A whole figure rather than a face, and the plainest drawing lesson here to follow. A circle for the head, a wide rounded body under it, an arm each side, two legs, a zigzag of icing at the wrists and ankles, then the eyes, smile and buttons. If a child has never worked through a drawing sheet before, start them on this one: six steps and not a straight line anywhere in it.
Fat limbs, or you have drawn a stick figure
A gingerbread man is a whole figure, which means arms, and an arm is where the pencil goes wrong. Left to themselves most children draw one as a single line. A single line is a stick, and four sticks round a body means the biscuit has gone.
Each arm on this sheet is one unbroken loop: out from the shoulder, down to where the hand goes, round the end and back up the underside to rejoin the body. What that leaves is a shape with width through the middle instead of a line, and width is the entire difference between a biscuit and a stick figure. The legs are built the same way, wide at the top and tapering to a foot.
The useful thing to say out loud at step three is roughly how thick to make it, and the measure that works is on the drawing already: an arm wants to come out about a fifth as wide as the body. Children aim too thin by default, and being handed a thickness to aim at fixes it before the pencil moves rather than after.
One biscuit, built in six goes
Four of the six steps build the shape and the last two decorate it. Every piece starts and finishes on a line that is already on the paper, so what comes out is one joined biscuit and not a head with four shapes lying near it. The body is the clearest case: one open curve that leaves the head circle, swings round and comes back to the head circle, with no line drawn across the neck at all.
Keeping the icing back as its own step is deliberate. It is the mark that turns a biscuit shape into a gingerbread man, and folded in with the eyes and buttons it would have been rushed past. Four short zigzags of three points each, one at every wrist and every ankle.
- Draw a circle near the top of the page for the head.
- Draw a wide, rounded body under the head.
- Add an arm on each side, reaching out and down.
- Add two fat legs under the body.
- Draw a zigzag of icing round each wrist and each ankle.
- Finish with two eyes, a big smile and three buttons.
The one to start a young child on
There is no symmetry to hold here, no overlap to judge and no shape that has to land at a particular spot on another shape. The head goes near the top, the body goes under it, and the rest hangs off those two. A four year old who cannot yet draw a triangle can draw this.
It is also the drawing that doubles as something to cut out. Set the practice sheet to one box, draw the figure big enough to fill it and cut round the outline, and there is a shape to hang on a tree or draw round for the next one. The sheet opens with four boxes, which is the right number for working through it twice in a sitting.
Three buttons down the middle is what the panel shows. Children generally want more, and more is fine. The buttons, the smile and the icing are the three things on this drawing that nobody has to copy exactly.
Questions
- How do you draw a gingerbread man easily?
- Head circle first, then a wide rounded body under it, an arm each side reaching out and down, two fat legs, a zigzag of icing at each wrist and ankle, and last the eyes, smile and three buttons. Six steps and no straight lines.
- Why do the arms and legs have to be thick?
- Because a thin arm is a stick, and four sticks round a body give you a stick figure rather than a biscuit. Each limb is drawn as a loop with width through the middle, about as thick as a finger on the page.
- Can a four year old draw this?
- Most can, with the instructions read aloud to them. Nothing in it has to line up with anything else and no shape has to be symmetrical, so a wobbly circle and a lopsided body still come out looking like a gingerbread man.
- Where does the icing go on a gingerbread man?
- Round each wrist and each ankle, as a short zigzag of three points. That is the mark that reads as icing rather than a cuff, and it gets a step to itself because it is what turns a plain biscuit shape into a gingerbread man.
- Can the drawing be used as a cutting shape?
- Yes, if it is drawn big. Set the practice sheet to one box, fill it, then cut round the outline. For a cleaner edge there is a ready-made gingerbread man template on the site to print and cut instead of drawing one.