How to draw ellipses freehand

Wheels, cups, plates, bottles, eyes and hats are all the same problem. Get ellipses right and a whole category of drawing stops being hard.

Start the session

What this drill trains

An ellipse is a circle seen at an angle, and the rule that fixes almost everybody's is this: how round it looks depends entirely on how far it is from your eye level. Level with your eyes, a circle is a straight line. Flat on the floor below you, it is nearly a circle again. Everything in between is an ellipse, and the degree of it is information about where the viewer is standing.

The second rule is mechanical rather than conceptual. A good ellipse is drawn fast, going round several times in one continuous motion, and then you keep the best pass. Drawn slowly it comes out lumpy on one side every single time, because a hand cannot maintain a smooth curve at low speed - the same physical fact that makes slow straight lines wobble.

This is the highest-transfer drill on the site. Mugs, cars, tins, bottles, plates, hats, eyes and every wheel you will ever draw are the same problem at different sizes, so an hour spent here pays back across a whole category of subject rather than one.

How to do it

Decide the long axis first and draw it as a light straight line. An ellipse is symmetrical about that axis, and without it drawn you will not notice when yours is not.
Decide how round it is before you start - that is the degree, and it comes from how far the shape is from your eye level.
Hover and rehearse the loop two or three times above the page, the same ghosting rehearsal the line drill uses.
Touch down and go round three or four times without stopping. Do not lift between passes.
Stop while it is still smooth. Six passes is worse than three, because by the sixth you are correcting rather than drawing.
Check it against the axis. If one half is fatter, the whole ellipse is tilted rather than misshapen - redraw it rather than patching the fat side.

What good looks like

A good ellipse is symmetrical about both its axes, has no flat spots and no corners, and is made of two or three overlapping passes that follow nearly the same path. A bad one has a flat side, a visible corner where two arcs met, or ends that do not close.

The right-hand shape is the classic slow ellipse: a straight section along the top, a corner where the author changed direction, and a gap where the two ends failed to meet.

What we measure, and what the number means

This drill scores placement - whether a mark lands where it was aimed. For an ellipse that means three things: how far your shape's outline sits from the target at its worst point, whether the two halves match across the long axis, and whether the passes agree with each other.

Smoothness is scored separately as line confidence, so a wobbly ellipse in exactly the right place and a smooth one in the wrong place fail differently and get different advice. That separation is the reason a single overall drawing score would be useless.

If a session produces too few closed shapes to compare, nothing is reported for that session. We would rather show a gap than a number we do not believe.

The lessons this drill helps with

Anything cylindrical, anything with a wheel, and every eye you will ever draw. These are the lessons where the ellipse is the actual difficulty rather than a detail.

How to draw a mug - two ellipses that must agree · How to draw an ice cream cone - circles that stack · How to draw an eye - the iris is an ellipse, not a circle · How to draw an apple - a sphere that is not symmetrical · How to draw a dog - two overlapping circles under the face · How to draw a face - the cranium is a ball

Where it usually goes wrong

Drawing it slowly. This produces a flat spot on one side without fail, and no amount of care removes it - only speed does.

Building it out of four arcs. Four quarter-arcs joined up gives you four corners, and the eye finds every one of them.

Drawing only the visible half. On a mug or a tin, draw the whole ellipse including the part hidden behind the object, then decide what to erase. Drawing only the front arc gives a rim that does not close.

Ignoring the degree. If the top of a cylinder is rounder than its base, the object is tipping toward you, and that is almost never what you meant to draw.

Questions about ellipses

How do I draw a perfect circle freehand?: Fast, in one continuous motion, going round three or four times and keeping the best pass. Speed is the whole answer - a slowly drawn circle is always lumpy.
Why do my ellipses have flat sides?: You slowed down partway round, usually at the far side where the movement is least comfortable. Rotate the paper, or move from the elbow rather than the wrist.
What does the degree of an ellipse mean?: How round it looks, which depends on how far it is from your eye level. At eye level a circle looks like a line; well below you it looks nearly circular.
Should both ellipses on a cup be the same?: The same width, but the lower one is always slightly rounder, because it is further from your eye level. Getting that backwards is what makes drawn cups look like they are sliding off the table.
Is it cheating to use an ellipse template?: Professionals use them constantly, so no - but a template will not improve your hand. Use one for finished work if you like and keep drilling freehand alongside it.
How many should I draw in a session?: Twelve in five minutes is a good rate. If you are doing fewer than that you are almost certainly drawing them too slowly.

Session lengths

60 second warm-up A warm-up, not a session. Its job is to get the first bad line of the day out of the way somewhere it does not matter - do it immediately before a lesson.
5 minute session The real session, and the default. Long enough that the correction starts happening inside the session instead of between them.