How to Draw an Acorn

In today’s easy step by step drawing tutorial, you are going to learn how to draw a quirky and cute acorn. We often see squirrels in acorn trees, but did you know that deer, mice, and other forest creatures snack on them too? This easy drawing tutorial is great fun for puns and sarcastic designs on t-shirts, tote bags, framed wall décor and more.

Before you begin this tutorial, get your supplies together. You can use any medium you have on hand with our drawing tutorials. This can include painting with brushes, colored pencils, markers, or even digital programs like Procreate and Photoshop.

For this tutorial, we are using Procreate with this ink brush set to make our sketches. The collection of Procreate brushes will also be used to outline and color our design.

Step 1 - Make the Rough Sketch of your Acorn

We are first going to sketch the basic shapes of our acorn using a medium that is easy to remove. An example would be a pencil or a light-colored medium that can be covered up.

Sketch the Base Shape

Make your first rough shape by sketching a circle for the nut part of the acorn. Your circle doesn’t have to be perfect, so you can go ahead and draw it freehand.

Next, sketch a semi-circle over the top of your circle for the acorn cap. Make sure to leave some space between the tops of the two circles for the top cup of the acorn. You can follow our example below.

Define Your Base Sketch

Lastly, add the definition and the stalk to your rough sketch. Start by defining the bottom of the circle and sketching a rounded point as seen in our sketch below. Then, draw the stem in the top center of the acorn cup.

Step 2 - Outline Your Acorn Rough Sketch

Once you have roughly sketched out your drawing, switch over to a more defined medium. You can use something like a pen to make the outlines permanent. Take note of overlapping sketch lines, as we don’t want to outline the top and bottom of our circle sketch.

Step 3 - Add Color and Shading to Your Acorn

In our final step, we are going to color, add some shading, and draw the final details. For our color palette, we chose light and dark shades of brown. This will be the base color, shadowing, and details of the clipart.

Add the Base Color

Fill the acorn base with two medium brown colors. The lighter of the two will go on the bottom, and the darker medium brown will go on the top.

Create a Shadow

Create some shadow depth using a darker shade of brown for the top and bottom of your acorn. Looking at our example below, we added our shadows on the left side in a curved shape.

When adding shadows keep in mind what direction the “light” is coming from. The shadows indicate that the “light” is coming from the right side of the acorn.

Draw in the Details

Next, using the darkest shade of brown, draw the scales on the acorn cup. Next, draw a line on the stem and two lines on the shaded part of the nut.

Lastly, using your lightest shade of brown, which could also be white, draw two lines on the right side of the acorn nut for light reflection.

Great job on drawing your very own acorn! Why not make more acorns in different shapes and sizes with leaves? We hope you enjoyed this step by step tutorial and drawing an acorn with us.

Did you know that Design Bundles offers FREE Procreate brushes? Download them now with a dual license for commercial and personal use.