1. Design & Illustration
  2. Drawing

Draw a Cute Badger Scene Step by Step

Final product image
What You'll Be Creating


We'll start from scratch and you'll be able to learn a lot of useful tricks to create a quick illustration. Then you can use the final sketch to bring it into vector with Sharon Milne. Find a bit of paper, grab a pencil and let's get started!

1. Sketch the Base

Step 1

Let's draw the ground first. It's very important to define perspective for the picture, even when it has nothing to do with architecture or right angles. Just draw simple lines as if they were laying flat on the ground.

simple lines

Step 2

Use quick gesture lines to create a general shape of the badgers. All you need to do is to define the position of spine, head and back. Such a fast sketch helps avoid stiffness of figures and it lets you to sketch the idea before going into anatomy and other complicated things. Notice how I defined the volume of the bodies.

general shape
outlined shape

Step 3

When the general shape is done, you should do a pose check. Sometimes the gesture looks great, but it may be anatomically impossible. Of course, you can bend the rules, but try not to go too far away from them.

sketch atonomy

Step 4

Use the base we've created to sketch the outline. Don't pay too much attention to it, just sketch what you see in this messy shape.

sketch animal outline

2. Build the Head

We're going to use the lessons from my previous tutorial on drawing animals to create heads for two badgers in 3D space.

Step 1

Start with a ball where in the widest part of skull. Use its lines to define the halves, and so the direction the badgers are looking.

ball for head

Step 2

Draw the muzzle. The female has a long, slim mouth, while her baby has a cute, short muzzle.


Step 3

Draw a ball at the end of the muzzle to define the exact placement of the mouth.

mouth placement

Step 4

Sketch a big nose and lips.

nose and lips

Step 5

Find the place for eyes. Placing them low gives the baby a cute look.


Step 6

Use the guide lines to sketch the outlines of the head.

head outline

3. Add Details to the Head

Now we're ending the sketch phase and starting the real drawing. If you're drawing traditionally, it's the best to redraw the defined lines subtly on a new sheet of paper, leaving all these messy guides-of-guides behind.

Step 1

Draw the noses. Badgers have them very big!


Step 2

Shade the noses. Keep the noseholes the darkest and leave a bit of the nose clear to create shine.

shade noses

Step 3

Sketch the ears. The baby is going to have them laying flat, since it's pretending to be angry.

sketch ears

Step 4

Add a lot of fur to the ears.

fur on ears

Step 5

Draw the eyes. The mommy is going to have them closed, and the baby wide open, with wrinkles of anger!


Step 6

Shade the eyes to create some depth.

shaded eyes

Step 7

Finally, we can draw the contours of the heads. Don't forget about placing the stripes!

head contours

Step 8

Shade the heads. Black stripes will make your animals resemble badgers, no matter how much you spoiled the anatomy.

shade heads

4. Draw the Rest of the Body

Step 1

Draw the paws with long claws. Fortunately for us, they're mostly covered with the body and we just need to draw the fingertips, without bothering about the anatomy.

paws with claws

Step 2

Shade the paws. The claws are gray and the feet are black.

shade paws

Step 3

Draw the fur around the body.

draw fur

Step 4

Shade the fur. With simple lines you can make it look darker than the head (the head is white and the rest of the body is gray).

shade fur

Step 5

Draw a simple shadow using our perspective lines.

draw shadow


You've just drawn a cute illustration in a simple and effective way. You can leave it as it is, or use it for a vector illustration. Good luck and see you next time!

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