Drawing Tutorial: How To Draw Smoke

Learn to draw a smoke step by step with our easy-to-follow tutorial. Perfect for beginners and art lovers!

In this step-by-step drawing tutorial you will learn to transform simple lines into enchanting plumes of smoke that look like they're ready to float right off the page! Perfect for beginners or pros, grab some paper and a pencil and let's get started!

Step 1:
Establish the line of your smoke, which direction it follows and how it twists, as shown with the red line.

With the green shapes you establish the volume of your smoke/cloud, while the first example looks more like a flat twisted ribbon the second one is puffy like a cloud.

Here is an example of those two traits combined:

Step 2:
Add a color of choice and lower the opacity, then with a soft eraser brush erase areas of the cloud.

By doing that you achieve this nice transparent layer that can be put over any subject. To make things more easy to read, enhance the smoke with some light flowy lines this can also be a stylistic choice, so play around with swirls and see what you can achieve.

We also want to give you access to the PDF and video tutorial! Click below to access those for free:

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