Ready for another installment of cute drawing ideas for all ages? Or maybe you’re just looking for a pre-made cute bat drawing in cartoon form? Whether it’s Halloween, or some other spooky season, you’ve come to the right place!
My name is Lillie and I’m an artist and teacher who delights in providing such tutorials as “Cute Snail Drawing,” and my all-time favorite, “How to Draw an Octopus.” Unfortunately, in every lesson, I come across a certain problem…
Problems with How to Draw a Bat
The issue I keep coming across while attempting to make cute drawings of animals is this: Sometimes the animal has a real-life aspect of their anatomy which is simply… not cute. For example, in the case of our sea urchin drawing, real sea urchins have a mouth on the BOTTOM of their body. For the sake of cuteness, however, it looks better to sketch the smile higher up, on the “face!”
In the case of bats, real-life bats have beady little eyes that creep me out. Therefore, for the sake of making our cartoon cuter, we will take some artistic license and make the eyes bigger and sweeter. We want someone looking at the sketch to say, “Aww, so adorable,” not, “Eek!”
During our artistic exploits, we will also tinker a bit with certain color (or colour, if you’re British) aspects — as you’ll soon see. On to the drawing tutorial!
Easy, Cute Bat Drawing
Here are instructions for how to make an easy, cute cartoon bat for Halloween drawing ideas (or any other time you need a sketch of the animal called a bat — not a baseball bat). First, however, a reminder: as with all my drawing prompts, these “instructions” are merely suggestions.
In other words, one of the many benefits of drawing is that it helps us build confidence in our OWN artistic choices. There is no right answer in the world of creativity. With that said, here’s the first (suggested) step to create our bat…
1. Sketch cute googly eyes.
I always start my drawing with the eyes. To add cuteness, make sure to leave a “shine” of white in each of the pupils. (This is a vital part of making cute animal drawings!)
2. Add a pointy-toothed smile, but probably no nose.
To create a sweeter version of the freaky fangs bats have, make a simple smile line, then two little “V” shapes for pointy teeth. (We used similar tactics to make our easy spider drawing more cute and less creepy.) Now, what about the nose?
Well, bats DO have noses, but they’re not cute — so I suggest leaving them out. (Apologies to chiropterologists — people who study bats! We’re going for cuteness here, not 100% accuracy.)
3. Draw the head shape with small, pointy ears.
What distinguishes a bat head from the head of another animal is that the ears are small and pointy. Looking at the Batman helmet in silhouette helps with this! The peaks are a tad reminiscent of our Halloween witch hat drawing.
4. Make a simple body.
Draw a pudgy little oval-shaped body under the head — nothing complicated. Bats do have arms and legs, but for the purposes of us creating an EASY bat drawing, let’s leave them off here — unlike our cute frog drawing strategy which emphasized and exaggerated those froggy legs.
5. Sketch the big wings.
The giant, leathery wings MAKE the bat drawing! Ensure you have enough room around the body on your paper (or screen) to reaaaaally stretch them out. (Just as we needed lots of room for our simple spider web drawing.)
Start with two big swoops upwards for the top of each wing, then for the underside, dip your pen up and down three times on each side in inverted “U” shapes — almost like the bottom of an umbrella. (You can do the bottom of a cute ghost drawing in a similar way.) Next, add thin lines connecting the bottom of the wings diagonally to the top to indicate the folds.
6. Add color and shading.
Though they’re often drawn a moody black to seem more ominous and creepy, bats are actually more of a brown color with some gray — but that’s not cute enough for our purposes! Therefore, I’ve chosen to ink in our cute bat drawing with grayish, magenta-ish mauves and midnight purple… still dark-colored, but more exciting than reality, in my view.
7. Flesh out the background.
Adding background context helps give the (Halloween?) bat drawing more pizazz, so don’t leave it out. In my case, I decided to create a dark blue sky with even darker cloud drawings along the edges. Next, to make the dark-colored bat “pop” against the equally dark background, my daughter had the great idea to add in streaks of yellow-white lighting!
VIDEO: How to Draw a Bat
Easy, Cute Bat Drawing, in Sum
I hope this easy, cute bat drawing tutorial has been helpful and fun. I have lots more Halloween drawing ideas, as well as tutorials on other spooky yet sweet sketches like drawing the wind. What else would you like to learn to draw? Do share!
Want more? Check out how to draw candy…
The author and artist, Lillie Marshall, is a National Board Certified Teacher of English who has been a public school educator since 2003, and an experienced Reiki practitioner since 2018. All art on this site is original and hand-drawn by Lillie. She launched DrawingsOf.com Educational Cartoons in 2020, building upon the success of her other sites, AroundTheWorldL.com (established 2009), TeachingTraveling.com (founded 2010), and ReikiColors.com. Subscribe to Lillie’s monthly newsletter, and follow @WorldLillie on social media to stay connected!