How to Draw a Volcano Step by Step

This tutorial shows how to draw an erupting volcano with smoke and lava in six steps. It provides simple drawing examples and quick instructions.

Volcano drawing step by step
Volcano drawing step by step

You can see a preview of the drawing steps for the volcano in the illustration above.

Start the tutorial in pencil and make light lines that are easy to erase in case you make a mistake. You can darken them later on with a black pen or marker.

Step 1 – Draw the Outline of the Volcano

Volcano outline drawing
Volcano outline drawing

Begin with an outline of the volcano itself. Make it wide at the bottom and much narrower towards the top with slightly curved and wavy lines for the sides. Make the opening at it’s top bumpy and uneven as well.

Step 2 – Draw the the Smoke

Volcano smoke drawing
Volcano smoke drawing

Coming up from the volcano draw a big cloud of smoke. You can define it with a bunch of curves of varying sizes. Overall you want to smoke cloud to be narrower at the bottom and then to spread out as it goes up (like smoke usually tends to do).

Step 3 – Draw the Lava

Volcano lava drawing
Volcano lava drawing

Running down the volcano draw some streaks of lava. Yet again try and define these with wavy/uneven lines so that they look more natural.

Step 4 – Draw the Volcano Details

Volcano details drawing
Volcano details drawing

To make the volcano look a little less flat you can give it some details. Draw these as a series of wobbly and broken up lines as shown in the example.

Step 5 – Draw the Smoke Details & Finish the Line Drawing

Volcano line drawing
Volcano line drawing

Similar to the volcano itself you can also add some details into the smoke to again make it look less flat. Draw these in the form of a bunch more curves. You can place some of these close together and some on their own.

Once done with the details of the smoke trace over your lines with a black pen/marker or darken them with the pencil. Just make sure that you are happy with the way your drawing looks before doing so.

Step 6 – Color the Volcano

Volcano drawing
Volcano drawing

To color the volcano you can make it’s main part grey (with a bit of blue in it). Make the lava yellow towards the top and red towards the bottom with a smooth gradient between the two.

Make the smoke grey at it’s base and lighter towards the top until it blends with the white of the background.

An easy coloring method for this particular drawing can be colored pencils as well as a regular pencil (for the greys).

Conclusion

The volcano in this tutorial is fairly simple and should be reasonably easy to draw even if you are a beginner. By giving it just a bit of details as well as some color you can create a drawing that looks nice but also does not require too much effort. Hopefully you’ve had fun following along and found this drawing approach and the provided tips helpful.

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