Ever looked at a drawing of a "Crescent Moon" and felt like something was... off? It happens all the time. You see a sliver of white, but the dark part of the circle is missing, or the horns of the moon are pointing toward the horizon like they’re tired. Drawing phases of the moon is actually one of those things that feels easy until you sit down with a pencil and realize you don’t actually know where the light goes.
The Moon doesn’t just change shape. It’s a sphere. When we talk about drawing it, we’re really talking about drawing how sunlight hits a giant rock 238,000 miles away. If you mess up the curve of the shadow, you lose the 3D effect. It stops looking like a celestial body and starts looking like a flat sticker on a piece of paper. Honestly, the trick isn't even in the drawing; it's in the geometry.
Understanding the Lunar Cycle Before You Sketch
The biggest mistake? Thinking the shadow is a crescent. It isn’t.
When you’re drawing phases of the moon, you have to remember that the shadow (the terminator line) is always an ellipse. Think about a ball. If you wrap a rubber band around a tennis ball and look at it from the side, that band looks like a curve. It never makes a sharp "V" shape at the poles. It’s a smooth, sweeping arc that connects the North and South poles of the Moon.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio has some of the best references for this. They show how the "terminator"—that's the line between day and night—creeps across the craters. If you’re drawing a Waxing Gibbous, you’re basically drawing a circle where one side is slightly "puffed out" by a secondary curve.
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The Eight Traditional Phases
- New Moon: You basically draw nothing, or a very faint "Earthshine" glow.
- Waxing Crescent: A thin sliver on the right (in the Northern Hemisphere).
- First Quarter: Exactly half. Don't curve the line; make it a straight diameter.
- Waxing Gibbous: More than half, but not full. This is the hardest one to get right.
- Full Moon: A perfect circle. Focus on the "seas" or maria here.
- Waning Gibbous: The shadow starts creeping in from the right.
- Third Quarter: The left half is lit.
- Waning Crescent: The final sliver before it disappears.
The Secret to the "Terminator" Line
If you want your drawing to look professional, you need to focus on the terminator. This is where the magic happens. On a real moon, the shadows are longest right at this line. Why? Because the sun is "setting" or "rising" for a lunar observer at that exact spot.
If you're using graphite, don't just shade a flat gray. Use a blending stump or even your finger—though a stump is better for keeping oils off the paper—to create a soft transition. But wait. Is the transition actually soft? Not really. Space has no atmosphere to scatter light. The transition from light to dark on the Moon is actually quite harsh, but because the surface is covered in craters and mountains, it looks "toothy" and jagged.
Don't Forget Earthshine
Sometimes, when the Moon is a thin crescent, you can see the rest of the circle faintly glowing. Leonardo da Vinci actually figured this out in the 16th century. It’s called Earthshine. It’s sunlight reflecting off the Earth, hitting the Moon, and bouncing back to our eyes.
If you include this in your drawing phases of the moon, your work will instantly look more sophisticated. Use a very hard pencil, like a 2H or 4H, to barely ghost in the dark side of the Moon. It gives the viewer the sense that the Moon is a whole object, not just a floating slice of light.
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Positioning the Horns
The "horns" or tips of a crescent moon are called cusps. Here is a rule that people constantly break: the cusps always point away from the Sun. If the Sun has just set below the horizon, the points of the Moon should be pointing generally upward.
I’ve seen so many illustrations where the Moon is a "U" shape at the top of the sky. Unless you’re near the equator, that rarely happens. In the Northern Hemisphere, the Moon usually sits at an angle. To get this right, literally draw a tiny dot where your "Sun" is off the page. Then, make sure the curved, lit side of the Moon is facing that dot. It’s a simple geometric check that prevents your drawing from looking "fake."
Surface Details: Maria and Craters
You don't need to draw every single crater. Please, don't try. You'll go crazy.
Instead, focus on the Maria. These are the large, dark basaltic plains. Most people know the "Man in the Moon," but artists should look for the Sea of Tranquility (where Apollo 11 landed) and the Sea of Crisis. They aren't perfect circles. They’re blotchy, organic shapes.
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- The Tycho Crater: Near the bottom (South pole). It has "rays" that shoot out across the surface like a starburst. It’s best to draw this on a Full Moon.
- The Copernicus Crater: A bright spot in the middle of the dark plains.
- The Limb: This is the edge of the Moon. It should be a crisp, clean line. Don't blur the outer edge of the Moon into the blackness of space. Space is a vacuum; there's no "haze" around the Moon's edge.
Practical Steps for Your Next Sketch
Stop using a compass to draw the whole thing if you want it to look artistic. Use a compass for the initial circle, sure, but do the phases by hand. It gives the drawing more life.
Start with a light 2B pencil for the outline. If you're doing a crescent, draw the full circle first very lightly. Then, draw the ellipse of the shadow. Once you have the "shape" of the phase, go in with a 4B or 6B for the deep black of space around it. The contrast is what makes the Moon pop. If your background is just white paper, the Moon will look gray. If your background is a deep, layered charcoal black, the Moon will look like it’s glowing.
Think about the paper texture too. Using a cold-press watercolor paper or a toothy charcoal paper can actually help you. The "bumps" in the paper naturally look like the rough, cratered surface of the Moon when you rub a pencil lightly over them. It's a "cheat" that professional illustrators use all the time to get instant texture without drawing a thousand tiny circles.
Check your work against a real-time moon tracker. Apps like "Lumos" or even just looking at the NASA Moon Phase Gallery for the current date will give you a "reference photo" that is factually correct for tonight. Drawing from life—or at least from live data—is always better than drawing from memory. Memory simplifies things. Real life is messy, bumpy, and much more interesting to look at.
To get the most realistic results, try working in reverse. Start with a toned gray paper. Use a white charcoal pencil for the lit areas and a dark graphite pencil for the shadows. This way, you aren't fighting the white of the paper to get those mid-tones. You're building the light and the dark simultaneously from a middle ground, which is exactly how light works in the real world.