01 Oct 7 Best Drawing Exercises for Creating Cartoon Characters

You Can Learn to Draw Better Cartoons in Just 30 Minutes a Day

You’ll probably agree it’s REALLY hard to create cartoon characters that seem alive. The good news: 30 minutes a day is enough (for your whole life 🙂).

If you want to learn how to create professional cartoon mascots, this post is a great starting point. I will share my 7 best quick drawing exercises for beginners to improve your drawing skills. With some practice, you will be able to draw characters like a pro.

Improving Your Character’s Posing

Drawing exercise: create a character that communicates different moods, attitudes or actions without any lines, just a black shadow. If you do good work, the pose will be understandable.

Key concept: a key principle in character design is silhouette clarity: a pose should be instantly understandable even when reduced to a solid black shape. If your character’s attitude or action reads clearly in silhouette, the pose is strong.

Fast Sketching from Visual Reference

Drawing exercise: choose any cartoon or mascot character you like. Look at it as long as you need: observe the overall shape, gesture and proportions. Then set a timer for 45 seconds and sketch it quickly. You’re allowed to look at the reference while drawing.

Key concept: fast sketching is a drawing method where you work under time limits to capture the essential forms and movement of a subject.

Drawing a Cartoon Character from Memory

Drawing exercise: choose a cartoon or mascot character you like and observe it carefully for 2 minutes. Then take a 1-minute break without looking at the image. After the pause, draw the character entirely from memory. If it feels too easy, challenge yourself with more complex characters. Repeat the process and compare results to track your improvement.

Key concept: visual memory is the ability to retain and recall the essential features of a character after a brief exposure, helping you internalize shapes, structure and design logic.

Reducing Characters to Basic Shapes

Drawing exercise: choose a well-designed cartoon. Study it carefully and identify the basic geometric shapes that form its structure (circles, ovals, rectangles, triangles). Then redraw the character using only those simple forms. The goal isn’t to copy the details but to capture the underlying construction that makes the design work.

Key concept: in character design, shape language is the use of basic geometric forms like circles, squares and triangles to express personality and tone. Mastering it lets you reduce a character to its essence without losing impact.

From Basic Shapes to Detailed Characters

Drawing exercise: in the previous exercise you learned to break complex characters down into simple shapes. Now we flip the process: your goal is to build a character from basic forms. Start with only a basic form, then add details and refine the silhouette.

Key concept: shape construction means starting from a simple geometric base and gradually adding detail to create a fully developed character.

Improving Action Lines in Cartoon Characters

Drawing exercise: choose an image of a cartoon character you like (you can use one from my mascot poses gallery) and find its action line.

Key concept: an action line (also called line of action) is an imaginary line that runs through a character’s body to show the overall direction and flow of a pose. It captures the energy, rhythm and movement of the figure, and it’s one of the first steps in sketching a character: it makes the pose feel alive and natural.

Redrawing a Character Like a Pro

Drawing exercise: pick a professional mascot design you like and draw its body structure from the ground up, just like a pro would. In the video below I share a few tips to guide you through the process.

Key concept: in this final step, integration means putting all the previous concepts into practice (shape language, construction, fast sketching, line of action, silhouette) to rebuild a character with real structural understanding, not just imitation.

Here are some tips:

• Start with simple volumes. Beginners start drawing with lines. It may work when you copy a character, but you will fail miserably whenever you want to change its pose, because you didn’t understand the structure. This is the difference between copying a character and moving a character.
• Place the eyes correctly. The easiest trick is to imagine the character is wearing a mask. Before drawing the eyes, draw the mask with the facial expression you like.
• Paint shadows. If you don’t fully understand a volume, try adding shading; it will help you a lot.
• Draw the middle line. Splitting the character into 2 halves helps you place elements in the right place and with the correct perspective. In this case my character is not completely frontal, so I moved the middle line to the right.
• Draw hidden parts and then overlay elements. Notice how I drew the hand, then the fingers, and finally the keys.
• Add details at the end, only when the character’s structure is solid. Doing just the opposite is a very common beginner mistake.
• Create horizontal lines adapted to the volume; they help you understand how to place elements.
• Secret tip: whenever you are happy with the result, flip your drawing horizontally (or put it in front of a mirror) and all the small mistakes will pop up. When you look at a drawing for a long time, your lazy brain gets used to it; mirroring forces it to see it as a new visual stimulus.

The Character Designer FAQ

Which Tools Do You Need to Create Digital Characters?

Procreate, iPad and Apple Pencil are wonderful tools, but I consider them a secondary portable setup. For professional production I still prefer my desktop station (MacBook Pro + Wacom Cintiq + Photoshop). Feel free to read my post on how to pick the best drawing tablet.

More Educational Resources

• Pinterest boards for: anatomy, drawing exercises, face expressions, dynamic poses, static poses
• My YouTube short tutorials
• Books: The Illusion of Life