Hello, and welcome to another tutorial by Emily Drawing! Today’s tutorial is all about drawing the beaver! We’ll go through nine easy steps to draw this small animal.
Baby beavers are known as kits, and they measure around 12 inches long and weigh about 1 pound at birth. What tiny mammals!
Now, beavers are considered adults when they’re around 2 or 3 years old. As adults, beavers measure around 3 to 4 feet long, and this includes their tails. They also weigh about 40 to 70 pounds, but some beavers can weigh as much as 100 pounds, especially if they’re older and fatter.
Fun fact: The largest beaver on record was found in Wisconsin in 1921, and it weighed 110 pounds.
It’s time to get started on the tutorial for drawing a beaver. Grab your colored pencils or markers, and learn how to draw this mammal.
Materials:
- a piece of paper
- a pencil for the guiding lines and sketching
- an eraser
- a black Sharpie or a pen for the outlines
- markers or colored pencils for coloring
- our printable drawing guide (Join my Email List below to get this Tutorial)
Here are my RECOMMENDED Art Supplies!
- Crayola Coloring Set (140 Pieces – Mega Value!)
- 24 Colored Crayon Set
- A4 Printer Paper
- Crayola Coloring Pencils
- HP Home Printer with Instant Ink!
Time needed:
15 minutes.
How to Draw a Beaver — Let’s get started!
Step 1 – Draw The Beaver’s Head
You’ll start by drawing the beaver’s head, which is an odd but easy-to-follow shape. The top of the head is smaller than the bottom, but this is because you’re also drawing the beaver’s cheeks. However, a beaver’s cheeks are actually small.
Step 2 – Draw The Beaver’s Forepaws
Next, you’ll draw the beaver’s two forepaws. They’ll look like two longer, round shapes sticking out of the head. Don’t worry, they’ll look more like forepaws once you add the body. One interesting fact about beavers is they use their forepaws like hands. They need their forepaws to build, eat, and store food.
Step 3 – Draw The Beaver’s Body
The third step is to draw the beaver’s body. The body is a round shape that’s wider than the head. When drawing, be sure the forepaws are in front of the body. Your drawing should look more like an animal now, even without the details we haven’t gotten to yet.
Step 4 – Draw The Beaver’s Hind Legs
Drawing the beaver’s hind legs is easy because they’re just small, round shapes at the bottom of the body. Beavers have short legs with large, webbed hind feet. You can think of this tutorial as only drawing the beaver’s feet, but you don’t have to add any details for the toes.
Step 5 – Draw The Beaver’s Tail
Now, you’ll draw the beaver’s paddle-shaped tail, which sticks out from behind its body. A beaver has many uses for its tail, such as balancing, swimming, and storing fat. They also use their tail to communicate with other beavers. Beavers slap their tail against the others to warn others of danger, but they may slap their tail for fun as well.
Step 6 – Draw The Beaver’s Ears
For this step, you’ll draw the beaver’s round ears. Don’t be fooled by their small ears. Beavers hear well, and they rely on their sense of hearing more than sight. Amazingly, the valves of their ears close when they’re underwater to keep the water out.
Step 7 – Draw The Beaver’s Details
You’re going to add a few extra details for this step. Start by drawing a small circle inside each ear, which is the inner ears. Then, you’ll also add a few details to the tail. These details simply look like tally marks. Finally, you’ll add a curved marking on the beaver’s belly.
Step 8 – Draw The Beaver’s Face
The last step in drawing a beaver is to add its face. This includes two curved lines to show their eyes are closed, a large upside-down rounded triangle for the nose (which you can shade in), and the curved mouth for the smile. Sticking out of the mouth are two large teeth. Did you know that beavers have orange teeth? This is because their enamel has iron to help them gnaw through wood.
Step 9 – Color In Your Drawing!
Lastly, you’ll color in your drawing of a beaver. If you want to follow our color scheme, we’ve chosen brown for our beaver. The belly, tail, and inner ears are a darker shade of brown. While a beaver’s teeth are orange, we’ve decided to color this beaver’s teeth white. The rest of the details, such as the eyes, nose, and mouth, are all black. You also want to color the background of your picture!
Pin it now, Draw later!
Interesting Facts About The Beaver
Beavers originally came from North America, in the late Eocene. Then, they spread to Eurasia through the Bering Land Bridge. However, the beavers we know today are about 10 to 12 million years old, and they were originally found in Germany.
Beavers prefer habitats such as rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, and adjacent wetland areas. The amazing thing about beavers is they can change their habitat by building dams out of natural materials like sticks, branches, saplings, and reeds. They’ll also use elements such as fallen trees and weirs when building dams. Beavers build dams to create slow-moving water and reduce damage to the stream.
Did You Know?
- When building their dams, beavers use their teeth to cut down branches and trees. Beavers can build a large dam in a week or so. In addition, beavers build small canals to transport food and materials.
- Beavers are herbivores, and their diet is mostly woody plants, aquatic plants, and herbaceous plants.
- The gestation period of a beaver is about 3 months or 100 to 110 days
- The average lifespan of a beaver is 10 to 12 years in the wild. In captivity, they can live up to 19 years.
We hope you had fun with our “How To Draw A Beaver” tutorial. We love seeing our completed drawings, so please share yours on social media with the hashtag #EmilyDrawing! If you want to learn to draw other animals, feel free to browse through the tutorials on our site. We offer a range of easy-to-follow drawing tutorials.
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