How To Draw A Smiling Face Step By Step

This tutorial shows how to draw a smiling face emoji also known as a smiley face or just a smiley in four steps.

You can see a preview of the drawing steps for the smiley face in the example above.

Please note that this is just one way to draw such an emoji and there are many more variations out there.

Te emoji is very simple to draw but it's still recommended that you stat in pencil just in case you decide to tweak something or make a mistake. It can also be helpful to have a black pen/marker handy to trace over your drawing later on as emojis tend to have fairly thick black outlines.

Step 1 – Draw the Outline of the Emoji & Eyes

Begin by drawing a circle to outline the emoji. Slightly up from the horizontal halfway point draw two pairs of curves for the eyes. At this stage you don't necessarily need to shade them in but you can if you wish to.

Alternatively you can simply outline the eyes as shown above and then shade them in once you draw the rest of the face.

Step 2 – Draw the Mouth

The mouth will be lightly open with a wide smile.

You can see the steps for it in the example above. You can first draw the lower curve of the mouth followed by the upper curve and then the little wrinkles on the sides.

Step 3 – Draw the Eyebrows & Finish the Line Drawing

Finally add another pair of curves above the eyes for the eyebrows. Draw these with their inner corners higher up than their outer corners to emphasize that the face is smiling.

Once done you should have a pencil line drawing of the face. At this point make sure you are happy with your drawing and if you are trace over it with a black pen or marker.

If you don't have one handy you can also simply darken your lines with the pencil.

Step 4 – Color the Smiley Face

To color the smiling face make it yellow (as is so common for emojis) and slightly shade the inside of the mouth to be darker than the rest of the face. Simply go over the mouth with orange or brown to do this.

You can use pretty much anything you like for the coloring method such as paints, markers or colored pencils.

Once done coloring you should have a finished drawing of the smiley emoji.

Conclusion

There is a lot of variety when it come to smiley faces and emoji. This is just one way to draw one in a way that makes it look like its happy/friendly and smiling. For other similar tutorials also see:

How to Draw a Heart Step by Step
How to Draw Lips Step by Step
How to Draw a Maple Leaf Step by Step
How to Draw a T-Shirt Step by Step