How to Draw a Cute Snail
Learning how to draw a cute snail is easy and fun. We’ll show you step by step how to draw, outline, and color your snail drawings with markers.
Art and drawing are skills anyone can learn. It just takes consistent practice over time. The more you enjoy practicing, the more you’ll want to do it.
Learning to draw should be relaxing and enjoyable. We do our best to help keep things fun. Because everyone should look forward to their creative time.
So let’s grab some supplies and get ready to have some fun learning how to draw a cute snail.
* Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. This means I receive small commissions for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you.
Art Supplies
- Thin black marker
- Paper or cardstock
- Markers
- Pencil
- Click Eraser, Pink Pearl Eraser
- White Gelly Roll pen
About Snails
The shell on the backs of a snail is their home. And they move around on a single foot. Snails are known for their lack of speed and how slowly they move around.
Snails live in almost all habitats, including land and sea. They can have gills, lungs, or both.
Some people say the whirled shape on the shell represents the circle of life, making snails a symbol of rebirth.
When eating, snails prefer to dine together. Therefore they can often be seen in small groups or pairs.
The shells can be hairy as well as hairless. I personally have never seen a snail with hair, but I’d like to.
A snail’s body has a head, neck, hump, foot, and a tail. The eyes are located on a large set of tentacles that are on the top of the head. There is a smaller set of tentacles on the bottom of the head.
The body of a snail is typically gray or beige. And the shells are normally black, white, or brown. They can be spotted or striped. Shells come in many shapes and sizes as well.
Snails have the ability to completely withdraw inside its shell for protection.
Now that we know a bit more about snails, we can approach learning how to draw a snail with this knowledge and understanding. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make them however we want.
That’s what makes creating art so much fun.
Snail Sketch Practice
Doing some quick sketches is a really good way to warm up and practice what you’re going to be drawing. And it only takes a few minutes to complete a session.
Here’s how you do a snail sketch practice exercise…
- Get some paper and something to sketch with
- Pull up some reference photos
- Set a timer for three or five minutes
And then quickly sketch as many cute little snails as you can before you run out of time.
Another option is to simply sketch until your paper is full and you run out of room.
Regardless of the method you choose, the idea is to keep your lines quick and loose. Just get the rough shape and proportions down. Or use this opportunity to work through some ideas you may have.
How to Draw a Cute Snail Step by Step
Learning how to draw a cute snail is really easy. And there’s a lot of opportunity for variation when doing your drawings.
We can start by making some basic shapes to use as guides for our snail drawing. The head is going to be a circle. And the body an oval shape that comes to a point at the end.
This first step will help you get the size, shape, proportions, and placement of your cute little snail.
Draw a more detailed shape of the snail’s body and connect the head to the body so they don’t appear to be separate.
Add the antenna to his head. There are a lot of different ways to draw the head. Don’t feel like you have to do your drawing exactly the same as mine.
Next, draw your eyes. The bigger you draw the eyes, the cuter your snail will look. You could also draw the eyes on top of the head, instead of in the head.
Finish up the eyes by adding the iris and pupil for each eye.
Now draw a mouth for your cute little snail.
When drawing the shell, you can start by making a circle.
Then add the spiral design inside the circle. And make the overall shape more defined.
Finish your snail drawing by adding some texture to the shell and some grass for him to crawl on.
Learn more about How to Use Texture in Art for information on how this can be done.
Easy Snail Outline
The next step is to outline your drawing. This can be done using a black pen or marker. You could try using a different color besides black as well.
To make your snail outline all you have to do is trace over all of your pencil lines. You can make them thinner, thick, or a combination of line weights.
Have fun with this and don’t be afraid to try different things to see what looks good. How you make your snail outline will be determined by your artistic style.
If you don’t know what your artistic style is, don’t worry. Your style will develop over time with practice.
How to Draw Snail with Markers
Learning how to draw a snail with markers isn’t as difficult as you might think. And there’s really only a few things you need to consider before starting on your artwork.
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. Which could be the effect you’re after, in which case it would be ok.
So for this snail, I used yellow and yellow-orange for the body. And a couple of browns for the shell.
For the grass two different greens were used as well.
A white Gelly Roll pen can be used for adding highlights.
Final Thoughts and Next Steps
Now that you know how to draw a cute snail and color it using markers, what’s the next step? If you want to improve your art and drawing skills you’ll need to practice.
Even if it’s only for a few minutes each day you’ll still see improvements in your skills. Short sessions consistently over a long period of time would give you many benefits. Try making your creative time part of your daily routine.
If you want to get really good at drawing snails and coming up with new ideas, challenge yourself to do a series of drawings. You’d be amazed by how much you can improve in just one week.
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