Simple Drawing Of A Light Bulb

This tutorial shows how to draw a light bulb in eight steps with simple illustrations and a breakdown of it's various parts

Start the tutorial by drawing light pencil lines. This will make it easier to correct any mistakes. You may also need to erase some small parts of the drawing in one of the steps so use a pencil until you finish the line drawing. You can darken the lines afterwards.

Step 1 – Draw the Glass Done of the Light Bulb

Start by drawing the glass done of the light bulb. This should have a fairly round upper part and get narrower towards the bottom. Make the under side of this part flat.

Step 2 – Draw the Base

Below the dome add the base of the light bulb. Draw this in two parts with the upper section being slightly wider than the lower one and having an angled bottom. This angle will later help you draw the screw threads.

Step 3 – Draw the Bottom

Draw the bottom of the light bulb's base getting narrower as it goes down ending with "bump like" part on the end (the electrical connector).

Step 4 – Draw the Screw Threads

Now add some screw threads along the light bulb's base as shown in the example above. These should have the same angle as the upper part of the base drawn earlier.

You can erase some small parts of the base's outline where it's overlapped by the threads.

Step 5 – Draw the Glass Base

Inside the done add the glass base (supports the inner wires added in the next step). Draw it with a wider part at the bottom followed by a narrower part and finally a "cap like" shape at the very top.

Step 6 – Draw the Support Wires

From the glass base draw some support wires. There should be a thicker pair of wires going up from the thicker part of the base and a thinner pair going from it's very top.

Step 7 – Draw the Filament & Finish the Line Drawing

Connect the wires with a few curved lines to show the filament. Once you are satisfied with your drawing go over it with a black pen or marker. You can also simply darken the lines with the pencil.

Step 8 – Color the Light Bulb

To color the light bulb you can make the glass part yellow or a light grey depending on if you want to show the light bulb being on or off. Also leave a bit of a highlight on one of it's side as shown in the example to indicate that it has a smooth reflective surface.

Color the base grey with a darker grey or black on the very bottom for the connector.

If you are making the light bulb yellow a marker can be a good coloring option as they tend to be bright kind of like a glowing light bulb. You can use a regular pencil to add the greys (or whatever coloring method you like).

Conclusion

A light bulb is not very complicated but it does have a little bit of detail along it's base. Some light bulbs can also vary slightly in their design but generally a traditional light bulb as this one will have the parts shown in the examples.

For more similar tutorials see:

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