Today we will learn how to draw a tulip. While the drawing is really easy and completed in few simple steps, the result is quite a realistic flower with a nice shape and intricately overlapping petals.
Well almost realistic - we have shortened the tulip a bit to fit here. If you would like to give your tulip drawing better and more realistic proportions, just draw the stem about twice as tall as what you see here.
Our tulip drawing starts with a very basic sketch: Draw a nice horseshoe-shaped "U". Then give it a stem - just a slightly bent line down.
Next, draw some leaves for the tulip. Similar to the simple flower drawing, start at the ground level and draw one leaf on each side of the stem. Unlike the round leaves for the simple flower though, tulip leaves are narrow and pointy - so draw each leaf with two curves joined at the pointy tip.
Now it is time to improve on the tulip flower. Draw the two outer petals. The left one is a simple "J" shape, starting at the top left, and curving nicely to meet with the base of the flower. The second petal is mostly hidden behind the one we just drew - all it needs to finish it is a simple straight line at the angle to meet with the "J".
Let's finish the flower sketch with two more petals in the middle. These are just two upside-down "V" shapes with slightly curved sides.
Start outlining the two large tulip petals. Notice we are slightly improving the shape of the flower compared to the sketch line. To make the tulip flower a more interesting bell shape, we are drawing the top slightly more curved in.
Next, finish the tulip flower by outlining the two small pointy petals in the middle. The small improvement here is not drawing the middle line all the way to the edge.
Then outline the stem of the tulip - since we are drawing black outlines first and colouring the picture later, we have doubled up the stem, so we can colour it in later.
Here comes a simple step - the leaves a just a straight outline of the sketch.
Add some final touches to make our simple tulip flower drawing more interesting: Draw a line in the middle of each leaf to suggest the mid-rib.
And plant your tulip into the ground, so it is not just floating in space - a simple half ellipse around the base of the stem to suggest the loose ground where the flower is planted, and a curve for the actual ground.
Here is the finished outline drawing in one colour, after we have erased the sketch lines.
While this is a really simple way how to draw a tulip, the result is quite a realistic flower. Well almost - we have squashed the drawing a bit to fit here. If you would like to give your flower more realistic proportions, just draw the stem about twice as tall.
Our usual final step is to colour in the picture. There is a wide variety of tulips in many different colours to choose from. We have decided to draw a red flower with some yellow markings for contrast and interest - it could be the Calypso variety. The stem and leaves are of course green, as well as the grassy ground. Finally, we have some nice blue sunny day sky for the background.
And that is it - the very end of our how to draw a tulip tutorial.
