For sports drawing lesson number two, it's a cartoon football helmet. And team-wise, I decided to go with something unique -- the <insert> Dragons!


For sure, deciding on a cool logo and color scheme for your helmet is the most fun part of this lesson. But before you can do that, you'll need to draw it first!

For this lesson, I recommend you have a picture of a football helmet to look at as you work away. The face mask can be tricky to get right, and there are different ways that it can look.

Alright, let's begin!



First Step - Map Out Your Cartoon Football Helmet
Take a look at any football helmet and right away you'll notice - it's shape is pretty complex. To simplify this lesson, and hopefully make it easier for you draw, I came up with a rather unique-looking framework - based on a circle.

Begin by drawing a simple circle with a cross running through its center, dividing it into four equal parts. Then, close to how I've drawn mine below, draw an ear hole a little ways down from the very center of the circle. Just like this...

    Once the ear hole's in place, go ahead and draw another horizontal line - one that extends to the right and just beyond the perimeter of your circle.

Everything good so far? Great. Next - take a look at the green-lined pattern in my drawing above. All I did here was mark off the path of the bar formation that makes up the face mask of the helmet. Do the same... I recommend you use lightly sketched dotted pencil lines. It might be a good idea to practice off to the side a few times.

OK... things are looking good. Let's get drawing this cartoon football helmet!



Second Step - Draw the Face Mask in Three Phases
Drawing the face mask of your helmet can be a bit tricky. But, if you took your time in the previous step, producing a nice little guideline to help move through this phase, things should work out just fine.

Normally, when drawing a football helmet, you'd see more bars than what we've got here. And this is because we rarely view one 'perfectly' from the side like this. But because this is a cartoon, a simplified 'perfectly posed' helmet is what we're after here...

    Using the guide from the first step, drawing the bars of the face mask is a lot easier to do. Without this guide, it can be frustrating keeping everything inline. Still - I encourage you to try it without afterwards. Practice, practice, practice! :-)

Alright, a few more odds n' ends and the lesson will be complete...



Final Step - Finalize Your Cartoon Football Helmet
Well, here we are at the final step now. And with the face mask in place - even though it may look like a lot... the rest is fairly straight-forward.

Using your framework to help guide you along, sketch in the lower right under portion of your cartoon football helmet, along with any other details you feel the need to add. Extra face mask bars? Chin strap? It's up to you.

    The very last thing to do - and easy because you've already got a nice circle to help you out... follow along the perimeter of your guideline to give your cartoon football helmet the perfect polycarbonate alloy shell!

And of course -- one final touch. Favorite team in mind, or a new one you make up, add add/design a logo, give it some color, and you're all done!

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