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How to draw a koala
Six frames, one koala hugging a branch. The whole head and both fringed ears first, then the body, then the branch — and the eyes and the last leaves at the end.
This sheet is one drawing of a koala clinging to an upright eucalyptus branch, shown six times, each frame keeping the previous one's lines and adding more. Print it, put it beside your paper and take one frame at a time. A koala is a very forgiving subject because almost all of the recognition sits in two shapes, and both of them are in the first frame.
That first frame is the whole head: the skull, the muzzle, the mouth, the outline of the big nose, and both enormous round ears with their fringe of short strokes around the edge. The eyes are blank at this stage. Draw the ears first and make them far bigger than feels sensible. On a koala the ears are roughly as tall as the face is wide, and every koala drawing that fails has failed because they were drawn to the size of a bear's.
The nose is the other half of it. It is a large rounded shape hanging down the centre of the face, much closer to a spoon than to a triangle, and it should reach well below the level of the eyes. A small nose gives you a bear cub; the big soft nose is the koala.
Frame two brings the body — the curve of the back, the belly, the near arm reaching across to the branch and the near foot. Frames three and four build the branch itself, lower section first and then upper, with a gripping hand on each. The branch runs vertically up the right-hand side of the page, so leave room for it before you commit to where the head goes; a koala drawn centrally has nothing to hold on to.
The five eucalyptus leaves arrive across the last two frames, and the two eyes, filled in black, are in the final frame with them. So once again the face is completed at the very end, on a head that has been sitting there since frame one. Set the eyes low and wide, roughly level with the top of the nose. Eyes placed high on the skull make the animal look startled, and a koala is the least startled-looking creature there is.
The reveal order is largest closed shape first, smallest last, which is how a head arrives before a body and leaves arrive before eyes. It makes a sequence you can copy without ever facing a blank sheet, and this page is not claiming it is the way a koala ought to be drawn. Working from the branch outwards so the animal has something to hang off would be just as sensible.
One A4 page holds all six frames in plain black outline on white. There is no shading, so it prints anywhere and the last frame colours in cleanly with felt tips.
If you want a second one that looks different, change the arms rather than the face. Here both arms wrap forward around the branch; draw the same koala with one arm reaching up to a higher branch and the whole animal reads as climbing rather than resting, with the head, ears and nose completely unchanged. That is a quick way to learn that in animal drawing the limbs carry the action and the face carries the identity, and the two can be worked on separately.
Before you start
- Draw the ears before anything else and make them enormous — as tall as the face is wide. Everything else follows from that.
- The nose is a long rounded spoon shape reaching below the eye line. A small triangular nose gives you a bear.
- Leave a clear vertical strip on one side of your paper for the branch before you place the head.
- The fringe on the ears works best as short strokes of uneven length. Even fringing reads as a gear wheel.
Published Updated 554 words
The six steps
The steps go from the largest shape to the smallest, which is an easy order to copy. It is not the only order, and it is not a rule — if you would rather start somewhere else on the sheet, do.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
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