How to Draw a Knife Step by Step

This tutorial shows how to draw a knife in six easy to follow steps with illustrated examples and quick instructions.

The example drawing is of a kitchen knife with a fairly large blade and a tradition handle with three rivets.

The guide show how to draw the knife starting with an outline of it’s major parts (the blade and the handle) and goes down to the smaller details. It then explains how to apply some basic color/shading to the drawing. Overall the art is somewhat simplified to make the tutorial easier. You can see a preview of this in the step by step example above.

The tutorial is design in a way where it does not necessarily require any erasing. However, you should still start your drawing in pencil and use light lines. This way you can more easily make corrections if they are required. Darken your lines after adding all of the knife’s details.

Step 1 – Draw the Blade of the Knife

Begin by outlining the main shape of the blade. Start from where you wish to have it’s tip and define the top and bottom with curved lines. Next, define the back end by giving it an upwards curve at the bottom that goes up to the handle. Finish by making a straight line in the are where the blade joins with the handle.

Step 2 – Draw the Handle

Draw the handle starting from the back of the blade. Make it’s upper end very slightly curved. Make it’s bottom a little more curved (in the opposite direction).

At the end of the handle add the butt. Draw this with it’s overall shape curved towards the bottom.

Step 3 – Draw the Bolster

Near the start of upwards curve at the back of the knife’s blade draw a straight vertical line followed by a connected curve. This will help show the metal getting thicker near that handle and help define the part of the knife called the bolster.

Step 4 – Draw the Edge

Running along the blade’s bottom draw the knife’s edge. Show this by making a single line that somewhat follows the shape of the main outline but with a bit of a gap between the two.

Step 5 – Draw the Rivets

For the last set of details add three rivets evenly spaced along the knife’s handle. Make these round in shape.

After adding the rivets trace over your drawing with darker lines. Either press harder on the pencil or use a thin black marker.

Step 6 – Color the Knife

To color/shade the knife, make the blade grey and the handle black or dark grey. However, you will also want to have lighter and darker areas along each of them. With the exception of the edge, the lighter areas will show the sides of the knife facing towards the light and the dark areas will show shadows along the parts facing away from it. When combined these will help give the drawing a more three dimensional appearance.

First, fill in the blade with a fairly light grey but make the edge and a thin strip along the the top of the bolster an even lighter grey (almost white). While the thin strip along the bolster will show light reflecting form that area the edge of the blade is simply naturally lighter due to being sharpened. After the blade, fill in the handle with dark grey but leave a lighter strip running all the way along it’s top that joins with that along the bolster. Next, darken an area of the blade starting from the handle and going a little bit past it’s middle. Make it so that the boundary between this light and dark area is angled. Also, add a few more angled dark strips going past that. This will make the lighter part of the blade look like it has a reflection on it.

Finally, add a dark strip along the bottom of the handle and bolster and darken the bolster’s forward facing area. This will show shadows along those parts of the knife.

Conclusion

This guide illustrates how to draw a kitchen knife in a slightly simplified style. It start with an outline of the knife’s main parts and then shows how to add the smaller details. It ends with showing how to apply some basic color and shading.

If you like simple step by step art guides, also see the following: