How to Draw a Gnome

Do you want to be gnomies and learn step-by-step how to draw a gnome together? Gnomes are very versatile, making them perfect for Christmas gnome clipart, Valentine's day, and other craft projects. In today’s drawing guide, we are going to show you how you can draw a gnome easily, from sketching your little friend to adding color.

Use your gnome illustration to make quirky crafts, greeting cards, and sublimated gifts, or add it to your digital library for later use.

Explore new mediums or use your favorite drawing tool to create your gnome drawing. Use digital apps like Procreate or traditional mediums such as colored pencils, crayons, or paint. Our drawing tutorials can be used with any art medium you have on hand.

For our drawing exercise, we will be using the digital app called Procreate. If you are following along with Procreate, you can use any brush from your library. We suggest working with Procreate layers to easily change colors or add patterns to your gnome cartoon.

Step 1 - Make Rough Sketches of your Gnome

Let's create rough sketches for our gnome to get an idea of his appearance. We always recommend using a removable or light-colored medium when making sketches. This way you can easily make changes or fix a shape before permanently outlining.

Draw the Beard

The gnome beard will cover most of the character’s body and be the largest area. So, in the center of your page, roughly sketch a downward-flowing beard with a rounded top. Add the hair effect by drawing jagged edges curving outward and inward all the way around. This is similar to drawing flames, just in reverse.

Add the Nose and Hat

At the center top of your beard, sketch an oval shape for the nose. Our gnome's nose is about one-third the width of the beard and overlaps a little at the top.

Once you have added the nose, start sketching the hat above. Make your hat a little narrower than the width of the beard and pointy at the end. You can make the hat in any shape that you like, whether it’s slouchy, straight up, or curved.

Add any extra details to your hat, such as a star, a heart, fluffy embellishments, and so on. We added a round circle to the end of the hat.

Add the Hands and Feet

Your rough sketches are almost done, you only need to add the hands and feet. Starting with the feet, draw rounded squared shapes at the bottom of either side of your beard.

Then, sketch the hands at the top half of the beard on both sides. Your gnome's hands can look like ours with short bumps for fingers, or like mittens.

Add the final elements and details to your gnome sketch before moving on to creating the outlines.

Step 2 - Outline your Rough Gnome Sketch

Switch over to an outlining medium for this second step. Trace over your rough sketches to create a clean line drawing of your gnome. There will be a few areas that have overlapping sketch lines. Make sure to only outline the sketch lines that you want to include.

We added a couple of short wavy lines to our gnome outline in the beard for more hair texture. If you used a removable sketch medium, you can go ahead and remove it after outlining.

Step 3 - Add Color to your Gnome

In our final step, we are going to add color to our drawing. For your gnome, use any color you have available or color it to match a theme, like spring or Christmas.

We used a skin color palette to add to the nose and hands. We left the beard white and applied a black color to the shoes. For the hat, we used two shades of red and created a fun festive pattern on it.

Great work on creating your gnome art illustration! With your new illustration, use it as a template to create a bunch of themed characters. Just think of all the craft projects you can make by simply changing colors and adding a few elements.

Feeling inspired to create more drawings? We have other beginner drawing tutorials that will complement your next drawing adventure.

Thank you for joining and following along with this drawing tutorial. We hope you had fun creating and illustrating your gnome.