Although these lines are often difficult to see, any information of this type will help you to arrange the colours and patterns of the wing markings.
Black and White Butterfly Drawing Tips and Techniques
This butterfly drawing tutorial relies heavily on the video at the bottom of this page so don’t forget to watch it either before or after you’ve finished the text part of this drawing lesson.
I wanted to show how I would approach a realistic drawing of a butterfly so while this is in the step by step drawing section of the site I hope that you can take away so much more than just how to draw a butterfly drawing. By the time you have finished the video and text in this tutorial you’ll have a handful of new tools that you can use in your own realistic drawings, whatever they may be.
Step 1 – Basic Contour Lines
To start – get yourself a photograph to draw from. If you squint while looking at the picture some of the basic shapes should start to emerge. With the picture I used, I was able to see the following shapes of the butterfly, a branch and 3 separate leaves coming off of the branch.
Find the simple shapes in your photo and draw them lightly on the page. At this stage we are not going for perfection at all. You should only be concerned with quickly getting the drawing started. These contour lines shouldn’t take you much more than a minute or two to draw. If you’re taking longer than that, you’re probably trying to make things overly complex.
Step 2 – Adding in more details
The way that I approach this butterfly drawing is no different than how I approach most of my art. I try and work from general details to specific details.
What is a general detail? That’s what we created in step one. Specific details are smaller details like the ones that you can see in the step two image.
What I’m doing in this step is creating a ‘blue-print’ that I will later use when I am shading in the black and white drawing of a butterfly. Continue to add details to the other objects in your picture as you see fit. These aren’t the only details that I will add in as you will see when you watch the drawing video. The main idea to take away from step two is working from general to specific to even more specific.
Step 3 – Shading
The step three image is from the video and shows the contrast between a shaded butterfly wing, and one that only has detail lines added into it. I would suggest leaving the shading as your final step after you have added in your details.
Try working in layers when you are shading. Start with a light layer by pressing very lightly on the page. Gradually increase the pressure of your pencil as you add more and more layers of shading. The harder you press, the darker the shading.
Step 4 – More Shading & Clean-up
In step four you can see the finished butterfly and an unfinished leaf. Keep going with the shading just as you were doing in step three.
The shading should go fairly quick if you took the time to define your details from general to specific in step two.
Usually I will outline areas of shade and then color them in similar to a children’s coloring book. It’s an extremely simple technique and if you draw your shade area lines lightly, by the time you add in shading they should blend together nicely.
Use your eraser to clean up any unwanted lines around the edges of your drawing. You can also use your eraser to remove the darkness from parts that may have too much shading on them.
Now that you’re done with the text portion of this black and white butterfly drawing lesson, click on the video below and see all of the ideas come together as you watch the butterfly drawing being created.
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Lots of tips for sketching butterflies
I’ve just published a big update to my butterfly sketching class with lots of new tutorials and re-filmed versions of existing ones. The update is free for existing students!
After a quick introduction to butterfly anatomy (I find it helps tremendously to know what you’re drawing), I show my process for sketching butterflies easily in different positions – from the top, from the side and from various angles. These little creatures can move fast!
My basic method for sketching butterflies is to consider the overall shape (can be a triangle or a rectangle) and draw it in lightly. Then I measure the angles for the wings, and work out how much they overlap and draw them in. The body and details then can follow. A small paper model can be helpful to make sense of the weird angles.
I like to use a combination of watercolor and colored pencil for sketching butterflies, it’s a fast and reliable method – you get the best of both worlds. Smooth and intense color from your watercolor kit, and the ability to add precise detail and texture with the colored pencils. In the class also show how you can work with pencil or ink only to produce an interesting sketch.
One thing that I have benefitted from immensely are warm-up sketches. These are fast spontaneous sketches done in one minute or less. You have to focus on the essentials: shapes, angles, volumes. Basically you take a bunch of photos (or sit down in front of a popular butterfly flower like a thistle) and then start doing as many quick sketches as you can. If you’re sketching from life the butterflies will change their position automatically for you!
I’ve refilmed all of the tutorials that were previously in the class – some didn’t meet the best video and audio standards, and I asked students which kind of tutorials they’d like to see. So now you should experience the painting process flawlessly and there are more diverse sketching tutorials in the class (including caterpillars, and some popular butterflies like monarchs and swallowtails, a new tutorial covering iridescent colors).
All existing students will of course get the update for free. For everyone interested I still have my flexible pay-what-you-want-pricing in place for all of my classes, including this one.
I have filmed new lessons showing how to sketch moths and caterpillars that are available exclusively for those who purchase the course directly from my website (total length is now over 2.5 hours and I have ideas for future updates). I show a variety of techniques ranging from pencil and ink drawings to painting with watercolor and adding colored pencils.
All in all, this has been a serious overhaul of that very popular class, and I hope you’ll enjoy it a lot. Butterflies are fun to observe and sketch, and the techniques for mastering butterfly drawings are easy to learn.
I definitely enjoyed researching and filming the new material, especially since I saw and sketched so many new butterflies this summer.
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Drawing a Butterfly: Step 3
N ext you can outline the colors and patterns on the wings.
If you have managed to plot some of the skeletal structure in Step 2, you will notice how the arrangement of the shapes and colors of the wing markings correspond to its sections.
Drawing a Butterfly: Step 4
O nce you have completed the markings on the first two wings you are faced with a choice of drawing techniques:
Technique 1: As butterfly wings appear symmetrical, you can ‘trace and transfer’ the wings across to the other side of the body in order to form the second set of wings. The advantage of this technique lies not only in its speed, but also in its capacity to create a well balanced drawing, particularly if you have made the odd mistake in the first set of wings. When you trace and transfer your drawing, your so-called ‘mistakes’ are also duplicated. However, they are symmetrically balanced by this technique, making them look deliberate. Consequently they are less likely to be read as errors.
Technique 2: By following the same path you simply continue with your observational drawing for the second set of wings. As the wings are not exactly symmetrical this is the more difficult choice because it demands greater concentration to capture the slight variations of shape and color between each side. It is this path that we followed in this drawing as you can see by comparing the markings on each wing.
Drawing a Butterfly: Step 5
B efore you apply any color you need to establish the tonal structure of the drawing.
At this stage you should continue to use the purple pencil as other colors will comfortably blend over it.
Avoid shading over any areas of light or pure color as you need the white of the paper to shine through to illuminate these vibrant areas later in the drawing.
You will notice that our artist started the shading on the left hand side of the image. This is because he is right handed and wants to work away from what he has already drawn to avoid smudging it. If you were left handed you would obviously start on the right hand side.
