How to Draw a Clown

Do you want to create fun artwork and learn step-by-step how to draw a clown with us? Clowns are colorful and whimsical characters perfect for circus clipart, birthday party decor, coloring pages, and more. Our drawing guide will show you how to create a clown drawing, from sketches to applying color.

Use your illustration to make fun, quirky crafts and projects, or add it to your digital hand-drawn library for late use.

Try new mediums or use your favorite drawing supplies to create your clown clipart. Design digital artwork by using applications such as Procreate or Photoshop. Our FREE drawing tutorials can be used with any traditional or digital medium you have on hand.

Step 1 - Roughly Sketch your Clown

We will roughly sketch out how our clown will look with a sketching medium. We always recommend using an erasable medium like a pencil or a light enough colored medium that you can hide behind color. This way, you can easily make changes or fix details before defining your outlines.

Create the base shape

Begin by drawing a circular shape for the head. On either side of the head, draw half circles to shape the ears and two short lines at the bottom for the neck (shown in blue).

Below the head, draw a long-sleeved T-shirt as we did in red. Then add pants below the shirt. You can shape the top and pants any way you’d like.

Then at the sleeve ends, draw the clown’s hands. The hands can be detailed, like mittens, or shaped as we did in our gnome drawing tutorial.

Next, sketch long oval shapes below the pants to create the shoes. The larger the shoes, the more whimsical your illustration will look.

Add the Face and Hair

On top of the head, in line with the ears, draw bumpy lines to shape the hair. In the empty space of the head, draw the facial features such as a large nose, eyes, and mouth. See our example image below.

Add Details

Add the final details and decorations to your clown sketch. We added a hat, buttons, belt, and bow tie for our accessories.

Step 2 - Define your Clown Outlines

Switch to an outlining medium such as a pen, marker, or Procreate monoline brush. Trace your rough sketch lines to create a clean line art drawing. There will be areas of overlapping sketches, so make sure to start with features that are at the front.

Once you have your front feature outlines, define the remaining sketch lines that you want to include in your drawing. If you used an erasable medium for your sketches, you can remove it after outlining.

Step 3 - Color your Clown Illustration

In our final step, let’s add color to our drawing to bring it to life. Use any combination of colors you have on hand, or color it with one of these cartoon color palettes.

We used red, blue, and yellow for traditional circus clipart to color the clothes and face paint. After applying our color, we created a shadow effect using Procreate blend modes on a shadow line layer.

Great job illustrating your clown character! Why not create more themed characters for a circus show by changing the clothes, colors, and pose? Just imagine how funny many clowns will look in yoga poses or styles to look like friends and family.

Learn to draw more characters like this gnome drawing or draw an elf in just a few steps. Thank you for joining and following along with our drawing exercise. We hope you had fun creating and illustrating with us.