To draw like Leonardo da Vinci, don’t begin by trying to make an old-looking Renaissance sketch. Begin by trying to understand something. Observe a real subject closely, draw it more than once, study what is underneath the surface, and use your lines to explain form rather than simply outline it.
That is the part of Leonardo’s drawing process that is most useful to a modern artist. His surviving pages contain finished studies, quick sketches, anatomical investigations, diagrams, written observations, repeated forms, and corrections. Drawing was not only a way to produce pictures. It was a way to think.
This guide is about how to draw like Leonardo da Vinci, not how to draw a portrait of Leonardo himself. If you are learning the fundamentals first, my broader guide to drawing techniques is a useful place to start.
The Most Important Leonardo Habit Is Observation
It is easy to reduce Leonardo’s style to sepia paper, anatomical sketches, and diagonal hatching. Those are recognizable features, but copying them will only reproduce the surface.
A better place to start is with his habit of looking closely.
Instead of drawing a generic hand, examine the hand in front of you. Where does the thumb actually join the palm? Which knuckle sits highest? How do the tendons change when a finger bends? What disappears when you rotate the wrist?
This turns a drawing into a question rather than a performance. It is closely related to what I describe in analytical drawing: using the act of drawing to understand how something is built.
If you are still developing the habit of looking before drawing, my sketching tips for beginners can help with the simpler fundamentals.
Don’t Make One Drawing When Four Studies Would Teach You More
One of the most useful things you can borrow from Leonardo is the idea of the study page.
Take a subject such as a shell, hand, bird wing, plant, shoe, mechanical object, or face. Draw the whole thing once. Then stop trying to finish it.
Make a second drawing from another angle. Enlarge one confusing area. Draw a simplified diagram beside it. Add a few written observations. Turn the object and draw it again.
The page becomes a record of investigation rather than a single polished image.
This is also a good way to build a consistent daily sketching routine, because you do not need to invent a completely new finished composition every day. One ordinary object can generate an entire page of useful drawings.
If you need a subject to begin with, choose something from these drawing ideas and study it instead of simply drawing it once.
Build the Subject From What You Understand
Leonardo’s anatomical drawings demonstrate how interested he was in what existed beneath a visible surface. The Royal Collection’s Leonardo holdings include studies of bones, muscles, organs, plants, machines, maps, and many other subjects.
The Royal Collection’s Leonardo archive is worth studying because it makes the breadth of that curiosity obvious.
You do not have to dissect a subject to apply the same idea.
If you are drawing a hand, think about the bones running through the palm and fingers. When drawing a bird, consider where the wing attaches to the torso before concentrating on individual feathers. With a plant, follow the main stem and notice how smaller branches emerge from it.
This kind of structural thinking is especially useful for wildlife. My guide to animal drawing anatomy goes further into understanding an animal beneath its outer contour.
Use Hatching to Turn the Form
Hatching is one of the most recognizable characteristics in many Leonardo drawings, but the useful lesson is not simply to cover everything with diagonal lines.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes one Leonardo pen-and-ink drawing as using dense, fine parallel hatching to create depth of tone. The direction and density of those marks are part of what gives the drawing its form.
Look closely at Leonardo’s drawing in the Met collection and pay attention to what the lines are doing rather than merely noticing that they are there.
When you practice this yourself, allow the hatch marks to respond to the form. Lines across a round cheek, shoulder, fruit, or cylinder should reinforce the way that surface turns through space.
Start with widely spaced marks in lighter areas. Bring them closer together as the value becomes darker. Layer another direction only where you actually need more depth.
If this is unfamiliar, practice the technique separately with my guide to cross-hatching for beginners.
Let Some Lines Disappear
Trying to make every edge equally visible usually works against the effect you are trying to create.
A form can be described by a dark edge in one place, a tonal change somewhere else, and almost no line at all where light falls across it. That variation gives the drawing room to breathe.
Instead of tracing completely around a cheek, leaf, arm, or piece of fabric, ask whether the edge actually needs a line. Sometimes the contrast between the subject and background is enough.
Changing the pressure, thickness, continuity, and darkness of your marks is part of developing better line quality.
You Don’t Need Renaissance Drawing Materials
Leonardo worked in several drawing media rather than using one universal technique. Surviving drawings include metalpoint, pen and ink, red chalk, black chalk, and charcoal.
You can learn the principles without recreating his historical toolkit.
| Leonardo-era material | Simple modern option | What to practice |
|---|---|---|
| Metalpoint | H or 2H graphite | Controlled pressure and deliberate marks |
| Pen and ink | Fineliner, dip pen, or ballpoint | Hatching and committed lines |
| Red chalk | Sanguine pencil | Warm tonal drawing |
| Black chalk | Charcoal or soft graphite | Value and broad shadow |
| Prepared paper | Tan or gray drawing paper | Working from a middle value |
For me, an ordinary ballpoint pen is particularly useful for this kind of study because I cannot erase my way out of every decision. I have to build darker values gradually and accept some of the searching lines. My guide to drawing with ballpoint pen covers that process in more detail.
Separate Light From Shadow Before Chasing Detail
Leonardo’s dimensional drawings work because line, structure, and value support one another.
Try placing a simple object beside a window or under one lamp. Before drawing tiny changes in tone, identify the larger division between the side facing the light and the side turning away from it.
Keep the light areas relatively open. Gradually build hatching or softer marks through the halftones. Save your deepest darks for a few places where they help explain the form or establish a focal point.
You do not need to blend every transition into a smoky gradient. Soft passages become more effective when they sit beside clearer edges and visible drawing.
Try This With a Face
A face is a useful subject because small errors in structure are immediately noticeable.
Instead of beginning with eyelashes, nostrils, or individual strands of hair, establish the tilt of the head first. Compare the brow, base of the nose, mouth, chin, ears, and center line of the face.
Think about the forehead, cheekbones, muzzle of the mouth, jaw, and eye sockets as forms turning through space. Then allow your hatching and shadows to reinforce those forms.
If facial placement is giving you trouble, work through how to draw face proportions accurately before concentrating on a Leonardo-inspired finish.
Study Movement, Not Just Anatomy
Structure does not mean making a drawing stiff.
Look for the direction running through the subject before you start describing all of its parts. A stem bends before individual leaves appear. A torso twists before the folds of clothing matter. A wing has a larger sweep before you draw the feathers.
The same principle applies to less solid subjects such as water, clouds, smoke, and hair. Look for repeated directional rhythms rather than trying to freeze every small shape.
I go deeper into this idea in how to draw movement.
Put Notes Beside Your Drawings
You do not have to imitate Leonardo’s famous mirror writing, and decorative writing will not make a sketchbook more insightful. The useful habit is recording what you notice.
Write down why one shape changes direction. Label the light source. Note the part that confused you. Record how two views differ. Draw an arrow showing a movement or connection that is difficult to explain with words alone.
This is one reason drawing and field observation work so well together. If you enjoy studying plants, animals, and landscapes directly, the combination of notes and images used in nature journaling is surprisingly close in spirit to this investigative approach.
A Leonardo-Inspired Exercise You Can Do Today
Choose one object that is physically in front of you. A hand is ideal, but a plant, shell, fruit, shoe, skull reference, tool, or animal subject can work.
Use a single sketchbook spread.
- Draw the entire subject once without trying to finish it.
- Rotate it and make a smaller second view.
- Enlarge one part you do not completely understand.
- Make a simple structural diagram beside the drawings.
- Add hatching to one study, allowing the marks to follow the form.
- Write down three things you noticed only because you drew the subject.
- Close or remove the reference and redraw one part from memory.
Then compare the memory drawing with the real subject. The mistakes are useful. They show you what you actually understood and what you were merely copying.
Copy One Leonardo Drawing, Then Put It Away
Master studies can be extremely useful, but I would keep the purpose narrow.
Choose a small section of a Leonardo drawing and decide what you are studying. It might be the direction of his hatching, the way a contour disappears, the organization of a page, a shadow transition, or the relationship between a few anatomical forms.
Copy that passage slowly enough to notice the decisions behind it.
Then put the Leonardo reference away and immediately apply the same principle to something of your own.
That second drawing is the important one. It forces you to turn imitation into understanding.
Don’t Let “Drawing Like Leonardo” Stop You From Developing Your Own Work
There is little value in becoming extremely good at making drawings that merely resemble old Leonardo pages.
The more useful goal is to take a few principles from his work and allow them to change the way you see: observe longer, investigate structure, draw subjects repeatedly, use value deliberately, and remain curious about things you do not understand.
Your materials, marks, subjects, and finished drawings can still look completely different from his.
That matters if you are trying to find your own drawing style. Studying another artist is most valuable when you eventually stop seeing that artist in every drawing you make.
If You Meant “How Do I Draw Leonardo da Vinci?”
That is a slightly different drawing problem. To draw a portrait of Leonardo, you would need to choose a specific reference image and concentrate on that face’s proportions, angles, hair, beard, and values rather than trying to reproduce Leonardo’s drawing methods.
Start with my guide on how to draw a face and use it with your chosen Leonardo reference. I would keep a full Leonardo portrait tutorial on a separate page rather than mixing the two search intents together here.
What Did Leonardo da Vinci Draw With?
Leonardo used several materials over the course of his work, including metalpoint, pen and ink, red chalk, black chalk, and charcoal. He selected different materials for different kinds of studies rather than relying on one signature tool.
You can study the same principles today with graphite, charcoal, sanguine pencil, fineliner, dip pen, or ballpoint pen. The material matters less than what you are trying to learn from the drawing.
What Drawing Techniques Did Leonardo da Vinci Use?
Leonardo’s drawings combine observation, structural study, repeated sketches, perspective, directional hatching, changes in line, light and shadow, diagrams, and written notes. Different drawings emphasize different techniques, so there is no single formula that produces a convincing “Leonardo style.”
That is why the best way to draw like Leonardo da Vinci is not to memorize a collection of stylistic tricks. Use drawing to investigate something you genuinely want to understand.
Make another view. Look beneath the surface. Test what you remember. Leave some searching lines visible. Let the page record the process of figuring something out.
For more ways to practice, browse the rest of my drawing and art tutorials.