How to draw a heart in two ways: a classic flat heart icon and nice dynamic side-view curved heart. Add highlights and shading to make the heart pop out!
Here are the two hearts we will draw today:
Our first heart is the classic heart icon shape, which is really simple to draw. You can either fill it in a single flat colour, or we will show you how to add highlight and shadow, which will add nice volume to your drawing.
Our second heart is not that much harder to draw, but since it is nicely curved, it looks so much more interesting. We use a simple trick overlapping the starting circles to suggest a heart drawn from a side view. This heart drawing is more dynamic, and the lines on the sides make it look like it is beating!
How to draw a heart – a simple classic icon
Our first heart is the classic heart icon shape, which is really simple to draw. You can either fill it in a single flat colour, or we will show you how to add highlight and shadow, which will add nice volume to your drawing.
Step 1 – Draw two circles
We will start our heart with two simple circles. Both circles are the same size, and just touching one another.
Step 2 – Add a center line
Next draw a single straight line down from the point where the two circles touch.
Depending how long you draw the line, you heart is going to be either tall or short. Here we are aiming for a heart that is about as tall as it is wide.
Step 3 – Connect the circles with the bottom point
In this step, our heart is finally taking shape.
Connect the bottom end of the center line to each of the circles with a straight line, so that it looks kind of like an ice cream cone.
Step 4 – Outline the heart shape
In our final step, we trace the outside of the heart. What a clear heart shape!
Don’t forget to erase what’s inside this last line you’ve drawn afterwards!
Step 5 – Colour in the heart
If you want, you can colour your heart in. We like a classic red, but feel free to try out all sorts of crazy colours!
For a simple and easy heart drawing, a single flat colour is fine.
But let us show you a second colouring method. It is not much harder to add highlights and shading in few extra steps, and your heart will look much better.
Step 6 – Mark out where the highlights will be
In this alternate method of colouring, you don’t fill in the heart straight away. Instead, you start out by marking out two semicircles. These will be our highlights.
Draw them in the colour of your heart, so you can easily blend the edges into the colouring and make sure there is a white space left in between inside the lines.
It is better to draw the semicircles further apart and leave wider white space in between – you can always draw over it and reduce it later.
Step 7 – Fill in the colour
Now fill in the heart with our chosen colour – in our case, the cl
Step 8 – Add shadows
In this final step, we take a black or dark pencil and add the shadows. Notice our shadows do not go right to the edge – there is a narrow stripe of the original light colour left out along the outline.
What a fancy yet simple heart!
How to draw a heart – nice beating heart
Our second heart is not that much harder to draw, but since it is nicely curved, it looks so much more interesting. We use a simple trick overlapping the starting circles to suggest a heart drawn from a side view.
Step 1 – Draw two circles
Just like our previous heart, we start by drawing two circles. This time though, we make them overlap a bit instead of just touching.
Step 2 – Add the side lines
Because our heart is asymmetrical, we don’t draw the center like that we did in our last step. Instead, we draw the side lines straight away.
The right is a long, simple curve, while the left side is dented and short. The result, unlike our previous straight ice cream cone, is a nice curved heart.
Step 3 – Outline one side of the heart
Even the outline is slightly different to our simple drawing.
Trace first the left side of the heart. We start about
Step 4 – Outline the other side of the heart
The right line starts on the left outline, which gives us the feeling that the right part of the heart is behind left. That gives our heart some volume, so it isn’t just sitting flat on the page as the previous simple heart.
Like in the previous step, transition the top circle smoothly into the bottom curve, all the way to the point to complete the heart outline.
Step 5 – Erase guidelines
Erase all the guidelines that you don’t need anymore, to see the nice shape of our second heart.
Step 6 – Add colour, highlights and shadows
As usual, colouring in the heart is an optional step. As you can see, we are using the same trick as on our simple heart to leave out some highlights, and add shadows to really make our drawing pop out.
We’ve also added some curved lines on the top and bottom of the heart. It almost looks like it is a
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