How To Draw A Simple Turtle

How To Draw Turtle Step By Step:

Below are given few more step-by-step tutorials for kids to draw. These are very easy to follow as given in small steps. Render your turtle by following it with attention. Both the illustrations are different, so you can go for both or whichever you like most. It will also develop your observation power and innovation.

How To Draw A Cartoon Turtle:

Step 1: Draw a circle to start your turtle drawing with your head.

Step 2: Draw the head with a flat end and curvy upper becoming narrow at the point where attaching to body.

Step 3: Below the body draw a line parallel to it.

Step 4: Below the body draw 4 legs using circular rectangles and a tiny tail at back.

Step 5: Draw 2 big overlapped circles for eyes with pupil inside them, a small curved line for the mouth.

Step 6: Erase all the lines to get the image as depicted below.

Step 7: Draw hexagon in the upper body to form scale and small triangular shape on toes.

Step 8: Shade the upper sides of the leg to form shadow.

Step 9: Color your drawing with shade of dark green and yellow to give it a popy look.

Constructing The Back Foot

Due to the perspective in our drawing of a turtle, only the end of one of the back legs is visible to us. You are going to use a similar U shaped line to represent this back food, but you want the bottom of the shape to be a little more squared-off than the two previous feet. The two lines of this U shape should begin just before the end of the shell construction line.

Hopefully at this point in the tutorial, you can see the broad shape of the turtle in the construction lines alone!

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Adding Texture And Detailing

Now that we have most of the larger details drawn, it is time to add a little more texture and more intricate details. Most turtles have rather rough skin and shells, and you can create this appearance using a range of short and long lines. Around the rim of the shell, you can draw thicker and longer lines.

The amount of texture you add is up to you, but you want to make sure that the lines follow the general curve of all the different parts of the turtle. All the lines on the shell should head downwards, and they should wrap around the legs and head.

For the areas that are deeper in the turtle, like the area under the rim of the shell and below the legs, you can add thicker and darker textural lines. You can color in the turtles eye, and add several darker lines around the eye to give the impression of wrinkles. Remember to leave a small area of blank space inside the eye to create the reflection of light in the iris.

You can finish this step by adding three dark claws on each of the turtles feet.

Shading Your Turtle Drawing

Begin this step by adding a second coat of black to the eye of your turtle, and add a touch of white paint to make the iris reflection brighter. Use this same shade of black to add shading to the body of your turtle, including the mouth line, below the shell, on the undersides of the legs and neck, around the turtles nose, and behind the turtles head.

Be careful with the intensity of your shading. Black is a harsh color, and too much can overwhelm your drawing very quickly.

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Constructing The Second Front Arm

While the first arm you just constructed began at the back of the turtle, from our perspective, this second front arm begins underneath the shell on the side visible to us. Use another U construction shape to form this arm, beginning on the shell construction line and ending below the main body oval.

This second front arm should extend straight down, rather than forwards. You can, however, give the impression of a forward motion by adding a slight forward point at the end of the foot as we have done in the example below.

Add Patterns All Over The Sea Turtle

Draw circular shapes in various sizes all over the skin of the sea turtle. This outlines the unique spots on the surface of its skin.

Here, you can see the sea turtle is nearly finished! The only thing its missing is a dash of multiple colors to complete your artwork!

Finally, here is the most exciting partfilling in the colors for your awesome drawing! This is the part where you can show off your artistic skills and your ability to mix and match various colors.

The color of a sea turtle varies depending on its species. However, the most common colors of sea turtles are yellow, olive-green, greenish-brown, reddish-brown, and black.

Some species even have distinctive patterns all over their skin, thus they may have more than one color. This gives you a lot of color options to choose from when coloring your sea turtle!

Feel free to color your sea turtle drawing however you like and using any colors you like, and watch as your drawing ultimately comes to life! And while youre at it, why not try experimenting with different coloring materials such as watercolor and brush pens as well?

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How To Draw A Sea Turtle For Kids

For your interest, we have divided this artwork into two parts.

You may need some coloring kits but this is totally an optional activity. You can choose it or skip it for your leisure time. These Reptile Drawing help you to open your mind in this art work.

Material needed:

How To To Draw Turtle Easy

• Draw a circle and below that draw an overlapping oblong.

• Draw a small circle to the left-hand side of the drawing for the face and then draw curved lines to make a neck that connects the body.

• Draw rectangular feet of the turtle.

• Inside the small circle make dots for eyes and a curved line for eyebrow, also add a curved line for a mouth.

• Make turtles shell in the circle that you have drawn earlier.

• Darken the body and legs from outside.
• Make the pattern on shell using rectangular shapes.
• Rub all the unnecessary lines.

• Add colors to your drawing.

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Draw The Hind Legs Of The Sea Turtle

Now that we have drawn the flippers in the previous step, its time to draw the hind legs to complete the sea turtles limbs.

Draw two straight lines connected by a jagged diagonal line to form the sea turtles hind legs. Repeat the same process on the other side of the shell to create a pair of hind legs.

Creating The Final Outline

It is finally time to use all the construction lines that you have drawn so far to create the final outline of your turtle drawing. Begin by using the head construction oval to help you draw the final outline of the head and neck. You can stick pretty closely to the construction line, but you can amp up the realism by adding a few lumps and bumps. You can follow the back of the oval slightly with two curved lines to create the impression of skin wrinkles. Then, use the front part of the shell construction line to create the turtles neck. Do the same on the bottom, joining the neckline with the front leg.

While you are outlining the head, you can add an almond shaped eye and a downward curving line to represent the mouth.

Now, use the main body oval and the shell line to create the final outline of the turtles shell. Add a slight curve to the bottom shell line above the neck, to give the impression that the shell is curving around the neck. You can now trace all of the legs, making the forearm look as if it is extending from underneath the shell.

For the final touches, you can add a few shell details below the main shell line, and then you can erase all remaining construction lines.

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Draw The Turtles Front Legs And Feet

From the lower point of the turtles head, draw a curved line about half an inch in length. From about half an inch to the right of the left edge of his head, draw a slightly curved quarter-inch line down. Draw a C/L-shaped line from the end of that line. Draw two tiny curved C-shapes over the bottom outer point and erase the meeting point of the two lines. He has a leg and a foot! Move to the front line of his shell. About a half an inch from the bottom edge, draw a curved line downward thats about two inches long. From the outer edge of the shell draw a nearly straight line about two inches long. Connect them with a curved line. Draw three tiny curly-Q C-shapes for toes. During this process, you also formed his neck.

Are The Construction Lines Necessary To Draw A Turtle

Construction lines are not necessarily an essential part of the turtle drawing process, but they do make your life so much easier. We always begin all drawing tutorials with construction lines because it makes the rest of the drawing process simple and stress-free. Construction lines are a great way to ensure that you nail the perspective and proportions of your drawing before you get too caught up in the details.

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Start With An Egg Shape

We will begin the sea turtle by drawing the basic shapes of his body. This requires just a few simple lines and we’ll fill in the details in the next step.

Constructing The Bottom Of The Turtle Shell

This step is the last one before we start to create the final outline of the turtles shape using all of the construction lines that we have drawn so far. In this step, you are going to use a single curved line to outline the bottom of the turtles shell. Begin this line just behind the front line of the back foot, and bring it down so that it is in line with the bottom of the main body oval. You can extend this line all the way across the length of the turtle, and join it to the back line of the very front foot.

Take a look at our example below if you need clarity on where exactly this line should start and end.

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How To Draw A Turtle From An Angle: Outline The Drawing

Step 4: Draw a turtle shell pattern

Now it is time to draw the shell pattern properly and completely.

Start by tracing the hexagons on the ridge you drew before. Then connect the ridge points of the hexagons with the edges of the shell.

The turtle shell rim has a pattern onto it as well, although much simpler. Here we draw a kind of half circles. By overlapping the circles one onto another not starting the second right at the bottom, but rather a halfway up the previous, we build similar pattern that looks lake a half hexagons.

Step 5: Add patterns on the skin

We are almost done drawing our sea turtle. Lets just add few details onto the turtles body!

Sea turtles have a kind of cracked skin pattern. There is not one clear shape you should use we have used some squishy triangles and squares, but you can try other shapes too! What about a turtle covered in circles?

How To Draw A Turtle In A Simple Top View: Finished Drawing

How to draw a turtle in a simple top view: finished outline drawing

Using an eraser, erase all the guidelines and clean up the sketch. Here is the complete outline of our turtle drawing.

How to draw a turtle in a simple top view: finished drawing coloured-in

Colouring is optional, as always, but helps your drawing to stand out.

Here, we have used a single orange colour for the shell. We have left the top of the shell lighter colour, to give the impression that sunlight is reflecting off the shiny shell.

We have shaded the edges of the shell darker just by adding more pressure on the pencil and few extra colouring layers. That makes the shell pop up to suggest it is a half dome, rather than just flat.

On the other hand, shading on the head, legs and tail has been done by first colouring it with light green and the adding shadows with a darker green. We do not have any shiny highlights the body inside isnt shiny like the shell but still suggest volume.

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Adding Highlights To Your Turtles Shell

For this step, you need a shade of white to add highlights to the shell of your turtle. Using a small brush, add white highlights to the pathways between the plates all over the shell. You can also add highlights to the plate shapes on the bottom of the shell. Finally, use this highlight shade to line the very edge of the shell to add definition.

Make sure that you are gentle with your highlighting. The highlights should be soft and light, blending seamlessly into the light brown base.

How To Draw A Turtle From An Angle: Base Sketch Step By Step

Step 1: Sketch where the head and shell will be

We start drawing our turtle by sketching two ovals one large and long one for the shell, and a smaller one touching it for the head.

Step 2: Add the fins

Next, we draw turtle fins. We build them from two triangles larger one attached to the turtle body and a smaller one attached at an angle to complete the fin.

You will notice that the fins are different sizes this is because a turtles back flippers are smaller than its front ones. But why is the left front flipper smaller than the other one? Its simple perspective. The flipper is further away from the viewer, and so it appears smaller.

Also, you will notice that we have only used one triangle for the left-back flipper. It is because it is partially hidden by the shell.

Step 3: Sketch the face and shell ridge

Here we start sketching the details for our turtle.

First, we sketch a face at this stage, that means cutting a curved line through our head oval and adding two more ovals one partly hidden behind the curved line for eyes. We add a small line at the bottom of our head as well to mark where the mouth will be.

After that, we start drawing the turtle shell pattern. Add two almost parallel lines curving across the larger shell oval for guidance. Next, split the shell ridge into sections by drawing four short cross lines. Notice these are curved a little, to suggest the round shell shape.

Step 4: Add on to the shell pattern

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Adding Shading To Your Turtle Shell

For this shading step, you need to use a slightly darker brown shade than your base. A coffee brown is a perfect shade because it is not too dark. Like the highlights, you do not want the shading to be too extreme. Use this shading color to emphasize the rugged textures in the shell, using the detail lines to guide you. On the bottom of the shell, use this contour shade to separate the plates.

Add Detail To Your Turtle

Your turtle is going to come to life after this step because we’re going to add a few details and give him more dimension.

It’s time to finish your drawing and adding the final details is the best part.

That’s all there is to it. You should now have an adorable, smiling sea turtle. You can add color or add a background as if he’s swimming through the ocean or leave it as is.

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How To Draw A Sea Turtle Materials

• Eraser. Large ones you can hold in your hand do a much better job than just the pencil tips.

• BlackSharpie Marker. These fine point permanent marker pens make nice black outlines, have a good tip for coloring, and never bleed when they get wet. Use them with good ventilation and add extra paper underneath to protect your tables.

• Prang Crayons. These are a bit softer than other crayons so they sometimes look like oil pastels. They also have a some nice brown shades that Crayola does not have unless you buy their larger boxes.

• Crayola Crayons. The reliable brand that always works well. The 24 pack has some of my favorite golden orange and yellow colors that seem a bit richer and warmer than the ones Prang has.