How to Draw an Elephant Head, African Elephant

Artist: finalprodigy / March 13, 2012

Step 1.


Start out by picking your pencils. I used a 2H pencil for sketching, a 3B pencil for general shading/lines, and a 6B pencil for dark shading.

Step 2.


Start out with a basic sketch. Use the guidelines if you need them.

Step 3.


Your sketch should look something like this. Clean up any extra lines.

Step 4.


Start defining your sketch by starting around the eyes and moving outwards. Continue to sketch lightly.

Step 5.


Sketch in the trunk and tusks. Pay attention to the curvature of the wrinkles along the face and trunk. Don't just draw in straight lines or random curves. Pay attention to perspective.

Step 6.


Now define the ears and body a bit more.

Step 7.


Now use a 6B pencil to roughly shade the background then use a paper towel or blending stump to smooth out your shading.

Step 8.


Now start adding final shading/details. Start by roughly and lightly shading with a 6B pencil. Make sure that you aren't pressing down too hard. You want the paper's texture to show through. After that use a 3B pencil to add detailed shading. Do not    

Step 9.


Continue making your way down the elephants face towards the truck with your shading.

Step 10.


Go ahead and shade in the truck and tusks. If you find that the 3B pencil isn't dark enough, you can use a 6B pencil to shade as well.

Step 11.


Now start work on the ears, Use a 6B pencil to roughly shade them in. Then use 3B and 6B pencils to define the edges and shadows.

Step 12.


Build up your layers and add details to your to the ears and forehead.

Step 13.


Roughly shade in the rest of the drawing and add some rough shading to the background as well.

Step 14.


Smooth out your background with a blending stump and use 3B and 6B pencils to shade in the body and legs. Finish up the drawing by cleaning up your details and shading. Comments and questions are welcome!

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Details

Artist: finalprodigy
Date Added: March 13, 2012
Steps: 14
Favorited: 32 (view)
Views: 0 in last hour, 10 in last day, 48 in last week, 121157 total
Comments: 0
Tags: draw animals, how to draw elephants
Description: Here's a tutorial that I should have made a long time ago. Elephants are just a lot of fun to draw so I'm sure you'll all have fun with this one!