Drawing The Hulk is one of those things everybody, kids and grownups, has done at least once in your life. Whether this is your first attempt, or you already have drawn Hulk many times, this tutorial will help you to improve dramatically your results. I will teach you how to draw The Hulk in 3 different ways, 2 of them in a realistic style and the third one in a cartoon type style.
The tutorials will guide you step by step through the whole process. Each tutorial you will find in this included in this post follows the same 9 steps process:
- Step 1: Drawing the torso and the hips.
- Step 2: Drawing the legs.
- Step 3: Drawing the arms.
- Step 4: Drawing the head.
- Step 5: On top of your dummy draw the outline and features of The Hulk.
- Step 6: Painting the color base.
- Step 7: Painting the shadows.
- Step 8: Painting the lights.
- Step 9: Painting the highlights.
Now that we know the path we will follow for each tutorial, let’s start with the first one!
The HulK Realistic Style (Static Pose)
Step 1: Drawing the torso and the hips
- We will start drawing the rib cage area. You need to define also the line that divides the chest. This line will divide your rib cage and will set the view we are going to use when drawing Hulk.
- After the ribcage and the abdomen are in place, you should draw under them the hip and the crotch area. The easiest way to draw this part of the body is to draw it like some sort of short underwear or swimming short.
Step 2: Drawing the legs
- The legs will be divided into 4 part each: the thighs, the knees, the shins, and the feet.
- Take into consideration The Hulk goes barefooted, so you should draw the toes. Try to follow the drawing example I’m showing you above so you will be able to draw convincing and realistic toes.
Step 3: Drawing the arms
- Next step will be to draw the arms. We will start with the shoulders. Next, we will draw the triceps and the biceps area. We will follow drawing the forearms and finally the hands.
Step 4: Drawing the head
- Drawing the head, at this stage, will be quite easy to do. Just draw a sphere with flattened sides, and draw a vertical line across it. Once you have this done, you gotta draw a horizontal line across the sphere. This line should be drawn a little bit above the center of the sphere.
Step 5: Drawing the final line art
- In this step, we are going to draw on top of the dummy we created on the previous steps.
- You can play with the thickness of the line so you can create some depth and volume. Just draw the outline of the character thinner where the light will be hitting on the character and thicker where the shadowed areas will be located.
- Drawing the facial features could be a challenging endeavor. If you wanna learn more about drawing the human head, feel free to check my step by step tutorial ” How to draw a face “. I think you will find it useful.
Step 6: Painting the color base
- This part is quite straightforward. Fill the different areas of the character’s body with the corresponding color. Green for the skin, purple for the shorts and white for the eyes.
Step 7: Painting the shadows
- Adding the shadows on top of the base color will be quite easy. Just keep in mind where the main light source is located and place your shadows accordingly.
- As you can see in the image above, I like to keep the legs in shadows, especially from the knee down. This helps me to keep the viewer’s attention focus on the head and the shoulders, where the main details and features all located.
Step 8: Painting the lights
- In this step, we will add some lighting to our character. We will focus on the face, the shoulders and the chest area.
- We will use a warmer and more yellowish tone of green for our lights.
Step 9: Painting the highlights
- In this ninth and final step, we will concentrate on the face, adding some highlights on The Hulk’s forehead, bone chicks, the tip of the nose, lower lip, and shin.
- As a secondary point of focus, we will paint some secondary and less bright highlights on the chest, shoulders, and biceps.
If you like this first tutorial but you wanna draw The Hulk in a more dynamic and action posse, you will love this next tutorial!
The HulK Angry ( Action Pose )
Step 1: Drawing the torso and the hips
- Drawing the torso this time will be a little bit different compared to the previous tutorial. This time The Hulk will be walking forward.
- The rib cage will be turned to the side meanwhile the hips will be facing forward.
Step 2: Drawing the legs and the ground
- Drawing the legs and the base made of torn concrete could look a little bit intimidating. But, don’t worry is easier than it looks.
- The leg on the right is flexed so you gotta draw the thigh shorter and rounder compared to the leg behind. The knee, the shin and the foot you should draw it almost fully frontal.
- The leg on the left is quite easy to draw, only remember this leg is getting behind compared to the rest of the body, so you gotta draw it in perspective.
- The base is just like the steps of a stair dressed like pieces of concrete from a destroyed building.
Step 3: Drawing the arms
- The arms will help a lot to express the anger of Hulk. This is why the arm on the left has a clenching fist. Like with the leg on the right, a part of it, the forearm in this case, will be drawn in perspective.
- The arm on the right will just be laying on the side of the body, but with a clenching fist too, expressing some tension.
Step 4: Drawing the head
- The head will be placed in a 3 quarter view, looking to the right side of the viewer.
- If you are interested in knowing more about how to draw human faces, you can check my step by step tutorial here.
Step 5: Drawing the final line art
- Drawing the final line art on top of our dummy will be the next step.
- We will try to use shading for giving depth, volume and texture to our character. The way we are going to do that is using shading techniques like hatching and cross-hatching. If you are interested in knowing more about these techniques and other pencil shading techniques, feel free to check my article on “How to shade with a pencil”. Nevertheless, I will try to show you the basics here, so you can understand better my process.
- How it´s going so far? I hope your drawing is looking even better than mine. But, if you are struggling to achieve the results you were expecting, DON´T WORRY IT´S NORMAL! You probably need to work more in your artistic skills. As same as you, I used to be where you are now, trying to make my drawings look cool and impressing. Practice is the answer to your problem. However, there are things you can do for shortening your learning curve. For me, a game changer was to take action and to enroll in drawing courses. If you wanna check my review of a course I took that really helped me to improve, feel free to check my article on Proko’s Portrait Drawing Course. You will be able to see all the work I did on the course and the results I was able to achieve.
- Also, Proko has some great anatomy drawing courses that will really blow your mind. I really recommend his courses because they are really next level stuff.
Step 6: Painting the color base
- This part will be quite simple. Just use green for the skin, purple for the pants and white for the eyes and the teeth.
Step 7: Painting the shadows
- When drawing the shadows you should take into consideration the main light source will be coming from the top left.
- The abdomen and the leg on the left will be fully in shadows.
- For the shadows, you can use a darker tone of the color base of each part.
- The base will have also some shadows on them. Check the image above.
Step 8: Painting the lights
- For the areas under the light, we will use a yellowish tone of green so this will give some add some warm tones to this areas.
Step 9: Painting the highlights
- The highlights will be painted on the top part of the body, especially on the head and the shoulders where the viewer will focus his or her attention first.
The HulK (Cartoon Version)
Step 1: Drawing the torso and the hips
- Drawing the torso we can start to see how the proportions are more exaggerated compared to the previous realistic styles.
- The size of the hips compared to the torso is quite small and far away from real life proportions.
Step 2: Drawing the legs and the ground
- The leg proportions will be very different too. The thighs and the shins are very short and thick.
- The feet on the opposite side are very big and with thick toes.
Step 3: Drawing the arms
- The same principle we applied when drawing the legs we should use for drawing the arms.
- Small shoulders, short biceps and forearms, and huge hands.
- This exaggeration of the proportions is key if we want to achieve a convincing cartoon style.
Step 4: Drawing the head
- The head should be drawn as a rectangle.
- Keep the cross where the line of the eyes is drawn, very high on the head. This is due in part because of the cartoon style and in part because I want to add some perspective locating the viewer’s angle quite below.
Step 5: Drawing the final line art
- When you have your base dummy fully drawn you should draw the final line art on top.
- If you are working on using paper and pencil, you can check my Recommend supplies section where I show you which pencils I use, which kneaded eraser I use for removing the dummy’s underline without losing its proportions, and many more.
- I like to draw the muscles and the main body shapes quite angular and geometrical. This is part of the cartoon style I like to draw.
- Regarding the face, let me point you to a tutorial I wrote on How to draw a Cartoon Face and Facial Expressions. I think this tutorial will help you to understand not only how cartoon facial proportions work, but also how you can alter the facial features to achieve different expressions.
Step 6: Painting the color base
- This part is quite straightforward. Fill the different areas of the character’s body with the corresponding color. Green for the skin, purple for the shorts and white for the eyes.
Step 7: Painting the shadows
- When drawing the shadows you should take into consideration the main light source will be coming from the top left, so certain areas will be under the light and others in shadows.
- I usually like to keep the upper part of the torso and the head exposed to the light and the legs more in shadows.
Step 8: Painting the lights
- When painting the lights I will focus on the head, the shoulders and the chest. I will leave the rest of the lighted areas of the body almost untouched.
- The biggest contrast between light and shadows should be where the main focus area is (the head and the upper torso).
Step 9: Painting the highlights
- Highlights should be concentrated on the face and the shoulders, so you can narrow even more the attention focus on those specific areas.
Summary
