Cartoons are fun. Well almost. If you are like me you certainly love to watch cartoon figures. But drawing cartoons is another story particularly if you are not aware of the basics. If the thought of creating beautiful cartoon characters gives you high, read on, here you will find some tips that you can readily use to improve your skills and reduce the time taken to create beautiful cartoon characters. There are certain things that are same for every style of drawing, be it realistic drawing or cartoony, now we will go quickly through the basics before getting specific to cartoony style.

Clean your hands before starting your drawing. The paper you use for your work should be of good quality. Low grade, off colored paper will make your drawing look pale. Your first sketch should be made with light lines and for finalizing you should use deep-colored and prominent lines –so choose your pencils carefully. Many times beginners find drawing a smooth line difficult. Remember drawing smooth lines will be easier if you do not support your hand on your wrist like we are used to do while writing. Doodling and drawing some circular shapes just before you start will also help you to draw smoothly.

Learn to draw facial features and hand carefully. Hands are more difficult. Experts often judge a person’s drawing ability from how well he can draw human hands. So practice drawing hands with care. Study about basic forms and proportions of human body. Learn about basics of human anatomy and various ratios of human figures. As a cartoon creator you will have certain liberties, you do not need to bind yourself with strict body proportions rules. You can draw four fingered (Thumb + Three) hand that makes your work a bit easier. But one challenge you will face while drawing cartoons –cartoon characters needs to be more expressive and certainly you have to create this expressiveness with some lines drawn with your pencil.

The basic art of pencil drawing still remains persistent, among the beginners and even among the experts, to get an idea of the desired shape or structure of an object. In earlier times the rough sketches that were drawn, before the outcome is obtained, were known as cartoon drawing. Though it may seem cartoon drawing is pretty simple, considering the fact that all we have to draw are deformed figures, but still one must think twice. The reason behind this is that if we have ever portrayed a cartoon character in a particular shape and size, which was appreciated by various people, we would have to come up with the same deformed structure the next time we illustrate it anywhere. It is also a time consuming job, as in cartoon drawing one has to look after every careful detail of the body, simply because it is an illustration and has to be as self-explanatory as possible.

The toughest challenge ever faced while drawing a cartoon is making animations, as the same picture has to be repeated over number of times with slight alterations, leading to the movement of a single hand or any other body part. It would be worth imagining the amount of hard work that is put in the formation of a single animated video, as the cartoonists have to go through numerous cartoon drawings to get every motion perfect. Cartoon drawing has been taken up as a profession nowadays, due to its growing popularity among the people all over the world. Although the children are mostly attracted to cartoon drawing, on various occasions it has been seen that cartoon drawing has mesmerized quite a number of adults. Since there are no restrictions to cartoon drawing, various issues, be it political, legal, or general, may be addressed by the means of cartoon drawing.

Cartoon drawings are used in several aspects of our daily life, ranging from advertisements to entertainment and are quite readily accepted. With the urge of cartoon industries, there is also a requirement for imparting the art over to others, and for this purpose there are various institutes that give special training on cartoon drawing. No matter how it is done, the basic step of learning to draw proper shapes and structures, with diffidence, comes before anything; unless you master that, you would not be able to perform an art that has evolved from the elementary level of painting or sketching.