How to Draw an Alligator: Create Realistic Alligator Drawings With These Simple and Easy Steps!

I learned how to draw an alligator in school because I thought these were cool little reptiles. Through this lesson, you can learn what it takes to create a realistic alligator drawing on your own! Moreover, the same steps can be applied to learn how to draw a crocodile as well!

At school, it was easy as I didn't care about how the little details like how the scales were positioned on the body. Instead, I remember that my drawing is of a long cylinder with legs!

Fast forward to now, any professional artist should attempt an alligator drawing at some point in time because it teaches you how to draw scales!

This is extremely important should you decide to go the route of a fantasy illustrator as there will be a lot of creatures that are derived from reptile textures...like dragons!

The digital lesson on how to draw an alligator in this lesson will get you to look at drawing scales so you can fully appreciate the complexities of these textures!

1. Gesture drawing

First, we are going to create your alligator drawing through a gesture sketch. If you haven't already, look up pictures of an alligator anatomy and mentally picture the overall shape of the exterior.

Start up a new layer!

As you slowly start to how to draw an alligator on your digital canvas, ask yourself a series of related questions. For example, how many heads does the alligator take up to create the overall length? How are the bones positioned inside the animal?

Once you have an ideal, begin to roughly sketch out the geometric shapes that create the reptile. This will be the first step in learning how to draw an alligator!

On the second step, create a wireframe of the alligator by doing a series of horizontal and vertical lines that wrap all around the body. It doesn't have to be exact but it does have to correspond to the shape of the body.

Be careful of the tail, though. There are two horizontal lines that combine together near the end of the tail. It's all about looking for forms and combining shapes!

Do this lightly as you will be using this sketch as a visual guide to paint skin texture on the alligator.

2. Painting the base

This step is relatively easy in learning how to draw an alligator. Basically, you want a nice solid base to start painting your skin textures on.

To do that, start up a new layer underneath your gesture drawing. Then, pick up a nice dark tone and fill it in.

Set your brush pressure sensitivity setting to 100% as you want a nice solid object to work with. As you fill in the tone, try to conform it to the shape of your gesture drawing as best as you can.

Once you have done that, merge the two layers together so it is one layer. Your alligator should be a nice solid shape with the gesture lines in place.

If the gesture lines are hard to see, increase the contrast levels in this layer so you can see it easier.

3. How to draw the skin textures

To learn how to draw an alligator properly, you have to know how the scales will work. Now that you have your gesture drawing with a nice dark base, it is actually quite easy to paint the rest using the idea of negative space!

Using a small digital chalk brush, begin to dab in parts of the skin around the body. Adjust the size of the brush whenever necessary.

Smaller scales around the under body can be dabbed in using higher amounts of pressure to signify a lighter part of the skin while dabbing in lightly will create darker scales on the backside of your alligator.

In the meantime, be careful of the alligator's face. You shouldn't dab in too much detail as you just want to suggest texture rather than work on each individual patch of scales.

You will also notice that there are some pointy scales coming out of the alligator. Depending on the angle of the body, you can dab in little points to create these little protrusions.

As mentioned before, don't forget the two horizontal rows of protrusions that come together at the base of the tail!

4. Adding shadows

When all is said and done, you will have a nice alligator drawing on your computer. But it doesn't end there!

You still need to worry about how light and shadows are created on your reptile to make it look real.

With your solid alligator object in place, preserve the transparency of it and start work on painting the light.

If you are using Photoshop, create a clipping mask and set the transparency of it to 50% so you can paint on the overall lighting effects without covering your details.

If you are using another digital painting software that does not have clipping masks, simply duplicate your alligator drawing on a separate layer, preserve the transparency on that new layer, paint the light and shadows, and then adjust the opacity of the layer to reveal the alligator drawing underneath.

As you do this, pay extra attention to the limbs. There will areas of shadows around the limbs and underbelly as that is where light can't penetrate through.

Switch back between the layer with the alligator drawing and the lighting/shadowing layer whenever necessary if things seem a bit off.

Once more, remember this lesson well as the techniques that you have learned here will serve you well in your artistic career or hobby.

I hope you enjoyed this little lesson on how to draw an alligator in your digital art program. It's amazing just how much you can create simply by suggesting textures!

All that is left is just practice to give yourself the best head start in becoming a profitable and professional artist!

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