How to Draw an Easy Lightning Bolt
Learning how to draw a lightning bolt is easy and fun. We’ll show you step by step how to draw, outline, and color your lightning bolt drawing with markers.
Art and drawing are skills that anyone can learn. It just takes time and practice. The more you practice, the better you will get.
Keep things relaxing and enjoyable so you’ll look forward to your creative time.
Let’s gather up some supplies and get ready to have fun learning how to draw a lightning bolt.
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Art Supplies
- Thin black marker
- Paper or cardstock
- Markers
- Pencil
- Click Eraser, Pink Pearl Eraser
- White Gelly Roll pen
Lightning Bolt Sketch Practice
Doing a series of quick sketches is a great way to warm up your drawing muscles and work through some rough ideas.
It only takes a few minutes to do, but the benefits are huge. Here’s how it’s done.
- Get some paper and something to sketch with
- Pull up some reference photos
- Set a timer for three or five minutes
Then just sketch out as many lightning bolts as you can before you run out of time.
Another option is to do as many quick sketches as you can before you run out of room on your paper. Either way is fine. Just keep your lines loose and quick.
How to Draw a Lightning Bolt Step by Step
Learning how to draw a lightning bolt is really easy. And they’re a lot of fun to make. We’ll show you step by step how to draw them in some different styles.
Start by lightly drawing a line the size and direction of your lightning bolt.
Then draw a horizontal line across the top. Make the width as wide as you want your lightning bolt to be, keeping in mind it will get more narrow as it goes towards the bottom point.
You can draw this line straight across or at a slight angle. I like how it looks angled, but that’s my personal preference.
Next, draw a line from the corner of the first line you drew going down in the direction you drew your original guideline. This will be the first section of your lightning bolt.
Lightning Bolt Guidelines
Lightly draw a line going straight across. This will help to keep things lined up.
Draw a line from the other side of your top edge down to the guideline you just drew.
Now draw another horizontal line for the bottom of the first section of your lightning bolt. You can draw it right along that guideline you just drew, stopping before you reach your original guideline.
Next, draw a line for the bottom section of your lightning bolt that follows alongside your original guideline.
We need to offset this section of the lightning bolt, so draw the next line going away from the inside of the lightning bolt. You can make this line about the same length as the one on the opposite side.
Finish up your lightning bolt by drawing a line that goes from all the way down and comes to a point.
There are many different ways to draw your lightning bolts by making a couple of slight changes.
One way is by adding more sections to the overall drawing. You could make three or four sections for your lightning bolt drawing.
You can also draw the sections with uneven lines like in this drawing. It will change the overall look of your lightning bolt.
Try drawing them a few different ways to see what you like. There’s really no right or wrong way to make them. It comes down to personal preference and style.
Lightning Bolt Outline
Making your lightning bolt outline is really easy. Just simply trace over the pencil lines you want to keep for your finished drawing.
When making your lightning bolt outline you can use a black pen or marker. You can make your lines thick or thin. Or you can use a combination of line weights.
Using a color other than black is another option. Just do whatever looks good and fits your artistic style.
If you don’t know what your style is, don’t worry. Your artistic style will develop over time with practice and repetition.
How to Draw Lightning Bolt with Markers
Learning how to draw a lightning bolt with markers is much easier than what you might think. And there’s really only a few things you need to keep in mind.
First, if you want to be able to blend your colors together you need to use alcohol based markers. Bic, Sharpie, and Copic for example. As well as many others.
Second, you need to work while the colors are still wet or they won’t mix together. This isn’t a big deal. Just make sure you work on a section at a time.
Third, you need to use colors that are similar to each other if you want to create a smooth transition of color. If your markers are too different they will leave a harder edge.
For your lightning bolt drawing you can use yellow and yellow-orange for the inside of the bolt. This will make your drawing look more interesting than if you just used yellow.
Add a background or a ring of color around the edge of your drawing.
A white Gelly Roll pen can be used to add some highlights as well.
Maybe try adding a galaxy to your lightning bolt drawing. We have a full step by step tutorial on How to Draw a Galaxy with Markers.
Final Thoughts and Next Steps
Now that you know how to draw a lightning bolt, what’s next? The next step is to practice if you want to get really good at drawing them.
The more you practice drawing something, the better you will get at it. Repetition will help you improve your art and drawing skills as well as your creativity.
Try challenging yourself to see how many lightning bolts you can draw in a week. See what kind of creative ideas you can come up with for your drawings.
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