Sketching Butterflies

Author: Alison Hazel   –   Updated: March 2026

In this article, I’m going to share with you how I began sketching little butterflies in my mini square sketchbook. Alison

Finding Time for Art

Lunchtime Sketching

I’ve spoken before about finding time for art every day and that I do sketching in my lunchtimes at my four-day-a-week-day-job as a hobby artist.

I take my small square sketchbook and a selection of art supplies with me every day to work.

This is the sketch book that I’ll be doing a complete flip through later this year, but in the meantime, I want to show you the butterflies I’ve been drawing recently.

Reference Image

Someone said that on March 14th it was to be National Butterfly Day.

I always prefer to draw nature from original species and not necessarily fantasy animals so I Googled “red butterfly.”

This brought up an image of a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) which is common in Canada.

It belongs to the family Nymphalidae and is famous for its bright orange and black wings and its incredible long-distance migration across North America.

National Butterflies

I’ve recently discovered that the monarch butterfly is the unofficial national butterfly of Canada. Who knew?

Side note, South Africa’s national butterfly (where I lived for years) is the Garden Acraea (Acraea horta). It was declared the national butterfly in 2007. I’ll get to this one soon, but rest assured it’s on my list.

Whatever country that you live in I urge you to draw your own national butterfly, I mean why not?

Pencil Sketch

In my mini square sketchbook and with a 2H pencil, I lightly sketch the outline of the butterfly. I angled the composition on the page at 45° as I wanted to get most of the wingspan diagonally across the page. I drew in the body and carefully laid out the antennae.

Black Pen

With my Pigma Micron 0.3mm nib black pen I drew in the outline. Next, I erased all the pencil marks before continuing. Then, I drew the color swoops like long blobs on the forewing and hindwing, see I learned some butterfly jargon as well.

Additionally, I drew in some fine lines between the body and the wings and between the forewing and the hindwing and the head area. This was so that when I’d done the black ink, there would be a light demarcation area of white between each of the butterfly’s body parts.

Black Edges

I painstakingly slowly inked in the black areas on the edges of the wings, the head and the body. I used short strokes and always went in the line of the scales on the wings from the body outwards.

You don’t want to be inking left and right and up and down. Make sure to go with the natural flow of the scales on the wings. It just looks better when you do.

This black ink work took about two hours in total.

Colored Pencil

I chose to use my Faber Castel Polychromas colored pencils in the colors:

• Deep red
• Dark cadmium orange
• Dark Naples ochre (yellow-gold)
• Light chrome yellow

I began the darkest red at the top of the forewing and gradually lightened the color down to the yellow at the bottom.

There are white spots on the wings as well and I left them uncolored.

I colored the eyes in blue.

Name

I added the name “monarch” with the same black pen. There it was, my first butterfly and I was thrilled with it.

Onwards

Blue Morpho

Next, I searched for a blue butterfly and discovered the Blue Morpho. It seems this is the one in the emoji 🦋 for butterfly.

This I sketched and colored next as my “blue” butterfly.

I placed it straight on the page as the wings seemed to go higher.

Now I was on a roll.

Yellow Tiger Swallowtail

Then I did the yellow tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) with the flashy droopy lower tails for better control when flying like a rudder it seems.

This is also a North American species.

This turned out to be my yellow butterfly.

Green Butterfly

Then I attempted the green and black Malachite (Siproeta stelenes) butterfly.

This one is usually found in Central and South America.

There were many green moths to choose from, but I was now being a purist, or a pain, with my small collection of mini butterfly sketches.

Purple Emperor

And for my fifth and final butterfly, for now, I created the purple emperor (Apatura iris) butterfly.

This deep lavender one is found in woodlands and forest in Europe and Asia.

Butterfly Sketch Collection

In total, this gave me five butterfly colored sketches now in my mini sketchbook.

This is the start of my butterfly sketch collection. I can see myself coming back to this series later as more butterflies catch my eye.

So far, I’ve only done the strongly colored primary and two secondary colored ones (still to do an orange one) and now I may look towards the more subtle and variegated species as well.

I also considered ordering a butterfly handbook from Amazon so I could bone up on these lovely insects some more.

I never see butterflies in the wild so I’ll probably always have to resort to sketching from reference images for this collection.

Morning Whisper of a Butterfly

A butterfly floated so light,

In gardens of soft morning light.

It paused on a bloom,

Chased away all the gloom,

And whispered that everything’s right.

Butterfly Sketch Guide

Freebie

I created a one-page Monarch butterfly sketch guide if you want to try your hand a doing a monarch butterfly for yourself or with your kids or grandkids.

Handy Dandy

You can download my handy dandy Monarch butterfly sketch guide below.

Over to You

Flutter by or not?

Will you stretch your wings and have a go at butterflies?

They are pretty quick to draw and you can complete one in a day, which is the type of art that I like to do.

Let me know how you get on.

Author Bio: Alison Hazel