Creative Drawing Idea: How to Draw a Butterphant (Butterfly + Elephant!)
Below you’ll find an easy step-by-step tutorial for a creative drawing idea, mixing a butterfly and an elephant. It was inspired by a website called Night Zookeeper, which encourages both drawing and story writing for children.
One of the first lessons I learned years ago from seasoned classroom teachers, was the connection between drawing and writing. It starts as young as preschool, when students learn how to add bodies to their people, and windows to their houses, and so on. It makes sense that the more details they can draw, the more details they can write about too. Improving one can’t help but improve the other.
When Night Zookeeper reached out recently to see if I would like to work with them in some way, I checked what they did and was happy to see how they encourage drawing with writing too. They are an award winning and BAFTA nominated online tutoring service and gamified educational platform that inspires a love of creative writing in children ages 6-12+.
One of the many fun options on their platform is to create a brand new animal by mixing two familiar ones together. This Butterphant tutorial was created to offer one option of what a butterfly and elephant might look like, if combined.
When children visit the Night Zookeeper site, there are many more animal drawing options, all which start with dashed guide lines. Drawing on a screen is much different than drawing on paper, so those guides will help children of all ages get their drawing off to a good start.
Children who would like to try the drawing tool out can sign up for free Night Zookeeper trial via the button above. A Butterphant could be drawn on screen, or they can always draw one on paper and upload it to their site afterwards. A little camera icon will explain how to do that.
Meanwhile, here’s a step by step tutorial for how to draw a Butterphant, and perhaps come up with a story about how this interesting creature came to be.
Use the button below to download the Tutorial
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Butterphant Coloring Page
Materials for a Creative Drawing Idea
How to Draw a Creative Butterfly + Elephant — Butterphant!
Time needed: 45 minutes
Creative Drawing Idea, mix a Butterfly and an Elephant
- Draw a U shape for the belly.
- Add a simple head and trunk.
- Draw the back leg.
- Add the front leg.
- Draw a tusk and an eye.
- Erase the overlapping lines. And an ear/wing.
- Erase the line in the ear. Add wing patterns.
- Add another scallop line to the ear.
- Trace with a marker and color.
