How to Draw a Snake in Ssseveral Sssimple Sssteps

Our snake drawing starts as a wonky lighthouse. Draw a half-circle closed at the top first – this will be the bottom half of snake’s head. Then add an arc and connect it to the bottom half with two straight lines at an angle – that is the top of the head.

Then draw two “S” curves side by side – this will be the snake’s neck or the raised top of the body.

Next, add a spiralled long curve to mark out the snake’s long coiled body and tail. Feel free to draw any shape you like – you are aiming for a nice smooth curve that spirals around the risen head with some wiggles for the tail end.

Here comes the tricky part. Draw the same body curve one more time for the other side of the body!

The trick is that although you want the same width along the lenght of the body, the second curve is not exactly the same. Start the line as a smooth transition from the neck, and then twist it around at the same distance from the first line. For the final turn, bring the lines closer together to meet at the end in a nice pointy tail.

Now that we have drawn the snake’s twisted body, let’s give it a face. Draw two ovals for the eyes. Add two short lines for the snake’s narrow pupils. Then draw two small eyebrow arcs above the eyes.

Next, draw a small half-dome sitting on the middle face flat line for the nose, with two angled lines just underneath for nostrils.

Finally, draw a small smiling mouth with a two-pronged tongue.

Well, our snake is drawn, let’s just add the usual finishing touches that improve the drawing so much.

Double up on the neckline with another two “S” curves to mark out the snake’s underbelly. Then split the belly into segments with simple curved lines.

Let’s add a few more places where the underbelly shows on the snake’s twisted body. Double up the body curve in the bends and add the simple segmentation lines. That is the snake sketch done.

Let’s start outlining the sketch. Draw the eyes and eyebrows first – these are a direct outline of the sketch. Then draw the muzzle – outline the lower part of the sketch, but round off the cheeks and join them smoothly to the nose line.

Finish drawing the snake’s head by outlining the upper head outline, again smoothing off the sharp corners.

Then draw the nostrils, mouth and the twisted tongue. These are again a direct copy of the sketch – we have just made the tongue a touch wider at the top as it comes out of the mouth.

Then outline the raised part of the body.

Now outline the rest of the snake’s body. As we have done all the hard work drawing correctly spaced smooth spirals in the sketch, this is again just a direct outline.

Don’t forget to leave out the part of the body that is covered by the snake’s “neck”!

As a final step, outline the segmented snake’s underbelly.

Oh, did I say final step before? Well, this is an optional detail you might want to add for some extra interest: add some patterns onto the snake’s body.

As we are too lazy to draw individual scales of the snake’s skin, we just mark out some darker spots. Notice that while these are irregular, they follow a pattern – wonky-lined spots attached to alternating sides of the body.

That is it – now you know how to draw a snake. Here is the completed outline of the drawing, after we have cleaned up the sketch lines with an eraser.

And here is the completed, coloured in snake drawing. We have coloured the underbelly and the muzzle in a bright yellow. The body is coloured light green, with the spot markings in a darker green colour. And if you can spot it, there is some dark red/light brown on the tip of the tail and the transition between the upper and lower parts of the body.

Judging by the colours, this must be a rainforest tree snake.