How to Draw a Plague Doctor

In this tutorial, we will show you how to draw a plague doctor – a very interesting character who was formally considered a doctor but had little in common with modern doctors.

Plague doctors appeared in the Middle Ages, during the plague – in an era when most formidable weapons were arrows, the only source of knowledge was a book and the only light source was torches and candles.

In this lesson, we will explain and demonstrate in detail how to draw a man figure in a characteristic costume and mask.

How to draw a plague doctor step by step

Step 1: Sketch the basic shapes for the full figure

We will draw Plague Doctor in the style of medieval engravings. First, draw the head of the medieval doctor as an oval. Sketch the torso in the form of an elongated rectangle. Outline the hands and legs with light lines. Notice, that in the first steps you should not press on a pencil too hard. In this step, using basic shapes, determine the proportions of the body and the position of the doctor on the paper.

Step 2: Mark the facial guidelines and hat

Draw the lines of the facial symmetry on the head oval from the previous step. The vertical line will help you to find the center of the face and help to draw the beak. The horizontal line will help you to draw the eyes. Then, sketch the outlines of the hat, which was typical for all doctors of that era. Next, draw the cane, cloak, and the stick in the hands of the Plague Doctor.

Step 3: Draw the wide sleeves and gloves

Add volume to the arms of the medieval character. At first, draw the long and wide sleeves of the robe, that tucked into the gloves. Then draw the gloves and sketch the fingers. The sleeves should be wide enough and the gloves should reach almost to the elbows.

Step 4: Draw the plague doctor goggles

Now you need to add details to the head of the Plague Doctor. First, draw the glasses as a couple of round shapes at the top of the face and just below the hat trim. Next, draw the lines of fabric around the face – this part of the costume holds the mask. Visually this fabric passes from under the hat, that is, from the temple are across the cheekbones and chin to another temple.

Step 5: Draw out the arms of the plague doctor

Draw the lines of fabric around the neck. Add details to the hands, making them look complete. Draw some folds on the sleeves. Trace the palms and fingers, making them look more detailed. Give some volume to the stick in the hand of the plague doctor. This step will help you to draw lines, making them straight and even. Add some folds to the gloves to make the drawing more realistic.

Step 6: Detail the mask and erase the guidelines

Now erase all guidelines from the plague doctor drawing and start adding the final details. Draw the line that divides the beak into two parts. To add more realism draw the seam above this line. After that, add some folds to the bottom of the robe. Darken all lines of the figure and erase all remaining unnecessary lines. At the same step, you can start adding shadows and lights to the mask.

Step 7: Add shading based on the light source

It’s time to add some shadows to make the plague doctor drawing look finished. Light falls on our figure from the upper right corner. Given this and the rules of light and shadow, try to draw shadows as in our example. In contrast to the comic book style, in this drawing, we will not draw too contrasting shadows. Draw shadows using soft and smooth pencil strokes. Try to make the transitions between light and shadow as soft as possible.

So, it was a pretty detailed and interesting lesson, is not it? We hope that we had taught you how to draw a Plague Doctor.

In this lesson, we intentionally used an unusual drawing technique along with a distinctive shading method, giving the character a look very similar to the ones found in medieval engravings and illustrations in old books.

If you like advanced tutorials like this one, we recommend you to visit our tutorials on how to draw a doctor, to see a more modern version of this profession, or check out our knight drawing tutorial.

But if you like easy drawing lessons we recommend you our tutorial on how to draw a candle to learn how to illustrate this simple object, or visit our book drawing tutorial.

By visiting these lessons and learning how to sketch the objects shown there, you can also enhance your plague doctor drawing and create a more complex and interesting composition. For example, you can draw a candle in the doctor’s right hand and a book in the left.

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