Learn Dandelion Drawing In 6 Easy Steps – A Tutorial For Beginners
Dandelion drawings are one of the easiest to learn, and what’s even more fun is that these flowers are amazingly gentle and dreamy. Drawing and painting them in your art journal will add a soft vibe and make your pages more imaginative.
What is special about dandelions?
Here are some facts about dandelions that you might find interesting and that can inspire you to use them in your art:
- the Chinese used them in their traditional medicine
- it opens at sunrise and closes at night
- all its parts can be used in food and medicine
- its roots can also be used as a substitute for coffee (whaat?)
- the yellow flower of the dandelion consists of smaller flowers called ray florets (what a lovely name)
And my favorite is the following:
“Dandelion makes the only flower representing three celestial bodies during different phases of its life cycle – sun, moon, stars. The yellow flower of the plant resembles the sun, the dispersing seeds of the plant resemble stars, and the puff ball of dandelion plant resembles the moon.”
How amazing is this? These characteristics are inspirational for every artist out there who likes to paint in soft, dreamy, celestial themes. I sure love those.
Materials for dandelion drawings
If you want to draw a dandelion, you really need just a few supplies which are pretty much obvious.
You should prepare:
- any paper or an art journal
- a pencil or a pen (I like to use both)
- an eraser
- a compass (optional; you can use a cup for tracing a circle or do it freehand)
Dandelion drawing – step by step
Here, you’ll learn how to draw the simplest dandelion in just 6 easy steps. Later on, you can expand on that by experimenting with lines and details. I’ll also show you some ideas on how to do that.
Step 1
Draw a circle with a pencil, not a pen.
You can do this freehand or use a compass or a cup/bowl and trace around it. The circle doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s just there to help you navigate the flower lines, you’ll erase it in the end.
Since you’re erasing this later, make the pencil mark very light.
Step 2
Draw another smaller circle in the middle of the big one. This will be the beginning of the stem.
Easy so far, right?
Step 3
Start drawing lines from the small circle to the outside one. Make them all different sizes and do this randomly, there’s no right or wrong. Maybe my lines in the image above are a bit too straight. You can curve yours just a tiny bit to make the flower more loose and interesting.
Later, we might add more lines, but for now, you don’t have to go all in. Leave some space to draw the puffs, which is our next step.
Step 4
Color in the inner circle and start drawing puffs at the tops of the lines.
The simplest puffs have three lines with a dot on each.
The flower is getting more character as we go, right?
Steps 5 & 6
Now comes the stem and some flying puffs.
Start drawing the stem from the center down. Notice in the image below that the stem is curvy. If you drew a straight line, it would look a bit odd (but it’s your flower, you do whatever you like). The curvy stem gives the dandelion a soft vibe and flow.
Finally, draw some puffs flying away from the flower. You can play with the size and the position of the puffs. Turning them in a different direction will have an even more interesting effect.
Play with different puff styles
What makes a dandelion drawing so interesting? It’s the puffs.
Playing with the puffs style will let you draw beautiful dandelions. You can go simple using only lines and dots but you can also make it more extravagant. I’ll show you how to do this with examples.
Play with puff lines
You can make the lines straight, or curvy, combine them in longer and shorter combinations, close to each other or wider apart.
Make lines curvy
You’ll get softer results if you make all the lines curvy, especially puff lines. So, don’t draw them super straight but add some softness to them.
However, you can play with geometrical lines which I’ll share below.
Add a nice bottom to the puffs
When you draw flying dandelion puffs, add this cute little bottom to them. In reality, they have these bottom thingies, and by adding them, you add more interest to your drawing.
Add interesting tops to puffs
You can add many cute tops to the dandelion puffs and get your imagination flowing. This can be anything. Here are some examples below.
Add circles to the top. Make them different sizes and colors.
Invite more magic to the puffs by adding stars as the tops and including dots all around them. Your dandelion drawing will look magical!
Why not combine two different things like circles and hearts and draw lovely dandelion puffs?
More dandelion drawing tips & ideas
Dandelions are super cute and once you realize you can make different kinds by changing a few things or adding something unusual to them, you’ll create magic.
Here are some examples.
Draw a few dandelions together and add more magic with dots flying around, even some grass at the bottom.
Create geometrical dandelions. This can be a great drawing exercise and if you’re patient enough, you can draw magical dandelions. Perhaps you’ll need a ruler for this and a compass.
I suggest using a drawing compass to make the circles and divide things into sections before you start (for inner and outer circles). Also, draw with a pencil first and later outline it with a pen if you want bolder lines.
And now it gets even more interesting. What if you create patterned dandelions or mandala dandelions? Below is the example I tried to draw digitally, just to see how they’ll turn out.
I think they look amazing. Why not try this out? You might need a ruler, a drawing compass, some imagination, and some patience. This isn’t for scribblers :D.
How to add more interest to your dandelion drawings?
Apart from the ideas I shared above, you can also paint your dandelions. I love using watercolors for this because they’re translucent and soft. Just like dandelions.
I know dandelions are translucent white, but you can get creative and draw and paint magical dandelions.
This means that you can use any color you like. I’d stay away from dark tones, tough. You want your dandelion to be soft and airy, hence the lighter colors, and watercolors in particular.
Below is one of my dandelions, just for inspiration. But, as I said, you can do anything.
Use these drawing ideas and fill your art journal with magical things
With this FREE art journal course for beginners, you’ll get a bunch of ideas for creating without any overwhelm or worrying about where to start.
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