How to Draw a Tortoise Step by Step
This tutorial shows how to draw a tortoise in a cartoon style. It consists of nine steps with detailed illustrated examples and simple drawing instructions.
As mentioned, the drawing is of a tortoise. Not to be confused with a turtle (turtles live in water while tortoises live on land). You can see a preview of the main drawing stages for it above but the guide also includes a step by step breakdown of drawing the face as well as the shell.
You should start the tutorial in pencil and use light lines until you’ve outline the different parts of the tortoise as described throughout the steps. Light lines are generally easier to erase in case you happen to make a mistake. You can trace over them with a black pen or marker (or darken them with the pencil) before coloring.
Step 1 – Draw the Top of the Tortoise’s Shell
First draw an outline of the upper part of the tortoise’s shell. Make it’s top rounder and it’s bottom a bit flatter. Also give it an upwards facing bump at the front and a slightly longer downwards facing bump at the back.
Step 2 – Draw the Bottom of the Shell
Draw the bottom portion of the shell significantly smaller than the top. Make it’s shape as shown in the above example.
Step 3 – Draw the Head
Coming out of the front of the shell draw an outline of the head/neck. Make the neck curve slightly upwards.
Step 4 – Draw the First Pair of Legs
To each side of the lower part of the shell add the first set of legs. Draw both leaning slightly forward with a steep bend in the front one and a slight bend in the back one. Make the shapes of both legs slightly thicker as they go down.
Step 5 – Draw the Background Legs
Draw the second set of legs (in the background) coming out from behind the first set as shown in the example. Make the visible parts of their shape similar to the legs in the foreground but position them a little higher up.
Step 6 – Draw the Face
The tortoise’s face has a bit of details to it so you can see a step by step breakdown of drawing it in the example below.
As this is a cartoon tortoise it’s face will be somewhat different from that of a real one.
First, add the the outline of the eye. Inside it add the iris and then erase a little bit of it’s outline to add a small oval shaped highlight (light reflecting form the eye). Finally add the mouth to finish the tortoise’s face.
For drawing the eyes of a person (in a similar style) see:
8 Examples of How to Draw Eye Expressions
Step 7 – Draw the Toes
You can erase a little bits of the outlines of the feet and add in the toes/nails as shown in the example. You can make the shape each one similar to an upside down letter “U”.
Add three toes to each of the legs in the foreground (the ones in the background aren’t visible).
Step 8 – Draw the Shell Pattern & Finish the Line Drawing
Similar to the face you can see a step by step breakdown of drawing the shell below.
First draw a line to divide it into the top and bottom. Next divide the bottom portion into little segments that get narrower as they go to the sides. This will help show the curvature of the shell.
Draw another set of segments at the upper part of the shell. Again, make them narrower as they got to the sides. Give them pointy tips at their upper ends and coming from those tips draw the lines that will create the last set of the segments of the shell.
Once done with these details, confirm that your drawing looks good and trace over it with a black pen or marker. You can fill in the iris of the eye with black as well but leave the part overlapped by the highlight white.
Step 9 – Color the Tortoise
To color the tortoise you can make it’s main body a light yellow/green. Make the upper part of the shell brown and the lower part yellow. You can make the toes/nails yellow as well.
To get colors similar to the example water based paints or colored pencils can be good options. If you want a brighter looking drawing you can use markers instead.
Conclusion
The cartoon tortoise used as the example in this tutorial is not particularly complex. At the same time the drawing has some detail to it so as to not look overly plain. The guide was made to be beginner friendly and fun. Hopefully you’ve found it interesting enough to follow along (or at least read through if you’ve gotten this far).
For more similar step by step tutorials on drawing animals also see the following:
