How to Draw Father Time for New Year's Decorations

Father Time is the figure representing the old year, traditionally an old man in a white or gray robe with a long white beard and long white hair, carrying an hourglass. You can draw this cartoon easily in stages for a poster, place cards, or any party decoration for your New Year's celebration.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pencil
• Drawing paper
• Poster board if you're doing it large
• Kneaded eraser or white vinyl eraser
• Light blue, brown and black markers or felt tips for coloring
• Wooden or plastic art manikin or child's posable action figure for body proportions

1. 
   Father Time body proportion sketch from art manikin

   Sketch the body and head of Father Time using the manikin. Father Time is often shown bent over holding a cane as well as his hourglass, so sketch in the cane and hourglass on your position sketch too.
   
   My example is done in a dark soft 6B pencil so that you can see the lines, but you should use a normal No. 2 pencil or an H range pencil and draw lightly, so that it's easier to erase.
   
   Pose your manikin or action figure so that the back is bent over from the waist, and the legs are bent at the knees, with at least one foot flat on the "ground." Wood manikins are on stands, but it may take some fiddling to create a bent-knee posture with an action figure that's stable enough for it to stand up. Move one arm out to hold the cane at about hip height, and lean the other back a bit to hold the hourglass.
   
   Then sketch lightly all the body parts as ovals or circles as shown, to show the pose. You can copy my sketch if you don't have an art manikin handy or the action figure is falling over too much.

2. 
   Robe, hair, beard and details sketched over the manikin sketch

   Sketch his robe, beard, hair and features right over the manikin sketch, since everything's going to be erased. Don't draw as heavily as I did because you will need to erase it, but draw hair and beard with a wavy, loose outline. We're going to have some real fun with this in the coloring, since outlining something with blue or light blue will make it look white!
   
   Just for fun and to make him look really old, I made him bald on top. You can give him bifocals too if you want.

3. Erase all the lines that aren't part of Father Time's final appearance with a hard white vinyl eraser. Then use your kneaded eraser to lighten the lines that you're going to keep until you can barely see them.
   
   I'm scanning while they're still dark, but I'll lighten them before I begin the next step. If you don't get it clean enough with the eraser, then trace the design and use the tracing to transfer it to your final version with transfer paper.

4. 
   Pencil sketch lightened and brown details drawn

   Draw the brown outlines and details on the heavily erased barely visible sketch. Outline his nose and eyes, do the domed top of his head, do the cane brown and the wooden frame of the hourglass. We'll outline all the white areas like his beard, his robe and hair in light blue so that it looks even whiter. Because he's so old and slobbing around in a robe, let's give him slippers that cover the front of his feet when we get to the black details in the inking.
   
   If you want him dark-skinned, then use dark brown for these lines and color in his visible skin with the light brown.

5. 
   White hair, beard, eyebrows, mustache and robe outlined in light blue

   Using light blue, outline and shade a little on his hair, eyebrows, beard and mustache. This makes the white look really white. We'll give him black old-man slippers in the next stage.
   
   If you want to do the entire drawing as a cartoon in black on white, then use a thinner pen in proportion to the size of the drawing and do all of these later stages in black. But a color version can be more fun. Even a dark blue marker can give some of this whitened effect by outlining if you use a different color to outline skin.

6. 
   Finished cartoon of Father Time

   With the black pen, sketch in the black rubber tip on the cane, leaving a little white highlight because it's shiny. Draw a line down the right side of the cane for shadowing and shadow the inside of the curve, just to make that more three dimensional.
   
   Draw his fuzzy slippers by dotting the part that goes over his toes, then drawing a straight line under it for the sole. Dot black pupils into his brown eyes.
   
   Then detail the hourglass. Sketch knobs at the corners to stand out, then draw the lines of the glass part of the hourglass. Put one curving line on top and bottom toward the right for a shadow to show that it's clear glass, then dot in the sand. Making the sand black and having most of it piled up in the bottom shows that his year's almost up, the next year's coming in as the New Year Baby.
   
   To draw him on a poster, use an opaque projector at a school to scale up your drawing or just draw that large. To make invitations and place cards, draw Father Time small and maybe add the New Year Baby with him. If you draw from a manikin, you can change his pose to kicking up his heels and dancing, or handing off the hourglass, or waving his cane. Have fun and be imaginative.
   
   You can cartoon any figure as long as you pencil the body shape underneath the costume to give it bulk.

Tips & Warnings

• Draw large enough that the line width of your markers and felt tips isn't too wide for the details of the cartoon.
• On poster board, use markers. Colored pencils slide right off the coated glossy surface, so markers are the best medium. On decorations, you can use colored pencils instead of markers or even paint Father Time.
• Draw your pencil sketch light enough that it's easily erased before inking.