How to Draw a Gingerbread Man

Today’s tutorial is all about getting into the festive spirit and learning how to draw a gingerbread man. Sweet with a cinnamon spice twist, we just can’t get enough of gingerbread cookies. So, let's snap to it and create this cookie drawing for our baking clipart.

This drawing is just perfect for kitchen projects, product packaging, sublimation Christmas ornaments, mugs, and tons of other creative ideas.

There are so many decorative ideas for your design. You can use any type of craft medium, no matter what your drawing skills are. Some great choices are watercolor pencils, crayons, pastels, or brushes for Procreate if you want to use the drawing app.

If you are using Procreate like we are, then this Ink Procreate brush set is just perfect for drawing your collection of gingerbread men.

Step 1 - Create Sketches of your Gingerbread Man

To get started, we first need to create the rough base sketch of our gingerbread man. Use a pencil or light-colored medium, then draw a rough circle for the head of your gingerbread man.

Just below the head, sketch an oval shape extending out but make this shape wider at the bottom for the body.

Add the arms and legs of your gingerbread man. We drew oval shapes for the arms and placed them closer to the head. For each leg, we sketched a boot shape with a short rounded tip and placed these at the bottom of the body.

Step 2 - Add the Base Color to Your Gingerbread Man

If you want to, outline the base shape with a pen, a marker, or any permanent medium and then add color. Alternatively, fill the base shape of your gingerbread man with a light brown shade by using the outer sketch lines as a guide. We decided not to outline our cookie in the image below.

Let's create the icing edge on our cookie. Duplicate the base shape but make this a smaller size and fill it with a dark brown. We want the light color of the first base shape to show along the edge, as you can see in the image below.

Step 3 - Add Decorations to your Gingerbread Man

In this step, we are going to add the decorations to our gingerbread man cookie. We are going to make a face, bowtie, buttons, and wavy lines on the arms and legs. Change up your decorations to style your gingerbread man however you want.

Plan Where Your Decorations Go

Using your sketching medium from Step 1, plan and sketch where you want to add your decorations.

We sketched the eyes and mouth and added the bowtie below the head with three "buttons" lined horizontally down the center. The wavy lines were added where the arms and legs joined the body. Two wavy lines were also added to each leg.

Fill the Rough Sketch with Color

After you have completed sketching the decorations, add your color over the sketch lines. We used black for the eyes, and white for the wavy lines and mouth. The buttons and the center of the bowtie were filled with red, while green was added to the sides of the bowtie.

Idea: why not add white “chocolate chips” for the buttons instead of red?

For the final touch, pink was added to the cheeks with white "highlights" on the eyes and white stripes on the bowtie.

Step 4 - Add Shading to your Gingerbread Man

By applying some shading to your gingerbread man, you can bring your illustration to life. We have a helpful tutorial on learning how to shade in Procreate if needed.

Using darker shades adds contrast and depth to your cookie base and decorations. You can also add extra textures and details to your gingerbread man to complete your drawing.

If you're using Procreate, be sure to check out our collection of Procreate texture brushes for all your drawing exercises.

Your gingerbread man looks amazing and exactly like a real cookie! We hope you had a fun-filled time following along with this tutorial. Learning to draw a gingerbread man is so quick and easy that you can create different designs in no time. Why not add a pair of glasses, or a cute little top hat or create an entire gingerbread family?