How to draw a lion

Six frames, one lion standing in profile. The body first, then the mane, the face, the two far legs, and the ear and tail tuft last.

A lion is a cat with a very large hat, and drawing one is mostly about the hat. This sheet builds a lion standing in profile — side on, all four feet on the ground, the tail curving up behind — and it puts the body down first. The mane arrives second, and it is still the thing that decides whether the animal reads as a lion at all.

Frame one is the body: the long back, the deep chest, the belly, the near foreleg and hind leg down to their paws, and the curve of the tail. There is no head in it at all. Frame two is the mane, and seen from the side it is not a ring but a shaggy shield covering the chest and the whole side of the head, dipping lowest under the throat. Beginners usually draw the face first and then try to fit a mane around it, and the mane always comes out too small.

The face arrives in frame three, and here is the useful proportion: seen from the side, the muzzle and the eye occupy only the front third of the mane's mass. A face drawn to fill it produces a very hairy domestic cat. Leave more room than feels comfortable and the drawing will thank you.

The features themselves are a cat's, and in profile you draw one of each. One eye with a heavy brow above it, a broad nose wider than a house cat's, and a mouth line running down from the nose and splitting into two curves. The muzzle is a rounded shape sitting proud of the face, and drawing it as a distinct closed area rather than as lines is what gives the face its weight.

The two far legs come after the face, one to a frame, which is how the sheet builds the standing pose in depth rather than all at once. The paws are large and blunt. The tail's curve is already there in frame one, but the tuft at its end is held back to frame six — a detail worth waiting for, because the tuft is one of the few things that separates a lion silhouette from any other big cat.

The mane's texture is drawn with the mane itself in frame two rather than added at the end, and less is more even so. A run of shortish strokes around the outer edge of the mass, denser under the throat than over the skull, reads as fur. Filling the whole mane with strokes reads as scribble and buries the shape you have just committed to.

If you want a lioness instead, the answer is simply to leave frame two out. The body, face, legs and paws on this sheet are unchanged; only the shaggy shield disappears, and the head and chest become noticeably narrower without it.

The frames go from the largest shape to the smallest, which is why the mane arrives before the face it surrounds. That order is easy to copy, and it is not a claim that this is how a lion ought to be drawn — plenty of people work outward from the nose and get there just as well.

The mane's outline is worth thinking about rather than accepting. An even fringe of equal-length points reads as a cartoon; an edge that falls in ragged uneven points, deeper under the throat than over the skull, reads as an animal. The difference is a few millimetres of decision made in frame two, and it costs no extra effort at all.

A lion is also a good subject for learning to stop. There is always more mane to add, and the drawing gets steadily worse after a certain point. A useful discipline is to put the pencil down while you still feel the drawing is slightly unfinished — that is very often the moment it was actually at its best.

Published 28 August 2026Updated 28 August 2026654 words