YU Can Do It: Realistic Ice Cream Drawing Tutorial

Did you know that international soft serve day is on August 19? To celebrate this delicious holiday, there's no better way to honour the chillest of treats than by drawing it!

Welcome back YU Can Do It, a series where we teach you how to draw realistically, with any art tools and any level of experience. As always, we want to teach you the in's and out's of realism, minus the frustrating bits!

Today, we'll be teaching you how to draw this super simple ice cream cone that's almost good enough to eat! This project can be done in any medium you'd like. We will only be using three colours— a light, medium light, and dark grey— so you could even use something as a simple as a graphite pencil and get a stunning result.

Realistic Ice Cream Tutorial: Step 1

Our first step to completing this drawing is to sketch a guide, which will serve as a base for our colouring later on. To do this for the ice cream component, draw a curved peak on top, followed by cascading "bumps" on each side. Complete the sketch by connecting the bottom ends with a curve, and adding lines to emmitate a "swirl" effect. Try imitating the bottom image as closely as you can to get a similar effect!

Step 2

What's an ice cream without a cone? To sketch this component, you will need to draw a series of bumps, which will be mirrored on each side. Start with a bump, then draw a smaller bump going off of it, slightly more inwards. Another bump will follow it, going outwards a bit more this time, and lastly a series of small, bumps, almost like a shakey line. Once you have done this for both sides, complete with a curve to connect the ends.

Step 3

Using the guide we just made, we will draw the characteristic swirls of our ice cream. Using your dark grey, draw some curves going off to the right, as seen below.

Step 4

Now, use your light grey and add some accents to your swirl. You do not need to colour in the whole body of the ice cream; we will purposefully leave some white space to give the impression of a highlight. The light grey will slightly follow the dark grey we just drew. Try following as closely as you can the image below to get a similar result!

Step 5

Now that we have a general idea of how the swirl looks, we can erase our initial sketch guide for the ice cream part of the drawing. As a final step for this component, take your darkest grey and add a few highlights to emphasize the swirl effect, like so.

Step 6

Cone time! Take your medium dark grey and draw some highlights following the sketch you drew earlier. Emphasize the middle part of the biggest top bump, as well as the borders of the cone. We will also draw some linear shapes in the bottom left side of the cone to immitate the grid effect common on sugar cones. At this point, your drawing may look like this!

Step 7

Removing our initial sketch lines, we will now use our light grey to create more shadows. Colour in most of the cone, leaving some white space on the bottom right side, as well as near the edge of the top. In the middle of the cone, do a similar linear checkered effect as in the last step.

Step 8

For our last step, we will add some dark highlights. Emphasize the top boarder, middle creases, and the left hand edge, including the bottom. Follow the drawing bewlow as a guide for where to place the shadows. And now your realistic ice cream tutorial drawing is complete!

Did you try out this drawing? Share it with us by tagging our Instagram and Facebook pages. We can't wait to see what you've come up with!

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If you enjoyed this art activity, you are sure to love our art classes, available for all ages! Visit Yuliab.ca/book-online for details and to sign up.

International soft serve day is not only a good excuse for indulging in this sweet treat, it's also a great opportunity to draw it! So what are you waiting for? Grab yourself a scoop, gather your drawing materials, and get artsy!