How to draw Pikachu step by step.

Pika Pika, Pikachu! That's right, the drawing tutorial of the most famous Pokemon of all time is here! As you probably already know Pikachu is the evolved form of Pichu whose drawing tutorial we already have here: Pichu Tutorial. And, in fact, they are both very similar. So if you've already drawn Pichu then Pikachu should be a breeze. The biggest difference is, now that Pichu is all grown up into Pikachu, he's finally grown into his head, so the body and head are more proportional than Pichu's.

Step 01: We'll begin with some construction lines of the head and the body. Don't forget that all the blue lines you see are only construction lines and we'll be erasing them later on so don't press too hard with your pencil or you might have some trouble later. Let's start with a slightly tilted circle for the head and a  body shape that is the same height as the head. It looks a little like a chess pawn or maybe a mushroom, doesn't it?

Step 02: Next, we'll proceed with some more construction lines for the head and body. Go ahead and draw the eye line and the center line for the head. But be aware that the center line should be a little left of center because his head is rotated in that direction. We'll draw the center line for his back a little bit to the right of center, again because of his body's rotation. Lastly, start with the ears by drawing two lines pointing out from the head that are the same length as the height of his head.

Step 03: Let's continue by lightening the construction lines we've made so far. You can do this simply if you're in Photoshop or Open Canvas by making the construction layers more transparent and create a new layer above. And if you're using paper and pencil I always recommend using a kneedable eraser. It doesn't tear into or wear out the paper. After you've done that we'll add a long tail line that ends at the same height as the base of his ear on the right. Let's also add a half ellipse for his hand touching the head and body. And finally add a full ellipse for his leg that overlaps his body.

Step 04: Now, we can fill out his ears. They should come to a rounded point and the bottom line of the ear on the right should overlap the head line. In this step we can also add his back spots by drawing two stretched ellipses on his back. The top one should be smaller than the bottom and the center line of the back should be in the middle of the ellipses.

Step 05: Unlike the Simpsons, Pikachu has all five fingers on his hands. So add them here by drawing a continuous line for the five fingers on his hand. Also we'll try to tackle his tail. It looks a bit like a lightening bolt, right? Think of it as being made up of 2 lines, a top and bottom line. The bottom line should start at the base of the tail construction line and zigzag up to a point at the end of the tail line. The second indentation on the bottom line should also touch the tail construction line. The top line should touch the construction line on both the first and the second indentation.

Step 06: We'll add a few details here. Start by giving him 3 overlapping toes on his feet and define his butt cheeks. That's right, Pikachu has been exercising. ?

Step 07: We're already half way there. We'll move on to his face where we'll draw two circles for eyes with  eye on the right slightly larger than eye on the left. But the bottom of both circles should touch the eye line and be in the center of their half of his face. His mouth is a little squiggly line, the top of the squiggle in the middle should touch the eye line and be a little longer on the right.

Step 08: Pretty easy here. Let's touch up his eyes. Draw some small circles touching the top of the eyes – remember to make the one on the right a little bit bigger than on the left. And a dash above the mouth touching the center line of the head will do just fine as his nose.

Step 09: Just a few more features to go. We can't forget those big bubble cheeks, so we'll draw two cheeks in this step. The one on the left should be an ellipse and the one on the right should be rounder and more like a circle. They should both be a little farther out on the face than the eyes. And let's give him a diagonal mark on both ears about 3/4's of the way up the ears and a small squiggle line again on his tail between the first and second indentations.

Step 10: We're nearly there. Now, we're going to draw our final lines in black. If you're drawing in pencil then we should lighten the construction lines with our kneedable eraser until they are barely visible before starting to mark our final lines. And if you're working in photoshop or another painting software then create a new layer to do your final lines in and then hide your construction layer after you've finished outlining.You can draw over your construction lines of his body, head, eyes, mouth, tail, hand, leg and back marks. Don't do the cheeks or the squiggle line on his tail if you are going to color as we'll need to know where his cheeks are in order to color them in. And when we color, we don't want any black permanent outlines on his features. And also remember that, in general, the final lines shouldn't be too thick.

Step 11: We're going to do some inking. Even if you're going to color him in we need to do this inking anyway. So, we'll fill in the top part of the ears above our marks and his eyes in black. Be sure to keep the smaller circles in his eyes (the reflections) white.

Step 12: If we wanted to continue coloring in Pikachu this would be our final step. Just take your kneedable eraser and erase all of your construction lines except for the cheeks and the tail mark as we will use these for coloring in the next tutorial. If you'd rather not color him now or you just prefer the perfection of a nice black and white continue on to the next step.

Step 13: We're there!!! If you decided not to color him at the moment just outline his cheeks and his tail mark and say it with me: Pika, Pika, Pikachu!! As always make sure to try to draw Pikachu again from memory as this will help you remember all the shapes and techniques and will enable you to design your own manga characters in the future. Try it several times till you are confident that you've got a hold of it  ^_^.