Draw a Soccer Ball
Soccer balls are fun to play with, but can be unfamiliar to draw. The traditional soccer ball is made from two flat shapes, pentagons and hexagons. A pentagon, of course, is a five sided polygon, while a hexagon has six sides. The instructions here will help you to understand how a soccer ball looks so you can draw one. Let's begin!
Contents
Steps
A Simple Soccer Ball
- Draw a circle.
- Draw perpendicular lines bisecting each other at the centre.
- Draw a modest-sized hexagon at the centre of the circle to form the first guide to the shape of the ball.
- Join further slightly squeezed hexagons from three alternate sides of the hexagon.
- Fill the gaps with lines meeting on the perpendicular lines to form three pentagons.
- Attach nine small joining lines to complete the guides to form the shapes of the ball.
- Based on the guides, draw curved lines to enhance the realistic shapes of the sphere.
- Clean-up all earlier guides.
- Color the ball applying shades and a drop-shadows.
A Cartoon Soccer Ball
- Create a circle.
- Make two hexagons and a pentagon on three corners of the ball.
- Start joining more shapes to the earlier shapes.
- Complete drawing all shapes of the ball joining each other.
- Make a couple of overlapping ovals at the top of the circle to form the shapes of the eyes.
- Insert a smaller oval each inside the above made eyes to form the eye-balls.
- Draw a smile of the ball-character at the base of the ball below the eyes.
- Make three vertical lines within the shape of the smiling mouth joining the top and bottom edges to form the teeth.
- Draw a couple of paddle-shapes to create the feet of the ball-character detached from the circle.
- Join a couple of tube-like shapes on each side of the ball to form the arms of the character.
- Add further lines to the tubes to indicate the hands.
- Complete the drawing of the gloved fists.
- Join further regular-shaped tubes joining the bottom of the ball to the paddle-feet to form the legs of the character.
- Add eye-brows on top of the eyes slightly edging out of the circle and spikes on the shoes with a line for the soles as well.
- Add the shoe-laces and color the ball-cartoon.
A Traditional Soccer Ball
- Draw a circle.
- Create a pentagon with an inclined axis at the centre of the circle.
- Draw five straight lines from the five vertices of the pentagon.
- Join a couple of lines each from the five earlier lines drawn.
- Join the five open edges to complete the shapes.
- Join short lines to edges of the circumference to complete forming all the lines of the soccer-ball.
- Finally, color the soccer-ball.
Tips
- It may take you a few tries to get this right, as it is not mathematically possible to draw a perfect soccer ball.
- Draw large figures. Small ones will look unrealistic and misplaced.
- Traditional soccer balls have black pentagons and white hexagons, but you can mix up the styles and colors for your own unique design.
- Sketch the lines out freehand to make it look better and more realistic.
- It is really stressful to try to make a perfect soccer ball. Remember to do it slowly and take deep breaths.
- Don't rush!!! Take your time, and it WILL be worth it!
- A good way to shade is to lightly shade in your shadowed area with pencil, and then use your pinky finger to smooth out the color.
Warnings
- Don't draw darkly at first, just sketch it out your first try. You can fill out the lines after you finish.
- Avoid drawing the shapes too small; they should take up a good amount of space on the ball.
- Be sure that you aren't smudging your drawing.
- Don't make the pentagon too big or else the soccer ball won't look good
- If you are finished and it is so not perfect give it another go!
Things You'll Need
- Paper
- Drawing utensil (Black pen, pencil, marker, etc.)
- Eraser (for pencils)
