How to draw a hippo — easy step by step drawing ideas

Hippo drawing ideas are my go-to whenever a kid tells me they "can't draw animals". A hippo is, structurally speaking, a pile of comfortable ovals with a face on the front. There is nothing thin, nothing spindly and nothing that has to be exactly right. Learning how to draw a hippo takes about fifteen minutes and it almost always ends with the artist looking pleasantly surprised at themselves.

They are also just wonderful characters. A hippo has a face that is 80 percent muzzle, ears the size of buttons, and an expression that lands somewhere between sleepy and mildly amused. Give it two little nostrils and a wide curved smile and it is instantly one of the most likeable things on the page. Kids tend to draw one and then immediately want to draw the whole family.

In this tutorial we will build our hippo in six easy steps, matching the practice sheet below. I will share the pro tips I use when teaching this one, the mistakes that catch out nearly every beginner, and a few quick rescues if the drawing starts drifting toward "cow" or "pig". Grab a pencil and a grey crayon, and let us draw.

The 6 steps to easy hippo drawing ideas

Step 1 — Draw the big body oval

Start with a wide oval lying on its side in the middle of your paper, roughly twice as long as it is tall. This is the hippo's barrel of a body. Draw it lightly and make it bigger than you think you need — hippos are enormous, and a body drawn too small is the one thing that makes the finished animal look wrong.

Place it slightly to the right of centre, low on the page. The head is going to take up a lot of room on the left, and the legs need space underneath. Leaving that room now saves an awkward squeeze later.

Step 2 — Add the head and wide muzzle

At the front left of the body, draw a rounded head shape overlapping the body slightly — no visible neck, because a hippo essentially does not have one. Then attach a very big, wide, softly squarish muzzle to the front of the head. It should be almost as tall as the head and even wider, with rounded corners.

This muzzle is the heart of the drawing. A hippo's mouth is famously huge, and a generously oversized muzzle is what makes the animal instantly recognisable. Beginners almost always draw it too small and too round, which produces something closer to a bear cub.

Step 3 — Add the four stubby legs

Draw four short legs coming straight down from the underside of the body. These are not really legs so much as sturdy little pillars: each one is nearly as wide as it is tall, with a flat rounded bottom and no visible knee or ankle at all.

Draw the two near legs first as a matching pair, then add the two far legs slightly behind and a touch shorter. That small offset is all the depth this drawing needs. Because hippo legs are so short, the belly should hang low — leave only a small gap between the bottom of the body and the ground.

Step 4 — Add the ears and tail

Add two tiny round ears on top of the head, set well apart toward the sides. Keep them small — a hippo's ears are almost comically little compared to the rest of its head, and shrinking them is what stops the drawing from turning into a bear or a mouse.

At the back of the body, add a short stubby tail with a small tuft at the end. It should be about the length of one ear, pointing down and slightly outward. That is genuinely all a hippo tail is, which makes it the easiest tail in this whole tutorial series.

Step 5 — Add the face details

Now the personality arrives. Draw two small round eyes sitting fairly low on the head, close to where the muzzle begins, each with a white shine dot. Low, close-set eyes right above the muzzle are the single strongest cue for "cute baby animal" — eyes set high on the skull make the hippo look older and sterner.

On the top of the muzzle, add two little oval nostrils, spaced apart and tilted slightly outward. Then draw a wide curved smile across the lower muzzle, stretching almost from one side to the other. Hippos have gigantic mouths, so a big generous curve is accurate as well as charming.

Finish with a smaller curve inside each ear, a soft crease line where the muzzle meets the head, and two or three tiny toe lines on the front of each foot. Small round blush patches on the cheeks are optional but highly recommended.

Step 6 — Finish and color

Darken the lines you want to keep and erase the light scaffolding underneath. Color the hippo a soft grey — but do try a lavender-grey or a dusty mauve instead of plain pencil grey, because it looks far warmer on paper and keeps the drawing from going flat. Leave the belly a shade lighter than the back.

Use a pale pink inside the ears, around the nostrils and on the cheeks. Then have fun with the setting: a band of blue water across the bottom with the hippo half submerged is a classic, and it is also a brilliant shortcut, because anything below the waterline can be drawn loosely. Add a few lily pads, a small bird perched on the back, and sign your name in the corner.

Common mistakes to avoid

Drawing the muzzle too small

This is the number one hippo mistake. The muzzle feels like a facial feature, so beginners size it like a nose — but on a hippo the muzzle is practically the entire head. A small muzzle turns the drawing into a bear, a pig or an unidentifiable grey lump.

Aim for a muzzle at least as wide as the head and nearly as tall. If yours came out small, extend the front and bottom edges outward rather than erasing; the old line will vanish under coloring, and the hippo will suddenly look like a hippo.

Making the legs too long

Because most four-legged animals we draw have visible leg length, it feels natural to give a hippo the same. But hippo legs are famously stumpy, and long legs make the body look like it is floating above the ground on stilts.

Keep each leg roughly as tall as it is wide, and let the belly sit low with only a small gap beneath it. If the legs are already too long, thicken them substantially — a thick long leg reads far better than a thin one, and thickening is easier than erasing.

Adding a neck

A neck is such an automatic part of drawing an animal that many artists put one in without thinking. On a hippo it is instantly wrong: the head joins the body directly, with only a soft crease where they meet.

Let the head overlap the body oval slightly and blend the two outlines together with one continuous curve along the top of the back. Removing the neck is often the single change that fixes a hippo that "looks off" for reasons the artist cannot name.

Troubleshooting

"My hippo looks like a cow"

Check the body ends and the ears. Cows have a tapered body and larger ears set to the sides; hippos are equally round at both ends with tiny ears on top. Round out the rear of the body and shrink the ears, and the cow disappears.

"The face looks grumpy"

The eyes are probably too high and the smile too short. Move the eyes down until they nearly touch the top of the muzzle, and extend the smile out toward both cheeks. Low eyes and a wide mouth read as friendly; high eyes and a small mouth read as stern.

"It looks flat, like a cutout"

Add a soft curved line along the belly and the front of the muzzle to suggest roundness, and make sure the two far legs are drawn slightly shorter and set back from the near pair. Two small overlaps are usually enough to give the whole animal volume.

Key takeaways

FAQ

What age is this hippo drawing tutorial for? The six-step version works well from age 5 with a little help, and most kids around 7 and up can follow the sheet alone. There are no fiddly shapes in a hippo, which makes it one of the friendliest animals for very young artists.

Why is a hippo a good animal for beginners to draw? Because every part of it is a fat rounded shape. No thin legs to wobble, no long neck to get out of proportion, no delicate features — the drawing is forgiving from start to finish.

What materials do we need? A pencil, an eraser, paper, and crayons or markers in grey or lavender-grey plus a soft pink for the ears and cheeks. A blue crayon is handy if you want to sit your hippo in a river.

How do I make the hippo look cute rather than heavy? Draw the head large compared with the body, set the eyes low and close to the muzzle, and keep the legs short and stubby. Big head plus short legs is the universal baby-animal recipe.

That is your hippo! Whether it came out sleek and round or gloriously lumpy, you built a whole animal out of a few friendly ovals — and that belongs on the fridge. Keep the sheet handy, draw a whole family of them wallowing in one river, and come back tomorrow for a new tutorial.

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