How to Draw a Leprechaun Easy Video

This week we did a directed drawing of a Leprechaun. There was a boy and a girl Leprechaun. We outlined the drawing with sharpies and used watercolor paint and a few markers to finish it off.

Here's a directed drawing of a leprechaun. It's easy and so cute.

I did my drawing on the Smart Board so I apologize for the grainy quality.
First, here's my original sketch.

So the first thing I did was to trace a circle on to the paper where the head should be.

This is a good way to make sure the kids get their drawing in proportion. Children of this age struggle with making their drawings proportional to what they are looking at. I find that often with a directed drawing activity they might make their picture too small or too large for the paper. By drawing the face circle first, I helped them make their leprechaun fit the page more aesthetically. You could get the kids to trace their own circle, but I decided that I wanted to make sure it was placed a bit to the left to allow for the rainbow.
The I got started on the SmartBoard. I did a split screen so I could do both girl and boy leprechauns at the same time. Step one was to draw the circle and then draw the bottom brim of the hat like below.

Next the kids were asked to erase above the line.

Then draw a line parallel to the first hat brim line.

Then complete the top of the hat. Some kids found this hard and wound up with pointed hats. That's OK. I told them they had a really interesting hat on their leprechaun.

Next we closed in the ends of the hat brim and added some detail to make the hat look rounder around the brim.

Next add the buckle to the hat. I told the kids to draw a big square and a small square inside the big square.

Then add the ribbon to the hat by drawing lines straight out from the buckle to the edge of the hat.

Then add the hair or beard. Explain that the girl's hair is not finished yet.

Then draw the bodies. The boy is a circle and the girl is kind of a triangle.

Then add the arms, cuff, and hands like below.

Next add the faces like so.

I drew in the legs next, but you could finish the girl's hair first – I put that next below.

And finally finish up the girl's hair by drawing a line from the end of the hair back towards the arm.

Now draw the shoes at the bottom of the legs like so.

Add a buckle to the middle of the belly – a big square and then a smaller square inside it.

Then add the belt.

Now buckles on the shoes.

Stripes on the legs.

Add grass to the bottom.

Then add the rainbows. Now there are a few ways to do the rainbows. Below is how I showed my students to do it. I started with the line from the boys cuff and went up and out to make an arc. Then I decided it was easier to start at the edge of the page and make sure the arc was parallel to the first and draw back towards the boy. We made 7 lines. 3 above the part we started at and 3 below. This makes 6 stripes which is an easy rainbow to paint.

Many of my students, however, didn't understand my instructions and made rainbows that look differently. I actually like these rainbows better and next time I do this activity I will try to do it this way.

Next the kids outlined their drawings with Sharpies an used the Sharpies to color in the black belts. Sharpies are water resistant and won't run once they kids start using paint.

Next we got to painting with watercolor paint. First I used a bunch of colored markers and drew little dots on the rainbow with the colors in the order of a rainbow to help the kids.