By CraftingStepByStepPublished
Based on a video by Art for Kids Hub.
This cartoon sloth comes from Art for Kids Hub. Rob and his son draw it side by side, slow and steady, the way a sloth would want it. Your sloth hangs upside down from a branch by its long arms and claws, with a round smiling face, dark eye patches and a little tuft of spiky hair. It takes about ten minutes, and every shape is a circle, a line or an upside-down U.
You need a black marker, a sheet of paper and colored pencils for the finish.
Three details do most of the work. The dark patches running from the eyes to the side of the head are the big one. Without them, the face reads as a monkey or a bear. The second is the pose. Sloths spend their lives hanging, so the arms go up and the body sags below the branch like a hammock. The third is the claws. Two or three hooked V shapes over the branch tell everyone this animal is holding on.
Keep the face to one side of the page. The body needs room to swing out below it.
A fine point black permanent marker gives the bold outline you see in the video. Plain printer paper is fine for practice. For a picture you want to keep, a heavier drawing pad stops the ink from bleeding through and holds up to a lot of coloring. Nervous about mistakes? Sketch in pencil first and trace over it.
The video colors with colored pencils in five shades: medium brown for the body, light brown for the face, dark brown for the eye patches, black for the claws and green for the leaves. A soft blue scribbled around the sloth makes it pop off the page.
Once the basic sloth works, change it up. Draw a baby sloth hanging on its mom's belly. Add a second branch and a whole family in a row. Give the sloth a tiny hat, or turn the smile into a sleepy face with closed eyes. Kids who love sloths might also enjoy making one from yarn with this crochet sloth pattern.
For a classroom or back-to-school poster, have each kid draw a sloth on the same long branch across a big sheet of paper. Hang it in the hallway and count the sloths.
New to drawing? Start with how to draw for the basics.
10 steps · about 11 minutes.Check off each step as you go and your progress saves automatically.
Draw a circle a little off to the right side of your paper. Leave lots of room on the left, because the sloth's body hangs out over there later. Inside the circle, draw two small circles for the eyes, close together. Color them in with your marker, but leave a tiny white spot in each one. That white spot is the shine that makes the eyes look alive.
Tip
Keep the eyes small. Big eyes would crowd out the eye patches you add later.
Below and between the eyes, draw an oval for the nose. It is bigger than the eyes. Inside the top of the nose, draw a small circle. Color in the big oval and leave the small circle white. Sloth noses look shiny, and that little highlight gives the face a friendly, cartoon look. Take your time near the white spot so you do not fill it by accident.
Tip
Turn the marker on its side to fill the nose faster.
Sloths have dark fur stripes that run from their eyes to the sides of their head. To draw them, make a line from the side of the head to the bottom of one eye. Then draw a second line above it, from the side of the head to the top of the eye. Do the same on the other side. You color these in later, so leave them open for now.
Tip
Slant the patches down a little toward the side of the head. It makes the sloth look sleepy and sweet.
Above the head circle, draw a small W. That is the start of a little tuft of spiky hair. On each outside edge of the W, bring a short spike back down toward the head. Now the sloth has a messy little hairdo, which is a lot of fun. Keep it small. A big tuft can make the sloth look like a lion or a hedgehog.
Tip
Draw the W with quick, short strokes. Spiky hair looks better a bit uneven.
Starting at the left side of the hair, draw a curve down the left side of the face. Then go back to the right side of the hair and draw a curve that comes around the right side of the face. Keep that right line going, down and around to the left. It turns into the neck, because the sloth's head sticks up while its body hangs below.
Tip
Leave a gap between the face circle and the head outline. That gap is the light fur around the face.
To the left of the head, draw a tall upside-down U. Start at the bottom, go all the way up and come back down. That is the sloth's front arm reaching up to the branch. Draw a short line across the bottom for the belly. Then draw a second tall upside-down U to the left of the first one for the back leg. Make both of them really tall.
Tip
Try to make the two arms the same height. They both hold the same branch.
From the bottom of the neck, draw a long curve that dips down like a big smile and comes up to meet the bottom of the left leg. That is the sloth's back, and it hangs low like a hammock. Then draw a small line across the top of each arm and leg. Those lines mark where the claws start.
Tip
A deep curve looks heavy and relaxed. A shallow curve makes the sloth look stiff.
Draw a line from the left side of the page that connects to the leg. Add a short line between the leg and the arm, then keep the branch going up and out to the right past the head. It looks like a thin stick. To make it thicker, draw a second line under the first one, following the same path. Now the branch looks strong enough to hold a sloth.
Tip
Tilt the branch up toward the right. A slanted branch looks more natural than a flat one.
Behind the near arm, draw a small upside-down U over the branch, then a line down to the belly. That is the far leg. Do the same next to the front arm for the far arm. Now draw the claws. Make a zigzag of three small V shapes at the top of each arm and leg. It looks like the sloth is gripping the branch.
Tip
Two claws are fine if three do not fit. His son squeezes two into one spot.
Draw a short spike coming off the branch, then a curved leaf on the end of it. Add a couple more around the sloth. Then color. The video uses colored pencils: medium brown for the body, light brown for the face, dark brown for the eye patches and branch, black for the claws and green for the leaves. Add a blue background if you like.
Tip
Color the face lighter than the body so the eyes and nose stand out.
Keep going
How to Draw Rudolph
How to Draw a Sloth
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