How to draw a polar bear — easy step by step drawing ideas

Polar bear drawing ideas turn up in the studio the moment the weather gets cold, usually somewhere between a library book about the Arctic and a snowy afternoon with nothing to do. There is something about a big white bear on a big white page that children find completely irresistible — and learning how to draw a polar bear is far easier than it looks, because underneath all that fluff the whole animal is made of circles.

That is the secret worth knowing before you pick up a pencil. A polar bear cub is a big round head, two little round ears, a round muzzle, a round body and four rounded paws. There is not a single hard shape anywhere in it. Even the famous long polar-bear snout is just a gentle bump, and the fluffy edges that make the drawing look advanced are nothing more than a wobbly line you were going to draw anyway.

In this tutorial we will build a sitting polar bear cub in six easy steps, following the practice sheet below. I will share the pro tips I use when I teach it, the mistakes that catch nearly every beginner, and the one colouring trick that solves the puzzle every child asks about: how do you colour a white bear on white paper? Grab a pencil and a light grey crayon, and let us draw.

The 6 steps to easy polar bear drawing ideas

Step 1 — Draw the head

Start with the head, placed a little above the middle of your paper so there is room for a body underneath. Draw one big round shape that is very slightly wider than it is tall — a circle that has been gently squashed from the top. Keep your pencil light. This first shape is a guide, and guides are meant to be adjusted.

Make the head large on purpose. Cute cartoon animals almost always have heads that are far too big for their bodies, and a polar bear cub is no exception: in our drawing the head is nearly as wide as the whole body will be. If your head comes out small, the finished bear reads as a grown-up bear rather than a cuddly cub, which is a perfectly nice drawing but a much harder one to make adorable.

Step 2 — Add the ears

Polar bears have small ears, and that is not a random detail — small ears lose less heat, which matters a great deal when you live on the ice. Draw two little half-circles sitting on top of the head, closer to the outer edges than to the middle. They should be noticeably smaller than you think: about one sixth of the width of the head each.

Let the bottom of each ear disappear into the head line rather than sitting on top of it like a hat. Once you have drawn them, erase the short piece of the head circle that runs through each ear so the ear and the head become one shape. That single erase is what turns two stuck-on blobs into a real head.

Step 3 — Add the face

The face is where your bear gets its personality, so take your time here. Begin with the muzzle: a soft, wide oval sitting low on the face, roughly in the bottom third of the head. Polar bears have longer snouts than brown bears, so let this oval be generous — wider than it is tall, gently bulging out past the head line at the bottom if you like.

Then add a big rounded nose right at the top of the muzzle, two small round eyes level with the top of the muzzle and set fairly close together, and a little curved smile underneath the nose. Two tiny white dots left uncoloured inside the eyes will make them sparkle later. Keep everything low and central: a common beginner instinct is to float the eyes up near the ears, which makes the bear look startled.

Step 4 — Add the body

Now give your cub something to sit on. Draw a rounded body directly beneath the head, a little narrower at the shoulders and spreading out wide and soft toward the ground — think of a pear that has been sat on. Let the top of the body tuck slightly behind the head so the two shapes overlap; then erase the body line that crosses inside the head.

The sitting pose is doing a lot of quiet work for you. A standing polar bear needs four believable legs, a spine and a sense of weight; a sitting cub needs none of those things, because the body simply rests on the ground. If your bear looks a bit like a snowman at this stage, you are exactly on track.

Step 5 — Add the paws

Polar bears have famously enormous paws — they work like snowshoes, spreading the bear's weight across thin ice — so this is one place where bigger really is better. Draw two short front legs coming down from the chest, each ending in a rounded paw, and two wide back paws sticking out at the sides near the ground, like two fat ovals lying on their backs.

Finish each back paw with a larger pad and three or four small round toe pads along the top edge. Those little circles take ten seconds and make the drawing look finished. You can add a few short zigzag tufts where the legs meet the body if you want extra fluff, but do not overdo it: on a polar bear, less fur texture reads as softer, not flatter.

Step 6 — Finish and color

Go over the lines you want to keep with a firmer pencil stroke or a fine black pen, then rub out every guide line underneath. Suddenly a pile of overlapping circles becomes one clean bear. This is the most satisfying moment in the whole tutorial, and it is worth slowing down for.

Now for the colouring question every child asks: how do you colour something white? The answer is that you do not colour the bear at all — you colour the shadows. Leave the fur as bare paper and add a light grey or pale blue only where the light would not reach: under the chin, along the bottom of the tummy, inside the ears, beneath the back paws and down one side of the body. Fill the nose solid black, add a touch of pink inside the ears, and leave two white sparkle dots in the eyes.

If you would like a background, a single pale blue line for the horizon and a couple of soft grey-blue shapes behind the bear is all the ice you need. Keeping the background nearly empty is what makes the white bear pop off the page.

Common mistakes to avoid

Colouring the whole bear grey

This is by far the most common one. Faced with a white animal on white paper, most beginners reach for a grey crayon and fill the entire body, which turns the polar bear into a rather sad-looking stone statue. The bear should stay the colour of the paper.

If it has already happened, do not start over. Go around the outside edge with a slightly darker grey to make a soft halo, then add a pale blue background. The contrast will push the body back toward looking white, and the drawing is rescued.

The ears are too big

Ears are the fastest way to change what animal you have drawn. Big rounded ears high on the head make a teddy bear or a mouse; tall pointed ears make a fox. A polar bear needs small, low, wide-set ears, and beginners almost always draw them two or three times too large.

The fix is simple: erase them and redraw each ear no wider than the space between the two eyes. It feels far too small while you are doing it, and then the finished head looks right.

The face sits too high

If the eyes, nose and muzzle drift up toward the middle of the head, the bear looks alarmed and strangely grown-up. Cute faces live low. The muzzle belongs in the bottom third of the head, and the eyes sit just above it, not halfway up the circle.

A quick way to check is to hold the drawing at arm's length and squint. If there is a big empty forehead above the eyes and almost no chin below the mouth, the whole face needs to slide down — and it is much easier to erase three small features than to redraw the head.

Troubleshooting

My bear looks like a brown bear or a panda

Lengthen the muzzle and shrink the ears. A brown bear has a shorter, rounder face and bigger ears; a panda has the same round face plus black patches. Stretch the muzzle forward a little, keep the ears small and wide apart, and leave the colouring almost entirely white with grey shadows.

The head and body look like two separate blobs

This happens when the shapes merely touch instead of overlapping. Let the top of the body slide behind the head by a good centimetre, erase the line inside, and add a tiny neck shadow where the two meet. The bear will immediately look like one solid animal instead of a snowman.

The whole drawing looks flat

Flatness is nearly always missing shadow rather than missing detail. Pick one side — say, the left — and put every shadow on that side: left of the body, under the left ear, beneath the chin and under both back paws. Consistent light direction does more for a drawing than any amount of extra fur texture.

Key takeaways

FAQ

What age is this polar bear drawing tutorial for? The six-step version works from about age 5 with a grown-up nearby, and most kids around 7 and up can follow the sheet on their own. Our polar bear is a chubby sitting cub built from circles, so there are no tricky standing legs to manage.

How do you color a white animal on white paper? Leave the fur as the white of the paper and add only the shadows. A very light grey or pale blue around the tummy, under the chin, inside the ears and beneath the paws is enough for the eye to read the whole bear as white and fluffy.

Why does my polar bear look like a brown bear? It is usually the head shape. A polar bear has a longer, lower muzzle and smaller, rounder ears set further apart than a brown bear. Stretch the muzzle out a little, shrink the ears, and the bear turns arctic straight away.

How do I draw a mother polar bear and cub? Draw the same bear twice at two different sizes, then overlap them slightly so the cub leans against the mother's side. Give the mother a slightly longer muzzle and smaller ears in proportion, and add one snowy ground line under both.

That is your polar bear! Whether it came out sleek and arctic or gloriously lumpy, you built one of the biggest animals on earth out of a handful of soft circles — and that belongs on the fridge. Keep the sheet handy, try a whole family of cubs on one page of ice, and come back tomorrow for a new tutorial.

More tutorials: All tutorials · How to draw a penguin · How to draw a bear · How to draw a seal