How to draw a rabbit

Six frames, one rabbit in profile. The body first, then the folded hind leg, the head, the front paw, and the ears and tail last.

Two long ears are all it takes to say rabbit, which makes this a subject where you can afford to get almost everything else approximately right. This sheet draws a rabbit in profile, sitting with its hind legs folded, and builds it over six frames from the body outwards.

The body arrives first, as a rounded shape that is noticeably higher at the back than at the front. That rise over the hindquarters is where a rabbit's power lives and it is the difference between a rabbit and a guinea pig. A body drawn as an even oval loses the animal before the ears have even gone on.

The hind leg follows the body — a large rounded mass at the back with the foot lying flat — and only then the head, small relative to the body and set forward and low. Rabbits do not hold their heads high when they are settled; the profile runs almost continuously from the nose up over the back. If your rabbit looks alert and upright, that is a different and equally valid pose, but it is not this one.

The ears are the drawing, and they wait until frame five — after the head, after the front paw, with only the eye and the tail still to come. Long, narrow, rounded at the tip, and set close together on the top of the head rather than out at the sides. Draw the near one fully and let the far one sit slightly behind and partly hidden — two ears drawn identically side by side flatten the whole head into a cardboard cut-out.

The inner ear is worth a line of its own: a narrower shape inside the near ear, following its outline but not touching the edges. It costs one stroke and it is the detail that most reliably makes a drawn ear look like it has a shape rather than being a shape.

The eye is drawn twice on this sheet: its outline arrives with the head in frame three, and the pupil that fills it is one of the two last marks of all. Set it large, round, well back and high on the head, closer to the ear than to the nose. Rabbits have eyes placed for seeing behind them, and drawing the eye forward where a cat's would be is a subtle error that makes the animal look wrong without being obviously wrong.

The front paw arrives late, in frame four, as a small shape tucked under the chest — three frames after the hind leg it looks like it ought to accompany. That flat hind foot is worth getting right: a rabbit at rest sits on the whole length of its hind foot, not on its toes.

The tail is last and it is a single round shape, small and set high. It is one of the few parts of the drawing where accuracy genuinely does not matter — almost any small round shape in roughly the right place will read correctly.

In profile only one eye is visible, and that is deliberate. It is also why a profile is an easier place to start than a front view: half the face is simply not your problem, and the half that is has a clear outline to hang on.

The frames go biggest shape to smallest. It is easy to copy and it is not a rule about how a rabbit should be drawn; if the ears are the part you enjoy, draw them first and fit the rest underneath.

Published 28 August 2026Updated 28 August 2026593 words