How-To Draw Mickey Mouse - 1920s

- Hello everyone. I'm Steven. I'm an artist at Disney's Art of Animation Resort in Florida! Of course, you already know Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. Every day, you can find me or another Walt Disney World artist in the lobby of Disney's Art of Animation Resort, teaching guests how to

draw

their favorite Disney characters. Today, for a special video on how to

draw

, I'm on tour at the Magic Kingdom Theme Park at the Town Square Theater. This is where visitors can see Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse as part of the surprise Mickey and Minnie celebration. You know, they're both celebrating 90 years of magic.

Thank you for letting us use the room for a while. This is the first of three videos where I will teach you how to draw Mickey Mouse over the years. Mickey Mouse had always been Mickey, but the way artists drew him has changed a bit over the years. Today we are going to draw Mickey as artists drew him in the late

1920s

. Mickey and Minnie must be in Move It! Shake it! Mouseke Dance! Street party. Say hello to Chip and Dale for me. The first thing we are going to do is draw a simple circle. We will draw a circle the size of an orange.

I'm going to keep this circle very light and rough and we're going to use this shape as a construction shape to build the head of our character. Continue with a couple of curved lines that we call axis lines or guides. So we're going to draw a big curved line that goes up and down in a big curve and for the horizontal guide, just draw a big curved line, right in the middle at a slight angle. The reason we have axis lines or guides is so we can transform our flat 2D circle into a 3D sphere. Next, we will draw a large oval for Mickey Mouse's snout.

With those two construction shapes in place, let's start adding some lines to help define what Mickey Mouse actually looks like. Start by drawing a big curved line (upbeat music) on the front cross of our 3D sphere. I'm going to curve down and twist it to form almost like a number six on its side. With the snout complete, let's draw a smaller oval for Mickey's nose. Next, Mickey's mouth. From the end of the snout curve downwards. Keep it within our build shape and curve towards the inside of the snout. Inside the mouth, don't forget Mickey's tongue. I'm going to sketch a couple of overlapping curves.

After that, let's draw his chin or his jaw. So next to the bottom of the mouth, inside our construction shape, simply draw half a large circle and follow the curve of the actual mouth. In the

1920s

, Mickey Mouse's eyes were drawn very large. We will start by drawing a large, inverted letter U. For Mickey's other eye, simply draw a small curve coming out of the inverted letter U and all the way to the edge of our building shape. For the bottom part of the eye, we will draw a slight curve leaving a space on each side.

For Mickey's cheek line, we'll simply draw a crooked letter C. We'll eventually get to Mickey's ears, but for now, let's just work on the top of his head. Let's go ahead and trace the top half of our building shape, again to form the top half of his head. Let's now draw the small curve for the end of the mouth. For the pupils, or the dark parts of the eyes, let's draw two incredibly thin letters C. Now that the main head is finished, let's draw the most important part of Mickey: his ears! While drawing the ears, we will draw two large ovals that are about half the total size of the head shape.

Let's place one towards the back of the head. And for the other one, let's place, not directly above it, but a little further to the left. At first glance, it may appear that Mickey's ears are perfect circles. But in reality, they look more like large ovals. Now that our sketch looks like Mickey, let's start shading our character. The easiest way to shade a character or any sketch you are doing is to simply tilt the pencil slightly to the side and use the wide end of the lead. It is always better to shade lightly first and reapply a darker shade.

Which is much easier than deleting. Let's shade the actual shape of the head. Continue with shading the pupils or dark parts of the eyes. And we'll also shade the nose in the front, then we'll also shade the back half of the mouth. Language, let's clarify a little more. Now that Mickey is done, we have one last thing we need to do. We have to sign our work! And there he is, the one and only Mickey Mouse. Keep checking the Disney Parks Blog for more how-to drawing videos where I'll show you how to draw Mickey in two other styles over the years.

As always, I'll draw you later! (upbeat music)