13 Coolest Drawing Ideas: Step-by-Step Tutorials by Lavi Arts
Every drawing below is a four-panel breakdown by Lavi Arts, a Mumbai artist whose method is showing you the ugly first line before the pretty last one. Each grid reads left to right, top to bottom: construction shape, structure, linework, finish. The art is entirely his — Pixelorbyt.com did not create these drawings — and we have written up what is happening in each panel so you know what you are copying.
Work through them in order if you are starting out — they climb from a numeral-based cartoon monkey to a fully shaded graphite portrait, and the early ones teach habits the later ones assume.
For the same shading approach on gentler subjects, work through these step-by-step pencil drawings for beginners first — they build the construction habits these portraits assume.
13 Cool Drawing Ideas With Step-by-Step Breakdowns
1. Girl in a Crescent Moon
The trap is starting with the girl. Lavi starts with the dress — a wide bell whose hem is wavy, because the fabric is pooling on an invisible floor. The figure faces away, so you never draw a face; the read comes from the shoulder blades and the tie at the bodice. The crescent goes in last as one arc, thickened inward. If flowing skirts are your weak point, the wedding dress drawing ideas drill exactly this fold behaviour.
2. Easy Batman Cowl
Panel two adds the jaw guard as a shallow V, and that V sets the face height. Both ears must sit on the same tilt or the mask reads as broken. Then flood everything except the eyes and jaw with solid black. Very little of this is drawing; most of it is deciding where the light stays.
3. Best Friend Hands
Two hands hooked in a pinky promise. Lavi builds them as flat wedges first — no knuckles, no nails, just the edge-on silhouette — then divides the fingers. That order is why beginners fail at hands: they draw five fingers before they have a palm to hang them off. More paired-hand compositions sit in the love sketching ideas collection.
4. Two Best Friends Standing Back to Back
This starts as two long ovals joined at the base, which become the girls’ hair and heads. The clasped hands overhead are the anchor — both arms mirror the same angle, so any wobble shows early. Each girl kicks one leg back, and that small decision is what makes the pose read as friendship rather than two figures standing near each other.
5. Baby Monkey From the Number 3
The formula is written on the page: 3 + 3 + U. A numeral 3 becomes the head and ear line, a second the body and haunch, a U closes the belly. Because the construction is a character you already know how to write, the proportions come out right without measuring. The same trick runs through a set of animals drawn from numbers.
6. Cat Peeking Over a Ledge
A dome and a horizon line. The cheeks are drawn wider than the skull, and that is the whole reason this cat reads as cute — babyish proportion is cheek width, not eye size. Closed eyes as two upward arcs skip the hardest part of animal faces. For cats with real bone structure, see the cat drawing ideas.
7. Girl in a Circle Frame With Hanging Hearts
The circle comes first and forces a decision: how much figure do you actually need? Here it is head, shoulders and the top of a dress. The bob is one solid mass with a straight fringe, no strands. Three hearts hang on thin lines, filling the space above her head.
8. Mountain Village at Dusk
Two overlapping triangles — the near peak must overlap the far one or you lose all depth in the first thirty seconds. The cottage is small deliberately; scale is what makes the mountains feel large. Then chimney smoke, birds, a path that narrows as it recedes, and windows left as the brightest points. More like it in the scenery drawing ideas roundup.
9. Girl in a Ribbed Beanie
The beanie is drawn before the face, which feels backwards but is correct — the brim sets the hairline and therefore the height of everything below it. The face is placed inside the head shape, not around it. The last panel does the heavy lifting: ribbing, eyelashes, hair as dark masses with light strands pulled out. First one here where shading, not line, is the finish. Push further with these portrait drawing ideas.
10. Mountain and River Landscape
The river is the lesson. It enters wide at the bottom of the page, narrows to a point at the mountain’s base, and every bend runs wider on the outside of the curve. Get that taper wrong and the water reads as a road. The teal wash is flat — the depth comes from the drawing, not the colour.
11. Portrait With Tilted Head and Wavy Hair
The hardest one here. Panel one is one curved line for the jaw and one for the shoulder, and the tilt is decided right there: the head leans one way, the shoulders the other. Hair is blocked as large flowing shapes before any strand exists. The finish is heavy graphite — dark under the jaw, dark at the roots, skin almost untouched.
12. Girl in a Long Gown, Seen From Behind
A simpler cousin of the first drawing and a good warm-up. The dress is a clean cone with a slightly curved hem, the bodice a narrow band. The figure runs about seven dress-widths tall — stylised rather than realistic, and fine. The salmon fill is flat with one darker edge down the left side; a single value shift is enough to imply a light source.
13. Hijab Profile
Two crossed lines: one for the angle of the head, one for the drape across the shoulder. The hood is then a single sweeping curve. Because it is a profile you draw one eye, one lip line and the nose in silhouette — far more forgiving than a front view. Soft gradient shading inside the folds makes the cloth read as cloth. Related studies sit in the girl sketching ideas collection.
What These 13 Drawings Teach You
The same handful of habits show up in every grid above:
- Build from a shape you can name. A numeral 3, a circle, a cone, two crossed lines. If your first mark is the final line, you have nothing to correct against.
- Silhouette before detail. The hands in #3 and the hair in #11 work because the outer shape was settled before anything was subdivided.
- Decide where the light stays. The Batman cowl and the beanie portrait are the extremes: one leaves almost nothing light, the other almost everything.
- Keep the pencil loose early. Every panel-one line here is faint. Press hard only once the line is staying.
Pick one, redraw it three times, and keep the third. Repetition on a single subject teaches more than working through all thirteen once.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which of these should a complete beginner start with?
Number 5, the monkey built from a numeral 3, then number 6, the cat on the ledge. Both hide the proportion problem inside a shape you already know how to draw. Leave 9 and 11 until you have shading practice — they fail on tone, not line.
What pencils do I need for the shaded ones?
An HB for construction and a 4B or 6B for the dark passages covers everything here. The two portraits want a blending stump; a folded tissue works. Nothing on this page needs a full set.
Why do my figures look stiff compared to these?
Almost always because the shoulders and hips sit on the same angle. Look at number 4 and number 11: the head tilts one way, the shoulder line runs the other. That opposition is the difference between a pose and a diagram.
Can I post my versions of these online?
Draw them, study them, share your attempts freely — that is what step-by-step tutorials are for. Credit Lavi Arts as the source and do not repost his panel images as your own work.
Thirteen drawings is a fortnight of practice if you do one a day and repeat the ones that fight you. Drawing Class by Lavi Arts has the full videos, and when you want a fresh subject the 365 drawing prompts will keep a sketchbook busy for a year.
