Drawing SpongeBob SquarePants

Series Summary

We often identify with cartoon characters in our childhood because they portray the best, and worst, of human qualities in dramatic fashion, without much subtlety or complex juxtaposition of circumstance and desire. In other words, cartoons are easy to love and understand because they are safe and simple. Just as stage makeup seems grotesque when viewed up close, but perfectly appropriate for the theater environment, cartoons allow us see life from a perspective where things are contained, where no one dies, where no one can really get hurt, and where everything usually works out as expected in the end.

Despite the psychological underpinnings of the animated world, cartoons are great for just sitting back and having a laugh, no strings attached. Especially a Nick Toon called SpongeBob SquarePants, an undersea adventure featuring the daily exploits of SpongeBob and pals, Patrick and Sandy. In each episode, SpongeBob faces a new challenge: the scheming enmity of neighbor Squidward, the frustration of working at the Krusty Krab, or the unexpected happenings of the Pacific Ocean.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to learn how to draw SpongeBob SquarePants. But it should be so much easier for you, since artist Craig Browder walks you through it step-by-step, from nose and eyes, to hands and feet. If you practice the techniques found in these free art videos, drawing SpongeBob at the drop of a hat should be a piece of cake…so, let’s get started.

Video Transcript

"CRAIG BROWDER: How you doing? Basically this section is a 2D drawing but we're going to draw SpongeBob. I'm going to talk about how even though SpongeBob doesn't seem like SpongeBob is a in a two point perspective or whatever. He's just a cartoon character. But really all people or animators that do cartoons or some sort--understand the concept of perspective. And since SpongeBob is actually in essence like a square but he's just being skewed in perspective. What we're going to show how the techniques that we've already learned from previous How To's. We're going to help you draw almost anything and I'm going to start with SpongeBob. So whenever you're ready, let's get started. Alright, so what we've been doing recently is we're doing two point perspective and a lot of random stuff, a lot of boxes, a lot of--some are not really fun so I'm going to--you might be asking yourself of how do you apply this--what does this apply to? So this lesson, I'm going to show how even like characters that you see on television shows still use a certain amount of perspective. So I'm going to draw SpongeBob Squarepants because he really is just a square. So in the next-this next section, it's kind of give and take. But basically, if you need, you can like get picture of SpongeBob or whatever but basically, all you need to do is kind of just create a box and then make squiggly lines around it, you basically got SpongeBob. Really easy stuff but I'll walk you through it. So this is going to be another free hand so I want to make sure your paper isn't taped down because we're going to need to use that motion that we talked about, whatever is your favorite way to draw lines. Also, before hand it would help to warm up and like I said, you can do spheres and practice your straight line so. From here on now, I suggest fill in the page, doing that once or twice before you start drawing. So let's get started."