This tutorial will show you how to draw a Kunai, which is a knife-like object that can be used for weapons. The tutorial consists of seven steps, which include line drawing, shading, and coloring.
A kunai is often depicted as a ninja weapon in manga and anime. Although kunai look like daggers, they were actually originally meant to be used as gardening tools.
The kunai will draw this example in a vertical orientation. However, you can rotate your drawing as you wish. An example of an angle-drawn kunai is shown at the end.
If you’re not drawing digitally, it is recommended to start the tutorial with a pencil. Make light, easily erasable lines. These lines can be made darker before you color them.
Step 1: Draw the Blade of the Kunai
Start the drawing by drawing a straight vertical line. This is done to ensure that your drawing is straight and to make it easier for you to see if your kunai are symmetrical.
Draw the blade towards the end of the line. It can be made as shown in this example.
You can also draw the kunai at an angle if you wish.
Step 2: Outline the Handle
The handle can be added by lifting the blade. It’s cylindrical in form, but from this perspective, it will look like a long rectangle. It can be drawn with straight lines along its bottom and sides, but the handle’s top (the back) should be curved slightly upwards.
You should see a thinner handle than the blade on a knife or dagger.
Step 3 – Draw your ring
Add a ring to the handle. Draw the outer shape connecting to each side, then draw the smaller inner circle.
After completing this step, you will have an outline of the main parts of the Kunai.
Step 4 – Display the Blade Edges
You can now erase the center line drawn in step 1 along with the handle and ring. You can now draw a pair of straight lines from the upper end to the corners using the center line. This will show the sharp edges.
Step 5 – Draw your Handle Wrap and Finish the Line Drawing
Wrap the handle by running along with it. This can be drawn as a series of angled lines, with one straight at the end.
Step 6 – Apply color
Manga and anime can show the metallic parts of the kunai with different shades depending on the artist. They can also be painted black.
The blade will then be solid grey. The ring can be colored the same color as the blade, but you should leave some curved white reflections. Make the handle light yellow and add a little brown or grey.
Step 7 – Add Shading
The kunai in the previous example looks flat and bare. We will fix this by giving it some basic shading.
This will cause the shading to appear as though the light is coming in from the upper left. This will mean that the lower-left portion of the blade is the most light (no shading).
You can paint the lower left and upper right areas with a darker gray. As it faces away from the sun, the bottom right will be the darkest. This part can be made darker. The right side of the handle can be shaded.
You can shade the reflections depending on how shiny the kunai metal is. The metal will look duller if it has darker reflections (which are less bright). This is something you might want to do if you are drawing one for a Ninja. They wouldn’t want shiny objects that draw attention while sneaking around in the darkness.
Below is an example showing the same kunai, drawn at an angle. The shaded area is again drawn as though the light source was in the upper left. The shading may be slightly different because the object’s position has changed. This will make the left side (the base grey) of the kunai’s knife lighter and the right side (the darkest).
Conclusion
Although this tutorial is very simple, it can be extremely helpful if your goal is to draw a Kunai. It is similar to other tutorials on AnimeOutline but it focuses more on anime-style than general drawing. This tutorial shows how even something as simple as drawing a straight line as a guide can help you avoid common mistakes. You can also make your drawings look much better by using very simple shading.
