How to draw a minion

Hello everyone and welcome to a new tutorial on the Drawing Factory, this time titled ‘How to draw a minion”.  Do you know what Minions are? Minions are small, yellow creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single-celled organisms into beings who exist only to serve history’s most villainous masters.  In this tutorial, I will show you how to draw a minion from scratch and colour it.

I used a computer drawing software for this project, called SketchBook Pro however you can easily replicate the procedure with any drawing software or even with simple pencil and paper.

Let’s learn how to draw a minion

The first thing that I want you to do is to draw a few lines to define the space within which you are going to draw the minion. Two horizontal lines to define the top and the bottom of the drawing and three vertical lines to define where the body of the minion is going to be.

Once that’s done you can start, carefully, drawing the outline of the Minion’s body. It looks like a bullet with a rounded top and a flat bottom. It shouldn’t be too hard but take the utmost attention at this stage and make sure the final shape is what you are looking for before moving forward.

When the overall body shape is defined, start positioning the following elements, the waistline of the Minion, the little feet and the eyes. As you can see I did not draw the actual eyes at this stage, just an overall shape to show me where I will be able to position the eyes correctly later on.

Our Minion is already taking shape! Using the midline you drew before dividing the eye area into two parts, each will contain one-half of the goggles the Minion constantly wears. Also, add the mouth of the Minion at this stage. I haven’t shown all the steps to draw the mouth but it’s very simple and I am sure you’ll figure it out. Make sure as always to position it carefully before moving on to the next steps. You are really learning how to draw a minion, aren’t you?

Now it’s time to concentrate on drawing the goggles of the Minion. Now this may be the most difficult part of this project because the goggles are perfect circles. If you can and know how to you can use a compass for this job if you are drawing with a pencil or, like I did, you can use a function in your drawing software that allows you to draw circles. Or, by doing it carefully, you could do it by hand.

In any case, draw two circles like in my drawing making sure they intersect along the midline then, you can draw two smaller, concentric circles to delineate the inner rim of the goggles. These two circles do not intersect at the midline, instead, they barely touch.

Alright if you have been following so far, you can now clean up a little the goggle, make sure to delete any construction or access line so that only the actual shape of the goggles remains.  Also, draw two small lines from the outer rim of the goggles to the contour of the Minion’s head. These lines will guide you in positioning the goggle’s leather strap that keeps them on the Minion’s head.

Also, you can sketch in the arms and the hands of the Minion. The arms start exactly where the waistline intersects with the body. They are not too difficult, follow my lead, remember they are wearing gloves and try to match them as close as possible to my drawing.

Wow, the drawing is really coming along fast, isn’t it? For this next step, you should spend a little bit of time drawing the actual leather straps holding the goggles in place, like I did, positioning the pupils of the Minion’s eyes in the goggles and sketching the overall the minion is wearing. Look for pictures of overalls online if you want to use a reference or copy from my drawing.

Did you know that overall, overall, overalls, bib-and-brace overalls, dungarees or party bibs are a type of garment which is usually used as protective clothing when working? Some people call an overall a “pair of overalls” by analogy with a “pair of trousers”.

Have you realised that the drawing is practically finished!? At this stage, you can spend a bit more time refining the details of your drawing, cleaning up all the unwanted lines and really defining the contours of the various shapes to bring the drawing together.  I added also the logo on the pouch or pocket on the overall worn by the Minion.

The drawing is finished at this stage if you like or you can keep following the tutorial and see how I managed to colour it to achieve the final result.

Right, the first step of every colouring job s to fill the different areas with their base colour. Yes no fancy shadows or lighting at this stage, just a flat base colour. And that is what I did. I filled the yellow of the body, the blue of the trousers and the black/brown of the leathery parts. Oh and also the white of the teeth and eyeballs and the light grey of the goggles.

I did this on my computer as I told you before using SketchBook Pro but the same applies if you are using other software to draw on your computer or even if you are drawing this using traditional techniques.

You’ll probably notice that I have worked on the pupils quite a bit and that they look fairly realistic. I won’t go in detail here on how I did that and if you want you can watch the full video tutorial that I will be publishing together with this written tutorial to know more about it.

From this point on and after you have laid the flat colour of choice, it’s a matter of adding a little bit of shadow and a little bit of light to the colours to make them more lively and give the drawing a more polished look. In my drawing the light is coming from the upper left corner consequently I will be shadowing the colour on the right part of the drawing.

I won’t go too heavy with the shadows as I only want to create a subtle effect. What I did was to pick simply a darker shadow of yellow from my colour palette and I added it very slowly, using an airbrush tool to the right portion of the minion body that is likely in the shadow.  The effect is subtle but it’s definitely there.

I have done the same with the goggles, using obviously a slightly darker grey, the trousers or overall and the leathery garments.

You may have noticed also that the overall has a texture to it. To make that I simply picked a brush with a simple lecture of crossed lines, set it to a slightly lighter tone than the trousers and applied it overall to mimic the harsh texture of the used overall.

To finish off the drawing I added some highlights and a few details. All over the overall I went over the crevices and folds of the trousers and highlighted them with a very light shade of the trouser colour. See for example where the buttons attach to the front part of the overall? You can see the stretch marks on the fabric thanks to the highlights.

I highlighted the goggles as well and added the strands of hair on the Minion’s head.

Finally, I decided that the shadows needed a little more humpf! so I went in and added some shadows (always using the same technique) underneath the goggles and on the small little legs. I also highlighted here and there the leathery parts and created some bolder shadows where the crevices of the overall are and at the main folds. Cleaned it up a little more and presto! Your drawing of a minion is finished, coloured and ready to be displayed.

Why don’t you let me know what you think of this tutorial by leaving a comment in the comment section below or on my Facebook page? Also, you could post your drawings of a minion in our gallery and let me know if you have any questions or if you encountered any problems with the tutorial.