How to Draw an Onion

Today's drawing tutorial will teach us how to draw an onion. With these easy-to-follow steps, you will have your onion drawn in just a few minutes. Use your food clipart for product packaging, stickers, and sublimations, or add it to your digital library for later use.

Before heading to our steps, gather your drawing supplies. Use our drawing guides with mediums you have on hand, such as markers, crayons, and Procreate or Photoshop.

Do you feel inspired to create more vegetables like this? See our how to draw a carrot tutorial or how to draw a pumpkin.

Step 1 - Create the Shape of an Onion

Using a sketching medium like a pencil, create the shape of an onion. You can use any medium you can remove or cover later for your rough sketches.

Let's begin by drawing a large oval shape for our vegetable base. Onions come in all shapes and sizes, so your form can be circular, vertical, or short and wide.

At the top of your base shape, draw a pointed shape to make the peak of the onion. At the bottom, create the root area by drawing a rough circle with wavy and jagged edges on the bottom half.

Step 2 - Add the Layers

With the onion's base shape created, we can now add layers and skin. The drawing is of a half-cut onion revealing the inner layers. To make the layers on your vegetable sketch, draw curving lines starting at the bottom center. Begin with the small center layers and make them larger towards the edge.

As an added detail, we sketched wavy shapes at the bottom and top of the onion skin. Feel free to use our example sketch or add different forms to the skin.

Step 3 - Outline Your Onion Rough Sketch

We have finished our rough sketches and can now begin creating more defined outlines. To outline your onion sketch, use a pen, marker, or the black color of your chosen medium. Outline everything except for the overlapping sketch lines you do not want to include.

When you have made your defined outlines, move ahead and clean up your drawing by removing your rough sketches.

Step 4 - Color in Your Onion Outline

In our last step, we are going to add color. An onion is usually white, yellow, or red. But you could use any color palette or make it a rainbow vegetable if you wanted to.

We used a reddish-purple, light pink, and yellow color palette. We used pink to color our whole onion, yellow in the root area, and a few layers.

Then, we added reddish-purple to the outer edges of each layer and skin to create contrast.

Look at what a fantastic onion drawing you created! If you use Procreate, create a fading effect with Procreate watercolor brushes. Or make a vibrant vegetable outline by adding solid color strokes. We hope you enjoyed following our vegetable drawing tutorial and illustrating with us.