How to Draw a Microphone Step by Step

by easydrawingtips

This tutorial shows how to draw a microphone in 8 steps. The main focus is on line drawing, but there is also some basic shading applied in the last step.

In this case, the microphone drawing is somewhat simplified to make the tutorial beginner friendly. The finalized art is done with a black outline and flat shading. You can see this in the step-by-step preview image above.

Start the tutorial in pencil and make light lines, as you will need to erase small parts of the drawing in some of the steps. Darken them before shading once you feel that things look good. This can either be done with a regular pencil or a fine-point marker.

Supplies Needed for This Microphone Drawing

Regular Pencils: An HB pencil for the initial line drawing. Optionally, 2B to 8B pencils for the shading. Softer pencils can be very helpful for getting the dark grays.
White Paper: Drawing paper or standard printer paper.
Eraser: A kneaded eraser can be helpful if corrections are required for some of the smaller details, but a standard eraser is good enough.
Fine-Point Black Marker (recommended): For getting black outlines similar to those shown in the examples.
Drawing Tablet and Digital Software (alternative): Allows for easy black outlines and solid grays like those in the examples.

Step 1 – Outline the Head of the Microphone

Begin drawing by making a straight line at the angle that you wish to draw the microphone. The purpose of this line is to act as a guide that helps ensure that the microphone drawing does not get bent or skewed. It can also help you see if both halves of the microphone are symmetrical.

At the top of the guide line, add the head of the microphone. In this example, it’s somewhat circular in shape, but with a slightly flattened top. Draw its bottom as a straight line. This will show that it’s close to the eye level of the viewer and is in the center of their field of vision.

For more on the importance of the viewer’s eye level in relation to the subject, see:

Perspective Drawing Tutorial for Beginners

Step 2 – Draw the Handle

Draw the handle as shown in the example above, making it narrower as it runs down. Just like the bottom of the head, define the bottom of its first section with a straight line. Outline the bottom of the next section to be slightly curved and make the very bottom, slightly more curved.

To see why the drawing is structured in this way, check the “Top vs Bottom Comparison” section of the following tutorial:

How to Draw Cylinders in Perspective Tutorial

Step 3 – Draw the Wire

At the bottom of the microphone, show a little bit of the cord as well as the part that attaches it to the handle.

Once done, you should have a basic outline drawing of the microphone. If you feel that things look right, erase the guide line and move on to the next step.

Step 4 – Draw the First Set of the Mesh Stripes

With the main shape of the microphone done, add its smaller details. Begin with the mesh. First, draw a set of curved lines running in one direction across the surface of the head.

Step 5 – Draw the Second Set of Mesh Stripes

Add a second set of stripes overlapping the first one as shown in the example. Try to keep the curves as well as the spacing between these similar to those in the previous step.

Step 6 – Draw the Head Ring

Running through the middle of the head, add the ring that microphones of this type tend to have. You can erase part of the mesh before doing so.

Again, as the ring is fairly close to the eye level, you can define this part with straight lines for its top and bottom.

Step 7 – Draw the Switch & Finish the Line Drawing

For the last part of the microphone, draw an on/off switch in the middle of the handle. You can refer to the example for its design.

Once the switch is in place and you feel that everything looks right, trace over your drawing with a darker pencil stroke or a thin black marker (if you feel confident in your tracing ability).

Step 8 – Apply Some Shading

For some very basic shading, make the head of the microphone a light gray and the handle a much darker gray. Color the upper part of the switch an even darker gray to make it look like there is an indent there for the slider.

Give the wire a bit of a gradient where the gray gets lighter as it goes down, fading into the white of the page. This will help convey that the wire is not actually cut off but is simply not drawn all the way down.

Conclusion

This tutorial shows how to create a fairly simple drawing of a microphone with a black outline and flat shading. The microphone is shown with its most important parts and a shape characteristic of such a device to make it easily recognizable.

Hopefully you’ve found the instructions helpful and the step-by-step breakdown easy to follow.

For more similar tutorials, see: