How to Draw a Lightbulb

Today we are going to show you how to draw a lightbulb. A lightbulb illustration can be used for witty puns and inspirational clipart projects. With our easy-to-follow drawing guide, we will show you how to create the sketches, add color and create reflection on your lightbulb.

With our free drawing tutorials, you are bound to pick up a few tips and tricks to use with your next drawing. Before starting, gather your supplies. You can use any drawing supplies, from paint and brushes to your tablet and stylus.

For our lightbulb clipart, we are keeping our colors and light reflections minimal. We will be using Procreate, and if you are following along, you can use any type of Procreate brush to make your drawing.

Step 1 - Create your Lightbulb Shape

Using a pencil or light-colored medium, create the shape of your lightbulb. In the center of your drawing area, roughly sketch a big circle at the top. This circle shape will be the top glass bulb shape.

Below the circle, sketch a squared shape with rounded bottom corners. This square shape should be about half the height of your circle for the bottom of the glass bulb. See our example sketch below.

At the bottom center of the square shape, draw a rectangle with flat corners at the bottom. This will be for the metal threading used to screw the lightbulb in.

Step 2 - Add Details to your Lightbulb

In this step, we are going to sketch the final details. This includes the threading and the lightbulb filament. Beginning at the bottom, draw a couple of slanted lines for the threading as we did.

In the center of the glass bulb, sketch the filament. Start at the bottom and draw two lines going up and wider apart at the top. Close to the top, create a second set of lines going up. Then at the top, create wavy lines going across all the lines.

See our example sketch below for the filament, or add other objects. We've got tons of ready-to-use lightbulb illustrations to complement your drawing and projects.

Step 3 - Outline your Lightbulb Rough Sketches

With the rough sketches done, swap to an outlining medium like a pen or marker. Start by tracing the outermost line of your lightbulb sketch. At the threading, make small bumps to show the ridges of the threading.

Next, outline the filament and draw lines from the bottom of the threading bumps, as we did in our example. Once you have made your lightbulb outline, you can erase your rough sketches.

Step 4 - Add Color to Your Lightbulb

In this step, get your coloring tools ready to add some color to your drawing. You can make your lightbulb any color you want, like hues of oranges and blues or bright pink and red.

For our lightbulb drawing, we are using blue for the glass bulb and gray for the screw-in piece at the bottom. We left the center top of our filament white.

Next, let us create light reflection on our lightbulb and add yellow around the filament. Looking at our example below, we added lines along the edge and inside the glass bulb using white. With the white, we added short lines between the threading of the screw close to the left side and on the right edge.

With dark blue, we added a few lines in the glass bulb and used yellow around the top of our filament. Feel free to add, remove or change how you add light reflection in this drawing lesson. You could use the Smudge tool, textures, or leave your drawing as is.

Add extra line details to your lightbulb illustration to give it more depth. This can be a few more black lines to define the threading on the screw or a glow effect around the light bulb.

Now that your design is complete, what crafty ideas can you think of to use it with? Get creative with text and other elements to make your own sticker sheets in Cricut Design Space.

We hope you enjoyed following along and drawing a lightbulb with us today.