Caroline
Many drawings require a perfect circle shape as an outline. While a compass can help us draw a perfect circle quickly and easily, what happens when you don’t have access to a compass?
Learning how to draw a perfect circle without the aid of a tool is essential because it’s the outline of various characters, animals, and even objects.
To make it a lot easier for you, we have created a step-by-step process on how to draw a circle, summarized in 9 easy steps and illustrations.
All you need is a piece of paper and your favorite pencil and you’re all set to draw a perfect circle.
Follow this guide and you may be surprised to discover that drawing a perfect circle isn’t as difficult as you think!
Have fun and unleash your inner creativity!
How to Draw a Circle – Let’s get started!
Step 1
Start by drawing a straight vertical line in the middle of your paper. The length of the line should be as tall as you want your circle shape to be.
Also, feel free to use a ruler if you need help in drawing straight lines quickly and easily.
Remember, use light strokes when drawing these lines. Avoid pressing down too hard with your pencil so you can easily remove these lines when you no longer need them later on.
Step 2 – Draw an Intersecting Horizontal and Vertical Line
Draw a horizontal line intersecting with the vertical line that we drew in the previous step. These two lines encompass the length and the width of the circle shape.
At this point, these two lines should now be forming a cross pattern.
Step 3 – Draw a Diagonal Line on the Upper Left Side
Draw a diagonal line in between the top vertical line and the horizontal line on the left side. The length of the diagonal should be half of the vertical or horizontal line’s length.
Step 4 – Draw a Diagonal Line on the Lower Left Side
Repeat the previous step on the lower left side of the cross pattern. This forms another diagonal line in between the left horizontal line and the bottom vertical line.
Keep in mind that this diagonal line should have the same length to the first one that we drew in the previous step.
Step 5 – Draw a Diagonal Line on the Lower Right Side
Draw another diagonal line in between the right horizontal line and bottom vertical line. This diagonal line should be aligned with the line on the upper left side.
Thus, it should form a full-length diagonal line going from the upper left side to the lower right side of the cross pattern.
Step 6 – Draw a Diagonal Line on the Upper Right Side
Draw another diagonal line in between the top vertical line and the right horizontal line. Similar to the other diagonal line, this line should be aligned with the line on the bottom left side.
At this point, there should be an intersecting horizontal and vertical line along with two diagonal lines. Thus, the guidelines for the perfect circle are now complete.
Step 7 – Trace an Outline of the Circle on the Left Side
The purpose of the multiple intersecting lines that we drew in the previous steps is to guide you in outlining a perfect circle shape.
This also helps make sure that the circle is proportion and symmetrical.
In this step, we will be tracing a circle using the endpoints of the line as a guide. Starting from the top, simply trace along from one endpoint to another until the circle is drawn halfway through.
Step 8 – Afterwards, Complete the Outline of the Circle
Trace the other half of the circle on the right side, finalizing the form of the circle shape.
As you can see in the illustration, the perfect circle is finally complete!
Step 9 – Now, Erase the Lines to Refine the Circle Shape
Now that we’ve successfully drawn a perfect circle, we no longer need the reference lines within the circle.
Get rid of these lines using an eraser to polish up the shape of the circle. This also helps keep your drawing neat and tidy.
Be careful when erasing the guidelines, you don’t want to accidentally erase any part of the circle.
After drawing a perfect circle, it’s finally time for the most exciting part, which is coloring your drawing!
This is the part where you can showcase your artistic skills, especially your ability to mix and match various colors.
As you can see in the illustration, we’ve kept the colors plain and simple. We used a vibrant yellow to color the entire figure of the circle.
Feel free to use any color you like! You can even use more than one color to create a multi-colored circle shape! It’s all up to you. After all, it’s your work of art!
Have fun making the circle shape colorful!
Here’s how you can make your circle drawing even better…
These tips will show you how you can add to this drawing to make it even better!
We created a simple shape for this circle sketch, but now that you’ve mastered it you can turn it into other things. For example, it could be a pie with a slice cut out of it, or it could be a sun over a busy beach.
There are many objects that have a round shape, and you could turn this drawing into any one of them! Maybe you could even see how many different round objects you can create.
We all use emojis in messages and posts, and many of them have a circular outline. We think it could be fun to turn this circle drawing into an emoji face! You could do this by replicating the facial expressions and details as they appear on your favorite device.
On the other hand, it could also be interesting to design some emoji faces of your very own! This is another idea where you could create many different variations.
This drawing of a circle looks really great, and you could make it better by adding more shapes around it. Whether you add squares, rectangles, triangles or anything else, you can make this drawing even more interesting to look at.
Drawing a circle is probably the trickiest shape to do, despite how simple it looks. Now that you can do it, drawing any other shapes to create a fun pattern should be a breeze! What other shapes would you add to this page?
You can also make this circle sketch even better by adding some fun colors and effects. You could use your favorite color to fill in the circle, and in doing so you can also play with art tools and mediums.
That’s one way of doing it, but you could also fill the circle with smaller shapes and patterns to make it look even more dynamic. Then, use your colors to fill in whatever you put inside the circle to have even more amazing color details.
Your Circle Drawing is Complete!
We hope you enjoy this step-by-step circle drawing tutorial. Now that you can draw a perfect circle even without a compass, we’re sure you will be able to use this important skill on much more complex drawings in the future.
Remember, all of our drawing tutorials are 100% free for you to use as learning materials for your drawing activities.
We are regularly updating our “How to Draw” catalog so make sure you keep checking back to continuously enjoy brand-new drawing tutorials.
As soon as you’ve finished drawing and coloring a perfect circle, don’t forget to show off your masterpiece.
Take a picture of your artwork and post it on our Facebook page and on Pinterest. You’ve worked hard for it, so we’re sure it’s definitely worth sharing!
We would love to see how your perfect circle turned out!
