How to Draw a Nutcracker

In today’s drawing exercise, you are going to learn how to draw a nutcracker. With these steps, you will learn to sketch, outline, add color, and intricate details to your nutcracker clipart. There are so many ideas for your illustration such as greeting cards, Christmas clipart, tree decorations, coloring or activity pages and even sticker PNG crafts.

For our nutcracker drawing, we will be using Procreate. You can use any medium you have available such as watercolor pencils, paint, or digital drawing apps.

Step 1 - Sketch the Head of your Nutcracker

It's recommended to use an erasable pencil for sketching, making corrections and adjusting the size of your nutcracker. Alternatively, use a light color medium that's easy to cover up.

Create the Head and Hair

For the head, draw a rectangle that has curved sides as seen in the image below. Then, on either side of the head, draw a wavy line from the top to bottom for the hair.

Create the Hat

On top of the head shape, roughly sketch a narrower rectangle for the rim of the nutcracker hat. Above that, draw a shape the same size as the head with three wavy peaks at the top.

At the center top of the hat, draw a curved line. Then, add the ball details to your nutcracker hat by drawing a circle on each wavy peak and right at the top. See the sketch at number six below.

Step 2 - Sketch the Body of your Nutcracker

Working your way down, create the body shape. Start by drawing a squared shape that is wider at the base of the head for the chest. The chest shape was slightly curved with rounded corners.

Below the chest shape, draw a narrow rectangle for the nutcracker's waist.

Add the bottom hip shape, about half the height of the chest and place this right below the waist.

Step 3 - Sketch the Legs and Arms

In this step, we are going to add the legs and arms of our nutcracker. Nutcrackers usually have straight arms and legs, or one bent arm.

Draw the Legs

At the bottom of your nutcracker, draw two long rectangles with a gap between them for the legs. Then, create the shoes by drawing two stacked squares below the legs.

Add the Arms

Begin drawing the arms next to the chest at the top, with the right arm drawn straight down towards the hips.

For the left arm, we sketched it halfway down, and then created an angled end. This will give the effect of a bending arm.

Lastly, add the hands to the ends of the arms by drawing circles. For the left hand, the circle is drawn over the arm.

Step 4 - Add the Decorative Scepter

Using a selection of shapes, create the top part of the decorative scepter in the left hand. Place this above the left hand. Then, draw a long oblong below the hand, rounding off the end with more shapes.

Step 5 - Add the Face and Body Details

Now we are going to add the face, beard, and decorative details. Inside the head area add the eyes, eyebrows, and a long rectangle nose. Where the chest and head meet, draw a small rectangle with ovals inside to create the mouth.

Below the mouth draw a wavy rectangle with lines inside for the beard. We also added some short wavy lines to our nutcracker's hair. Decorate the body, scepter and hat with lines and dots.

Step 6 - Outline your Rough Nutcracker Sketch

With the rough sketch complete, it's time to outline using a permanent medium like a pen or maker. While outlining, make sure to leave out unwanted or overlapping sketch lines. Once you have finished your outlines, tidy up your drawing by removing your sketches.

Step 7 - Add Color to Your Nutcracker

Use any color palette you want or choose from a ready-made selection of Procreate color palettes.

For the hat, clothes, and scepter, we used three shades of pink. We then added a skin color to the head and hands, with white added to the hair and details. The eyes were filled with a blue color and the mouth with a red shade.

Our nutcracker is now complete.

We can just imagine how wonderful your nutcracker will look on your next craft project. Thank you for coming along on this journey and drawing a very detailed nutcracker with us.