Easy to Draw Butterfly Step by Step

Below you'll find an easy step-by-step tutorial video for how to draw a Butterfly and a Butterfly Coloring Page. It's a great lesson in drawing and coloring with symmetry!

Butterfly Drawing Tutorial Video

Many How to Draw a Butterfly tutorials found on the internet tend to be overly simple (as in wings with a few circles) or overly complex (complete monarchs with dozens of shapes). This project is intended to land in the middle. The outline of the wings land on the center guides, to help students get started, and there are just enough shapes inside to give a realistic look, without getting forever lost in them. TIP: Try challenging your students to layer crayon color to jazz up their background. You don't have to use oil pastels to do it, pressing hard with crayons and laying down lots of waxy color can look amazing too! Scroll down to see this lovely purple coloring option. It's not too hard to understand why so many children AND adults are fascinated with butterflies. Their color and delicate beauty make them endlessly fun to look at.

Using Drawing Guides

You may have noticed that all of the tutorials on this site have a dashed line running through the center of each step, both in the horizontal and vertical direction. If students make their own centered lines on theirown paper, before drawing, they will have an easy reference to follow. The best way to get students off to a good start to any drawing project is to show them how a couple of guides can really help as reference points. Drawing skills are all about seeing where to place one's lines, so having some visual reference point to get started, will always help anyone learn how to be a little more accurate. Does that mean then that students need to draw a big fat lines down the center of their paper before they start? Goodness no, please don't! That will most likely be hard to erase and distract from any finished art. No, simply fold the paper in half both ways, make a crease, and unfold. The beauty is that by the time the drawing is done and colored in, the creases will disappear.

Use the Button below to Download a PDF Tutorial

Materials for Butterfly Drawing

Black Sharpie Marker (affiliate link)

Prang Crayons (affiliate link)

Crayola Crayons (affiliate link)

Time Lapse of the Butterfly Drawing

Directions for How to Draw a Butterfly

Time needed:1 hour.

How to Draw a Butterfly

Draw the body and head on the center line.
Add two symmetrical top wings.
Draw two symmetrical bottom wings.
Start the symmetrical shapes on top.
Finish the symmetrical shapes.
Start the bottom symmetrical shapes.
Add two more shapes on each side.
Finish the bottom shapes and add antennae.
Trace with a marker and color.

Coloring Page Gallery

If you are a fan of this Butterfly drawing, I'd like to offer another option. Busy teachers and parents can now just click on the buttons below to open the PDF, then look for a download arrow to save it to your desktop. You'll have a free Butterfly Coloring Page that you can print as often as you want, for whatever kind of project you want. Use it for younger students that want in on the coloring fun, or as a full size visual aid for those that are just learning how to draw. For more options, please see my Coloring Page Gallery. It's never been easier to see and download so many coloring pages all in one place!