How to Draw a Paint Palette Step by Step

by easylinedrawing

This tutorial shows how to draw a paint palette with some paints on it in six steps. It includes illustrated examples and quick drawing instructions.

You can see the steps included in the tutorial in the preview image above. In this case the palette will be draw as though it’s viewed on a bit of an angle (instead of directly from the top). This will make the drawing slightly more complicated but at the same time nicer and more interesting as the palette will look more three dimensional.

Start the drawing in pencil and make light easy to erase lines (in case you need to make a correction). You can darken them later on with a black pen or marker.

If you also want to draw a paint brush to go with the palette see:

How to Draw an Artist’s Brush Step by Step

Step 1 – Draw an Outline of the Paint Palette

Begin by outlining the shape of the palette as shown in the example. It should be rounded on one side and have an inward curve on the other.

Step 2 – Draw the Thumb Hole

For this simple step just draw the thumb hole. Make it oval in shape.

Step 3 – Draw the Edge/Side

To make the drawing look more interesting add show a bit of the edge/side (like the palette is being viewed on an angle). This will give it a more three dimensional appearance.

Step 4 – Draw the Side of the Hole

Similar to the previous step add the side/edge to the hole just like to the res of the palette.

Step 5 – Outline the Paints & Finish the Line Drawing

On top of the palette outline the paints. Generally you want these to go along it’s sides

As shown in the example you can make the shape of each blob of paint somewhat random but try and keep their overall size relatively close just so that the drawing looks nicer.

Once done you can trace over your lines with a thin black marker/pen or if you prefer you can alternatively darken them with the pencil.

Step 6 – Color the Paint Palette

To color the palette paints or colored pencils may be a good option to color the paints you can use any medium you like (paints, markers, colored pencils, etc…).

Make the palette itself a light yellow (optionally with a bit of brown) so that it looks like wood and make it’s side a slightly darker (add more brown to the yellow). You can make the colors of the paints whatever you like but generally you will probably want to at least have a couple of the more common ones like yellow, blue and red.

Also when drawing the paints leave a tiny white highlight for each of them. You may want to outline these before coloring just so that you don’t accidentally go over them. Do it either very lightly with a regular pencil or with colored pencil/maker that matches the color of that particular paint.

Conclusion

Sometimes adding just a little more detail to a drawing can make it look significantly nicer. Things like showing a bit of the palettes side and giving each paint a small highlight can make these things look more three dimensional without too much extra effort. Otherwise the palette would look a lot more flat and dull.

For more similar tutorial also see the following: