How to Draw a Unicorn Instruction
A unicorn is a mythical beast that was popular in the art of the Middle Ages. The unicorn was (and is) a horse-like creature with a single horn at the center of its forehead. In the lore of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, unicorns symbolized purity and chastity, though in most modern contexts they are just magical beasts. In some myths, there is only one unicorn on earth, and in others, there can be herds of them.
Unicorns are not hard to draw. Some people draw them as a horse with one horn in their forehead. Others draw them a little differently, as a combination of a goat and a horse, or somewhat like a very young horse with one horn in their forehead. Here’s how to draw a very simple unicorn in just seven steps.
- Make an oval. This will be the belly of the unicorn.
- Make two circles – one in front of the oval and the other behind the oval. The front circle makes the unicorn’s chest. The back oval makes its hindquarters.
- Make four little squares where the hooves of the unicorn would be. Then, halfway between the bottom part of the circle (that makes either the unicorn’s chest or its back haunches), make light, small circles about the same size as the squares that made the hooves. These make the unicorn’s knees in the front, and the joint of the back leg for their hind legs. Draw connecting lines that taper together, moving from the bottom of the front circle that makes the unicorn’s chest down to the little circle that makes their front knees. Then make another taper from the circles of the knees down to the squares of the front hooves. You’ve just made your unicorn’s front legs.
- To make the back legs, you have to think a little differently. The back legs don’t go straight down like the front ones. The first bend back, then go down, kind of like a greater than the shape of “>”, but with the bottom stroke going almost straight down. You could almost make the shape of the back legs as a lowercase “y”, but you’d want to have almost nothing for the right side of the “v” that makes the top of the “y”. After you’ve got that shape down and have connected it to the circle that makes the joint of the hind leg, then make a second taper from the joint down to the hoof, just like you did for the front legs.
- Move your pencil over to the front circle that makes that unicorn’s chest, then make a triangle shape for the unicorn’s head. The head should be about half as long as the front leg is, or about the same length as the front chest circle is wide. At the sharp end of the circle, don’t make a point, but make a square end there instead of a point. This makes your unicorn’s mouth.
- Connect the back of the head to the chest with a line at the top that arches up just a little, and a line from the unicorn’s throat to his chest that curves just a bit like an “S”. If that’s too hard, a straight line from the bottom of his head (by his throat) to the circle that makes his chest will do.
- Make the horn as a very narrow triangle coming out from his head. Then add little upside-down “V”s to make his ears, and a few long wispy lines to make his tail. You’ve drawn your first unicorn.