How to Draw a Volcano

In today’s beginner drawing lesson, we draw a volcano. Volcanos come in all shapes and sizes, making them perfect for drawing. You can design tropical stickers or a digital painting from your volcano illustration. In this tutorial, you will create sketches, outline, and add color to your line drawing.

Want to illustrate more tropical things that go with your volcano cartoon drawing? See our how to draw a pineapple and a monstera leaf drawing tutorials for even more fun.

For this drawing tutorial, you will need to gather your supplies. You can use any medium you have available, like Procreate, paint, or pencils.

Step 1 - Create Rough Sketches of your Volcano

Let's get started with a sketching medium to plan and create a rough volcano sketch. If you do not have a removable medium like a pencil, just use a light color of your chosen medium. You can cover it up when adding an outline or color to your drawing.

Make the Mountain Shape

For your first sketch, you are going to create a mountain drawing. For our volcano, draw a wide shape that gets narrower the higher it gets and is flat at the top and bottom. Feel free to make yours taller or slimmer at the bottom.

Add the Volcanic Ash or Smoke

At the top, we plan to draw a volcano eruption with ash or smoke. You can make the smoke or ash in a cloud shape, as we did in our example below.

Add the Lava

On your volcano drawing, at the top, draw dripping lines to create lava flowing out. You can add lava anywhere you like. You can even make teardrop shapes on the side to make it look like lava is shooting out of the volcano.

Step 2 - Create Defining Outlines of your Sketches

In our second step, switch to a defined medium to outline your rough sketches. You can use a black medium, pen, or marker to make your volcano outlines. We are using Procreate lettering brushes and a stylus to give our outlines different thicknesses.

Begin your outline by tracing the lava sketch first. We added curved lines to our lava to create an oozing or dripping effect.

Then outline your mountain that is not covered by lava. Add a couple of lines inside your volcano to create a rough mountain texture. See our example image below.

Lastly, outline the smoke and add more wavy lines inside to add more detail. When you have outlined your lava, mountains, and smoke, move on and remove your rough sketches.

Step 3 - Add Color to your Volcano

In our third and final step, we will add color to our volcano. We will be using three shades for each piece in our drawing. Feel free to use whichever color you have available, and choose one color for your volcano, lava, and smoke.

Starting with the smoke, we applied three shades of grey to give depth to our outlines. Then, we used yellow, orange, and red for the lava, adding lighter colors for the hottest parts. Then, we added more depth and definition to our volcano mountain using brown.

Feel free to add other elements like trees, land, water, or birds to complete your drawing. Using Procreate, you can use tree stamp brushes to quickly add trees in different colors to your illustration.

You did a great job on your volcano drawing. What an explosive picture. Just think about how your illustration will look with other tropical elements. Why not turn your drawing into stickers, greeting cards, or funny sublimated t-shirts?

You now know how to draw an easy volcano drawing. We hope you have a pleasant time following along with our drawing guide and learning how to draw a volcano from scratch.