Cute Drawing Ideas: 20 Simple Doodles With Friendly Faces

A small doodle with a friendly face can lift a birthday card, a planner page or a note left on the fridge. It takes very little drawing skill, because the charm comes from a handful of design choices, not from detail or realism.

Below are twenty cute drawing ideas you can sketch with one pencil, grouped by theme, plus the simple rules that make a drawing read as cute in the first place. Every idea is a generic, everyday subject, so the result is your own design.

What Makes a Drawing Look Cute

Five choices do nearly all the work. Apply them to almost any object and it turns friendly.

• Rounded shapes. Soften every corner. A square mug becomes a mug with curved sides and a plump base.
• A large head or body with small limbs. Make the main shape big and any arms, legs, ears or handles tiny by comparison.
• Dot eyes set low and wide apart. Place two small solid dots below the middle of the shape, with plenty of space between them.
• A tiny mouth. A short curve between the eyes, or slightly below them, is enough.
• Few details. Leave out texture, patterns and extra lines. Three or four details per doodle is plenty.

As a proportion check, keep each eye dot roughly one-tenth the width of the shape, and leave a gap of about one-third of that width between them. Eyes that are large or close together change the mood quickly.

Food Doodles

• Cupcake. A cup shape that widens toward the top, with a soft swirl above it and the face on the paper case. The step-by-step cupcake sketch shows the full build.
• Toast. A rounded square with two bumps along the top edge and a second line just inside the outline for the crust.
• Pear. A small circle sitting on a larger one, joined into a single smooth outline, with a short stem and one leaf.
• Mug. A short, wide cylinder with rounded bottom corners, a small ear-shaped handle and three wavy steam lines.

Plant Doodles

• Cactus. A tall rounded column with two short arms, sitting in a small pot, with a few tiny dashes for spines. For more shapes, see the guide to drawing a potted cactus.
• Leaf sprout. A small mound of soil or a round pot, a short curved stem and two teardrop leaves opening like a V. Put the face on the pot.

Animal Doodles

• Cat. A wide oval body with two small triangle ears on top and a curled tail at one side. No neck is needed. When you want a more complete animal, follow the easy cat tutorial.
• Owl. An egg shape with two small pointed tufts, a tiny triangle beak between the eyes and two U-shaped wings pressed against the sides.
• Whale. A long rounded drop shape, fat at the front and narrowing to a small forked tail, with a little spout of two curved lines above.
• Snail. A round shell with one spiral line inside it, resting on a soft slug-shaped body with two short stalks.
• Bee. A plump oval with two or three curved stripes, two small rounded wings on top and a short dotted flight line behind it.

Object Doodles

• Cloud. A flat bottom edge with four or five overlapping bumps on top. The simplest doodle on this list.
• Star. A five-pointed star with every point rounded off, so it looks soft and puffy.
• House. A rounded square with a low triangle roof, a small door and a chimney. Use two windows as the eyes if you like.
• Pencil. A short, stubby rectangle with a cone tip and a rounded eraser end. Shorter is cuter.
• Book. A slightly slanted rectangle with a narrow strip along one side for the pages and a ribbon bookmark hanging out.
• Sock. A soft L shape with a rounded toe and heel and a striped cuff.
• Teapot. A round ball body with a small lid and knob, a curved spout on one side and a loop handle on the other.
• Mushroom. A wide dome cap on a short, thick stalk, with three or four circles on the cap and the face on the stalk.
• Envelope. A rounded rectangle with a V-shaped flap, and the face tucked just below the point of the V.

For a seasonal page, the same rules work on winter and fall subjects. A good one to begin with is this simple snowman drawing, which is three rounded shapes with a face already built in.

Three Simple Face Variations

You only need one face to draw all twenty ideas, but small changes keep a page from looking repetitive.

How to Sketch Them

Keep each doodle small, about 1 to 2 in (2.5 to 5 cm) across. Small drawings forgive shaky lines and force you to leave details out, which helps the look.

1. Sketch the main shape lightly with an HB pencil.
2. Round off any corners and add the small parts, such as ears, handles or leaves.
3. Place the eyes and mouth.
4. Go over the final outline with a 2B pencil or a fine black pen, keeping the line weight even, then erase the construction lines.

Design Your Own Instead of Copying

It is tempting to copy a well-known character, but there is no need to, and the result is never really yours. The five rules above belong to nobody. Applied to an object from your own desk or kitchen, they give you an original doodle you can use freely on your cards and notes.

A quick way to invent one: pick any object within reach, reduce it to its simplest rounded outline, shrink the small parts, and add a face low on the shape.

First tries often come out uneven, with one eye higher than the other. Fill a page with the same doodle five or six times and the shapes settle down noticeably.