With genius level intellect and a body that he maintains at peak condition, Batman often referred to as the “Dark Knight” has been labelled as the World’s Greatest Detective in the fictional Gotham City. Batman is one of the most popular fictional superheroes of DC Comics and I have no doubt a number of his fans may have tried to draw the character a few times.
Fortunately, in this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to draw Batman in 2 different ways. I have made the tutorial pretty easy with a step by step guide for each of the tutorials. We are going to start with a dummy which will serve as a base for our final drawing. So lay out your paper and sharpen your pencils let’s get started on our Dark Knight.
First Tutorial: How to Draw Batman Cartoon
For our first tutorial, we will draw Batman in a relaxed pose using a seven-step process.
Step 1- Drawing the Torso
First of all, we will start by drawing our character’s torso. We will be drawing Batman from 3/4 angle and how we draw the torso will help to put the rest of the body in that perspective.
Draw a horizontal curve line across the torso to separate the pectoral muscles from the lower torso. Next, draw a vertical line from the top of the torso to the bottom, ensure that the line is closer to the left of the character because of the 3/4 view.
Draw the hips to look as if our character was wearing some sort of male underwear. Remember to draw ellipses on top of the head and on the right side to indicate where the head and arms will be placed.
Step 2- Drawing the legs
Draw the thighs as big tubes that gradually become thinner at the knees. Use ellipses to represent the kneecaps and demarcate the joints from the rest of the leg.
You will draw the calves as a concave curve line and the shins as a straight line starting from the knees and ending at the ankle. Use geometric shapes to represent the feet.
Step 3- Drawing the arms
While the right arm is in full view, the upper part of the left arm is slightly hidden from view. Draw the shoulders as egg-shaped spheres for the right arm and a rectangle for the slightly concealed left arm. Use short lines to represent the biceps and triceps connecting the shoulder to the elbow.
Draw the forearms as tubes, the wider part will be connected to the elbow and the narrower part to the wrist. The hand is clenched in a fist and the fingers are barely visible. You can draw a trapezoid to represent the visible part of the hand.
Step 4- Drawing the Head
Draw two lines coming out of the body from the ellipse you drew on top of the torso, this will be our character’s neck.
Now, draw the head as a sphere, somewhat squared at the sides and bottom. Remember to draw a horizontal line and vertical line across it, both lines should not cross the center of the sphere due to the 3/4 view.
Step 5- Drawing the Cape, Weapons, and Gadgets
Next, we will draw the cape and gadgets of our character. The basic shape of the cape is easy to draw, you can add long fluid lines to give a sensation of some foldings on the cape and pay attention to how the edges are serrated. The cape will cover the neck and some part of the upper arm. Don’t forget to draw two spikes on our character’s head as consonant to the Batman image. Draw a belt around the waist too, just a little above the hips area.
Step 6- Drawing the Final Line art
Now, it is time to draw details. You can erase out some parts of the dummy for this step so they do not interfere with your final drawing. Draw the facial features like the eyes and nose and draw a slightly flattened circle on the upper torso to represent the Batman logo.
Step 7- Painting the Colors
Pick out the colors as shown in the image above and the paint the area with solid colors. I recommend not using oversaturated colors in case you want to add more vibrancy to the image afterward.
Second Tutorial
If you are interested in more superheroes tutorials feel free to visit our Comic Character Drawing Tutorials section, where you will find many interesting tutorials.
Second Tutorial: How to Draw Batman’s head
For the third and final tutorial, we are going to just focus on drawing a portrait of our Batman.
Step 1- Drawing the Left Shoulder
You should start by drawing the shoulders. For the left shoulder, simply draw a straight line diagonally to meet a concave curve line below.
Step 2- Drawing the Right Shoulder
The right shoulder is quite similar to the left shoulder. Only that in this case, the straight line will meet a convex curve line below it.
Step 3- Drawing the Head
Once we have both shoulders outlined, we can then draw the head. In the space between the two shoulders, draw out two straight vertical lines that end as spikes. At the top, join the spikes with a slightly curved horizontal line.
Step 4- Drawing the Eyes
Use small flattened circles to represent the eyes on the head. In the space between the eyes, just a little below them, draw a short vertical line to represent our character’s nose.
Step 5- Drawing The Mask Opening and The Jaw
As shown in the image above, directly under the nose, draw a heptagonal shape to represent the mask opening and the jaw. The polygon should end at the point where the head meets the shoulders.
Step 6- Drawing the Mouth
To draw the mouth, simply draw a horizontal line slightly curved at the ends, this line should be a little above the center of the polygon. At this point, our character’s face should be coming up with a grim and serious look.
Step 7- Painting the Base Colors
Simply pick out the colors as shown in the image above and paint the area with solid colours. If you are painting against a white background, I recommend not painting over the eyes as they are white.
Step 8- Painting the Shadows
To paint the shadows, I recommend using a darker tone of the base colour of the area you want to shade. I shaded the right side of the face as shown in the image above.
Step 9- Painting the Lights
You should lighten the image by using lighter tones of the local color of the area you want to shade on. For example, I used grey to lighten areas around the shoulders which was painted black.
Conclusion
Now, you have learned three different ways in which you can draw the famous superhero. Just stick closely to the steps I have outlined above so you can achieve similar results to mine. You can try to create your own versions too, you do not have to stick to the three styles I used above. If you are interested in more free step by step drawing tutorials similar to this one, feel free to visit the Drawing Tutorials section.
I hope this tutorial was useful to you. If you have any doubt or question please leave it on the comment section, this will encourage me to keep working in new tutorials and articles.
Artist: Mafer Baruta and Toni Justamante Jacobs
Writer: Eseandre
