How to Draw Sonic

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Learn how to draw Sonic, the world's fastest hedgehog, in this drawing
lesson.
We'll draw him doing what he does best - running fast.




To emphasize his speed we'll use perspective shortening. That means we'll draw the hand and the foot in the front much larger than those in the back. This creates a nice 3d effect and makes Sonic look like he is coming out of the picture.

Sounds like fun? Then let's begin.

How to Draw Sonic - 1. Body Outline

Start with a big circle for Sonic's head.

Then draw an oval below the head for the torso.
It is pointing to the right, because Sonic is leaning forward while running.
The red lines compare the oval's size to the circle. As you can see it is just slightly longer than half a circle, and of course it is much narrower.


When we draw in the arms, perspective shortening starts to play a role already.
Draw the front arm with lines that go apart, so that the arm becomes broader towards the front.
Also make the lower arm a bit shorter than the upper arm.

Then draw in the hind arm.
Let it become slightly narrower towards the end.
Here you can give upper and lower arm the same length, however.


Draw in the front leg making it fairly thick and long.
It is as thick as the front arm at the broadest point, and the upper leg is almost as long as the torso. The lower leg is a bit shorter.


(I already erased the torso's line where it is covered by the front leg.
But to show you where the hind leg starts I drew in a dotted line.)

Draw the hind leg much shorter and thinner than the front leg. Let it become even thinner towards the end. The entire hind leg is probably just as long as the front leg's thighs.

How to Draw Sonic - 2. Gloves Outline

Now we start with Sonic's gloves. In this step we just draw their "sockets", or whatever you call the part that just covers the wrist.

Again, the one in the front has to be larger than the one in the back.
No surprise here.
But their shape is also a bit different, mainly because in the front the lines stay in front of the arm, while in the back they disappear behind the arm (see blue arrows).

Draw in two ovals for Sonic's fists in this step.
And again, one is much larger than the other. To demonstrate this, I traced the smaller fist in red (did this with software) and moved it over into the other.
As you can see, the larger fist is pretty much twice as broad as the smaller one, but there is not much difference in their height.

How to Draw Sonic - 3. Shoe Outline

We begin to outline Sonic's shoes in this section.
Begin with a narrow ellipse around Sonic's ankles.


Then draw two curves coming from behind the leg into the front.
At the back they are very close to the ellipse, but they move more and more away from it towards the front. Don't let these two lines meet each other in the middle, but let a bit of space free between them.

Now close these shapes at the bottom with another curved line. It should almost look like two rings lying above each other in the end.

Outline the shoe's actual shape now. You can do it with three lines. One short line at the back goes down to the heel. The other two lines define the shoe's sides and meet each other in the tip.
Overall, the shoe should be pretty big. Make it almost as long as the head's diameter and let the shoe point to the lower left of the picture.



Draw in the second shoe. Of course you have to make it smaller than the first one. I didn't take any measurements as I drew this shoe, but now it looks like it has 75% of the front shoe's length.
The shoe is seen from a different angle, and that's why you have to bring out the backside with a few additional straight lines (see arrows).



Draw the sole for each shoe running parallel along its side. Make it pretty thick.

Now the first outline of Sonic's body is complete.
It is time that we work over it again and put in all the details.

How to Draw Sonic - 4. Face Details

In our work of detailing we start with Sonic's face.
Instead of writing much, I split up the process into several pictures that you can follow.
Draw the face in the steps shown below.





With the folds around the eyes, Sonic's face is complete.
Now we draw in other necessary details for his head.

How to Draw Sonic - 5. Head Details

In this step we draw Sonic's spikes.
I marked their highest point with a dotted line in the left picture. You can see that it roughly lines up with the back of Sonic's head.
Draw in four spikes in total and let them become smaller the lower you go. The last spike should be partially hidden behind the arm.
If you want to make sure that you don't draw then too large or too small check out the right picture and read the paragraph below.

You can see that the distance from the circle's top to the spike's top has the same length as the distance from the circle's top to the eye's top (blue lines, distance "a").
And the distance from the head's right edge to the spike's end is as long as the distance from the right edge to the fold between the eyes (red lines, distance "b").
But you don't have to be super precise with this.


The spikes being set, you can now draw in the ears as two triangles sitting on top of the circle. One is in the front and overlaps the circle a bit, while the other one is in the back and slightly smaller.

Erase the entire upper part of the circle afterwards. Only let a small part stay below the corner of the mouth. Then outline the inner triangle of the front ear.

Separate Sonics belly from his back with a curved line running across his torso. Also draw in his tail and let it disappear behind the fist.

How to Draw Sonic - 6. Fist Details

Now we draw the details for Sonic's right hand.
Here I split the drawing process up into a lot of little steps again, because I thought it's easier to follow this way.
Draw the steps as shown in the pictures below.






In this last step I redrew the hand's lower edge and made it clean. When you look at the previous picture, you can see that it was still very sketchy. But the important detail here is the fold in the glove above the wrist. Erase a small part of the sides and then draw in the fold there.


Sonic's second hand is very easy to finish, because you don't see any fingers, except a bit of the thumb.
Move your eraser over the circle, so that it becomes very faint, and then redraw the fist with largely straight lines that make it look almost like a square. Add the thumb as a triangular shape standing out at the bottom.

Then also draw in a fold into the glove above the wrist.

How to Draw Sonic - 5. Shoe Details

We're coming close to the end. These are the last steps.


Draw a broad stripe running across Sonic's shoes. Watch out in which direction it's curving. On the front shoe it is curving down towards the right, but on the hind shoe it is curving upwards at the right.

When you look closely, you can also see another line I drew around the ellipse where the leg vanishes into the shoe. It's not too important, but you can draw it in now, and then move on to the last small step.


The stripe on Sonic's shoe is actually something like a belt and it even has a belt buckle. Draw in a rectangle across the stripe, and then draw a smaller rectangle inside of it. Then erase the lines that are covered by the belt buckle now, and your drawing of Sonic is finished!


Now you can decide what you are going to do with it. You can either leave it as it is, or you color it right away, or you first ink it before coloring.
Here you can see the inked version of my drawing. I carefully retraced all lines with a black pen and then erased the old lines. This way you get clear, black borders that can make the coloring easier.

Either way, that was my take on how to draw Sonic the Hedgehog, and I hope you enjoyed it!