How To Draw Cute Bugs (Patreon)

Hello lovelies!

I love adding cute little bugs to my garden scenes to help liven them up so I’ve made this simple step-by-step tutorial to show you how I draw ladybugs, snails, worms and bumblebees.

Let’s start with drawing a ladybug!

First we can start by drawing a large curve that’s open at the bottom to form the ladybug shell. I like to make mine really high and round, but you could experiment with the shape of your curve!

Join up the two open ends with a straight line along the bottom to make a semi circle.

Next we want to add a vertical curved line inside the semi-circle close to the bottom right corner, which will be the head of our ladybug. Let’s also give them two little antennae!

Now we can give them a happy little face, some spots on the back, and 6 feet sticking out the bottom. I like to vary the sizes of the spots and have some cut off at the edge of the semi-circle.

And that’s it!

Next, let’s draw a snail:

To form the shell, we can draw a round spiral with an opening at the bottom left.

Now draw two curved lines; one to close the spiral and the other down to the bottom right.

To make the bottom of the snail, draw a line from the top left and down along the bottom until you join up with the bottom right point. I like to make the bottom line a bit wobbly but you could also draw it straight if you like.

Next we can give them a face! Join the top two ends with a curve, give them two eyes on stems, and a little happy smile.

Now they’re finished!

Now for the worm (they’re super simple!):

Draw a line from the top left of the page down to the bottom right in a big, long ‘L’ shape, but give it a big bump in the middle.

Now draw the same line a little bit higher up, leaving the ends open. Try and keep the distance between the two lines the same if you’d like your worm to have a consistent thickness like mine.

Then we can close the ends with round ‘C’ shapes.

Be sure to give them a happy face and you can also give them some lines in the middle of their body to help them feel extra worm-y.

All done!

Let’s talk about adding colour. If you like you can just colour in the outline that we drew, but if you want to draw them without an outline, then this is my process:

We need to use the outline that we drew as a reference for our coloured shapes, so I like to reduce the opacity of the outline layer to about 20 or 30% in my digital drawing software. If you’re drawing traditionally you could just draw your outline quite lightly and paint or draw in colour over the top.

On new layers below my sketch layer I start drawing my coloured shapes. Personally I like to draw the elements that are different colours on their own layers.

Once my main shapes are drawn, I like to add details like the face, stripes and anything extra like the lines on the wings.

After that I can remove the outline layer because I don’t need it anymore. I add my shading which I do with my texture brushes, focusing on any areas that I think should be in shadow, like underneath the bee and under their wings.

You can colour in your little bugs however you like, but here’s how I coloured all four of mine! Snails are especially fun because you can decorate their shells in lots of different ways.

Enjoy! 🐞🐌🪱🐝