How to Draw a Pretzel

A baked bread twisted into a shape, the Pretzel is a favorite snack for many people. With our step by step guide, you will learn how to draw a pretzel in only four steps. These delicious baked goods come in several varieties, including salt, sesame and sweet seasonings such as sugar and chocolate.

Before starting this yummy tutorial, gather your drawing supplies together. All of our drawing tutorials can be used with mixed media, colored pencils, acrylic paint or any art medium you have available. If you prefer, you can even use Procreate and Photoshop.

Design Bundles offers tons of Procreate brushes to choose from. As we will be using Procreate in this tutorial, we chose these Procreate ink brushes for sketching and outlining our design.

Step 1 - Create the Pretzel Base Shape

Let's get started by creating the base shape using a sketching medium. This can be anything that is easy to remove or cover up such as a pencil or light-colored medium. You will want to remove your sketches or hide them later on when adding color.

Pretzels have a similar shape to hearts. We will begin our sketch by drawing the top half of a heart.

Next, close the bottom of your heart shape with a curved line as we did below. We want the heart shape to be fairly rounded. The base shape is now ready.

Step 2 - Create the Twisted Pretzel Shape

With the base shape drawn, we are going to create the twist and make our pretzel drawing thicker. First, start by roughly sketching the twist in the middle of the base shape.

Refer to the sketch below for guidelines. Begin by drawing a line from the top left of the shape, down to just below the bottom left. A sharp curve was added in the middle of this line. Do the same for the other side to create the twist on your pretzel.

Next, thicken out the shape by drawing a parallel line on the inside. This line should follow the curves of the twist that we drew above. Our image sketch below shows you step by step how to do this.

Then, repeat the step above. This time, add a thicker line to the outside of your sketch. Connect the ends by rounding them off.

Step 3 - Outline Your Rough Pretzel Sketch

Now that our sketch is complete, we can move on to outlining everything. To make your outline, try using a defining or permanent medium such as a marker. First, sketch the outermost lines of the pretzel.

Then, outline the inside of your pretzel, where there are gaps.

Looking at our example image below, outline the twist in your pretzel, including the ends. As you can see, our left side crosses over the right side at the top. Then goes back underneath the right side at the bottom.

Time to add some seasoning to our pretzel! We chose coarse salt, drawing squares and rectangles that were scattered across our pretzel. Once you are done outlining your pretzel, go ahead and remove your rough sketches.

Step 4 - Add Color to Your Pretzel

In the last step, we are going to add color. For our color palette, we used light, medium and dark brown. Our seasoning was left white while the pretzel was colored medium brown.

Highlights were added using a light brown and shadows applied with a dark brown. This will create more depth and the illusion of light. You can also use a texture brush with one of these versatile Procreate brushes for something fun and different.

Here is the final result of our drawing.

Great job on creating a delicious pretzel to add to your drawing collection. Why not try different seasonings, like a chocolate covered pretzel? We hope you enjoyed following along with this tasty tutorial.