When drawing cartoons, use bold, confident lines to outline the figures.
Cartoon figures are not meant to be realistic, and thus, a working knowledge of the porportions of a human figure is not necessary for drawing a cartoon. In fact, cartoon figures are best when they are distorted to look amusing or whimsical. Rather than trying to draw a cartoon realistically, plan your cartoon ahead of time and decide what type of distortions your cartoon figure will feature.
Instructions
1. Break your figure down into its most basic shapes. Draw ovals to represent the body and head, segments of the legs and arms, and hands. Don't worry about drawing in a way that is proportionally accurate --- draw the type of character you wish to see. For example, if you wish to draw a short and stumpy character with a round belly, then you must distort the shape of the body to be large and round, while the legs will be unrealistically short. These should be drawn lightly so they can be erased or covered up with colored pencils later.
2. Draw an outline around the segments you drew in Step 1, to link them all together. The outline should be long, unbroken and confident.
3. Draw the clothes on the body. This may be accomplished very simply by drawing a line at the neck, wrists, waist and ankles to represent the neckline, sleeves, waistband and pant legs.
4. Draw the features on the face. Circles for eyes and nose are adequate, for the mouth, a banana-shaped smile. You may distort the eyes to be extra large, or the mouth to be huge, with the eyes small. Draw hair at this time as well. A full head of hair should cover up the top of the head, so that you can no longer see the line of the cranium.
5. Color in the figure using the colored pencils. Press hard so the colors will be bold and bright.
