Here’s how to draw a Rubber Duck with his classic shape and bright yellow body. He could be the beginning to all kinds of fun drawing projects!

Rubber ducks have been recognized as the classic bathtub toy ever since Ernie, the cheerful Muppet on Sesame Street, first sang the catchy “Rubber Duckie” to his best bath buddy. The song actually rose to number 16 on Billboard’s chart of hit tunes! Kids have been singing the praises of their water play pals ever since.

No need to keep this duck as a simple kinder drawing project though, as there’s a tie that older ones can make to art history too. Did you know that Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, created a series of giant floating sculptures of yellow rubber ducks, which have appeared all around the world? They have been spotted in the harbors of Hong Kong, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Kaohsiung, Baku, and Sydney.

A fun project for students learning about PROPORTION (one of the Principles of Design) could be to show them photos of Hofman’s giant ducks in one of those harbors, and then have them draw their own rubber duck with things around it to reveal its own size. I don’t know exactly what Hofman was trying to say with his work, but my guess is that over-the-top PROPORTION had a lot to do with it.

Getting Started with Drawing Guides

The best way to get students off to a good start to any drawing lesson is to show them how to use guides as a reference point.

You may have noticed that all of the tutorials on this site have a dashed line running through the center of each step, both in the horizontal and vertical direction. If students make their own centered lines on their own paper, before drawing, they will have an easy reference to follow.

For instance, as seen in Step 1 below, a big circle is drawn for the head, which sits on the horizontal line, and overlaps the vertical center line a bit. The oval body is then added below.

Drawing skills are all about getting the size and placement of lines on paper, so having some visual reference point to get started, will always help anyone learn how to be a little more accurate.

So does that mean students need to get out a ruler to draw a big fat line down the center of their paper before they start? Heck no! That will most likely be hard to erase and distract from any finished art. No, simply fold the sheet of paper in half both ways, make a crease, and unfold. The beauty is that by the time the drawing is done and colored in, the creases will disappear.

And now, on to the Rubber Duck drawing project.