How To Draw A Lion

Hi, I'm Laura from Creative Drawing Studio in London. We offer art classes for children and adults. We believe that drawing is an enjoyable skill that anyone can learn, so why not give it a go and see what happens.

We're going to draw a lion and we'll start with the face which will be on the page about here. And the body will be about here. So we're just getting a general idea of the size to the page.

So first we'll start with an eye and we'll just do a small dot, the center of the eye, the circle around it. In between that, the shape of a nose, like this. And the front of the nose will come across with a straight line to a point at the bottom.

In between, put a little straight line, two dots. From the nose, put a straight line coming down the center and add the front, bend down, curl up, bend down, curve around and bend up. And you can put little dots, this is where the whiskers grow out of.

And let's put a bit of the mouth open underneath, color in, some teeth and the bottom of the jaw. There. Let's add a little bit of bone structure, cheek bones coming up and a little bit of cheek bones on that side.

And now we can start a bit of the mane, coming up. Before we do that let's give a bit more drama to the eyes, blackening around the eye making it look a little more fierce. There we go.

Let's now place in the ears, one ear will be here and one will be here. You could always rearrange them later if you don't press too hard. Draw them a bit lightly.

A little bit of fur. Now, I'm going to draw the general shape of the mane first, which comes down, flattens out to the side, goes up above the ear on this side. This way once we like the shape of the mane, we can then put little furry lines, broken lines, to indicate its fur.

We'll continue now with the body of the lion and we'll have a foot paw in front of the bottom of the mane. So at this point we'll draw the beginning of the arm, drag across into a curvy paw-shape, change direction, come back across and bend up like that. And you can indicate a bit of the paw there.

Let's add the other leg behind this leg by starting at this point on the mane. Coming down, going around and out, it's a bit above where this paw ends, so that it looks something like that. And the body tapers a bit, right, so we can add this shape at the back of the body here.

Before we do that let's add a bit of this leg here. The curving line, it goes back. And now a bit of the hip.

And now we can finish the back of the body, close this there but it's a little too far, so let's put the back of the leg first. That's better. And then come out to there.

Draw the top of the tail first and then follow it around, this lovely. And this is your lion.