How to Draw a Fleur-de-lis
The fleur-de-lis is a popular design which is incorporated in almost anything: jewelry, home decors, garden accents, wall paintings, sports items and so on. It is a stylized design of a lily or iris flower. The name literally means "lily flower".
Below is a series of steps that you can follow to draw the enduring and universal symbol of fleur-de-lis.
Required Materials
- Sketch pad
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Elliptical or circular templates
- Coloring materials (pastel, crayons or colored pens)
- A printout of the basic fleur-de-lis symbol
Note: The dimensions and proportions of the fleur-de-lis will vary, depending on the setting and the application of the drawing. However, the rule of thumb is that the petal in the center should be larger and more rounded as compared to the two other petals located beside it. The following instructions apply to the general appearance of a basic, stylized fleur-de-lis rather than the highly stylized version.
Instructions
- Use the printout of the fleur-de-lis as your reference. On your sketch pad, draw a vertical line on the middle of the page. Approximate the measurements according to the size of the fleur-de-lis that you would like to draw. Divide the vertical line into three sections and mark the points of the division. On the second point marked, draw a horizontal line. You should now have an inverted cross symbol as your reference lines.
- Next, on top of the horizontal line, draw a small rectangle using the vertical line as the center. At this point, you can just work on one side of the drawing since one is a mirror image of the other.
- On top of the horizontal line, mark the point where you would like the drawing of the fleur-de-lis to start. You can also divide the rectangle that you have drawn into three sections and mark the points as A and B. Remember that you will only be working on the left side of the drawing now, so half of the entire rectangle should be divided into three sections.
- Now, from the top of the vertical line, sketch a ballooning curve which has a large arch towards the middle, and is decreasing to a smaller curve towards the end. The two points that you should connect are the top of the vertical line which you marked earlier, and point B which you marked on top of the rectangle. Refer to the drawing of the fleur-de-lis to know exactly how the curve should look like. You can use freehand drawing, and just sharpen the curves later on using an elliptical template.
- From point B, you can draw a shape similar to a half-moon with A as the end point.
- The next step is to work on the bottom part of the fleur-de-lis. From the middle of points A and B, draw another half-moon shape pointing downwards until it reaches the middle point of the intersecting line which served as your reference point earlier. From here, draw another curved line and the end point should be the lower half of the very first vertical line that you have drawn earlier. You now have a finished drawing of the left side of your fleur-de-lis.
- Next, draw a mirror image of the left side of your sketch to the right side – thereby completing the fleur-de-lis. Sharpen the curves using an elliptical template and make sure that the entire drawing is proportional.
- Erase the reference lines and mark the heavy lines on the final sketch of the fleur-de-lis symbol that you now have on your sketch pad.
- Finally, color your fleur-de-lis drawing. You can use two contrasting colors to highlight each side, or just decide on a major color scheme to use.
Additional Tip
- For a more flashy fleur-de-lis drawing, you can add embellishments to the curves and incorporate additional designs within the drawing itself. No matter how many colors you use or how many embellishments you add, it would still look like the original fleur-de-lis symbol, since the basic design is already there.