How to Draw a Skeleton

Whether it’s for Halloween or everyday fun, you can get a lot of joy out of drawing a skeleton. The skeleton can be as evil or pleasant as you like, and bones are easy to place in a variety of amusing positions. You can draw a skeleton using a few simple steps.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paper
• Pen or other drawing instrument

1. 
    

   Draw the skeleton’s eyes and nose. For a more menacing skeleton, you’ll want to angle the eyes to peak at the upper corners. Your skeleton can be goofy with big, bug eyes or softer with oval eyes and even eyelashes. A simple, small triangle makes for a fine nose. The nose is one of the least important aspects for your skeleton, but they do look silly without one.

2. 
    

   Round out the skull by looping a line atop his eyes, making a few teeth below his nose and creating a lower jaw with three simple lines below the upper skull.

3. 
    

   Add at least five small squares leading vertically down from his skull to serve as his backbone and add a figure eight type object to serve as his pelvis.

4. 
    

   Put rectangles with rounded edges near the top of his backbone for his collarbones and below the pelvis to serve as his femur. Draw circles for his knees and elbows.

5. 
    

   Connect the knees to the femur and elbows to his collarbone. Add his shins and forearms with more straight lines, ending in his feet and hands, comprised of more rectangular shapes.

6. 
    

   Shade in his eyes, add pupils and any other slight shading you feel appropriate on his bone structure.

Tips & Warnings

• You can get much more elaborate with your skeletons by studying anatomy or propping open an illustrated book of the human form.
• Birthday cards adorned with skeletons make a great surprise greeting.
• Once you’ve mastered the human skeleton, move on to create an array of skeletal animals. You can even hang them on the fridge when you see how much fun they are.
• The more detail you add, the larger you’re going to want your skeleton to be, otherwise it will end up looking like one big clump of random bones. Also, use very fine-tipped drawing instruments if you are getting down to drawing metatarsals and phalanges.