Drawing a person standing still is hard enough. Drawing someone jumping mid-air with pom-poms while maintaining a massive smile? That’s a whole different level of anatomical chaos. If you’ve ever tried to figure out how to draw cheerleader characters and ended up with something that looks more like a stiff wooden mannequin than a high-energy athlete, you aren't alone. Most people focus too much on the uniform and not enough on the "line of action."
It’s the energy that matters.
Think about it. A cheerleader is basically a human firework. If your lines are straight and your angles are 90 degrees, you’ve already lost the battle. You need curves. You need tension. You need to understand how a human body compresses before it explodes into a "toe touch" jump.
The Anatomy of a High-Kick: Why Most Drawings Feel Flat
When people sit down to learn how to draw cheerleader poses, they usually start with the head. Big mistake. Honestly, the head is the last thing you should worry about. You need to start with the torso. In cheerleading, the power comes from the core. If you look at photography from the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA), you’ll notice that in almost every stunt or jump, the spine is either arched or coiled.
Take the classic "herkie" jump. One leg is out straight, the other is tucked. If you draw the hips as a flat horizontal box, the drawing dies right there. The hips have to tilt. One side goes up, the other goes down. It’s called contrapposto, but on steroids.
Vary your line weights here. Use heavy, thick lines for the parts of the body under pressure—like the foot landing on the mat—and lighter, flicking lines for the hair and the fringes of the pom-poms. This creates a sense of movement. If every line is the same thickness, the eye doesn't know where to look. It feels static. Boring.
How to Draw Cheerleader Outfits Without Losing the Body
The uniform is a trap. I’m serious. People get so excited about drawing the pleats in the skirt or the stripes on the shell top that they forget there’s a ribcage underneath. The shell top (that’s the vest part) is usually made of stiff, heavy polyester. It doesn't drape like a t-shirt. It holds its own shape.
But the skirt? The skirt is where the magic happens.
If you’re wondering how to draw cheerleader skirts that look realistic, stop drawing them as a bell shape. When a flyer is in the air, gravity and inertia are fighting each other. The skirt should be flaring upward or swirling. Use "V" shaped folds to indicate the pleats. Don't draw every single pleat. Just hint at them. Your brain will fill in the rest.
The Pom-Pom Problem
Pom-poms are not circles. They are thousands of individual plastic ribbons reflecting light. If you draw them as fluffy clouds, they look like cotton candy. Instead, use jagged, messy scribbles. Leave some white space in the middle to show where the light is hitting the shiny plastic.
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Pro tip: The pom-poms should follow the arc of the arm's movement. If the arm just swung upward, the ribbons should be trailing slightly downward. This is called "overlapping action" in animation, and it’s the secret sauce for making a drawing look like it’s caught in a split second of time.
Perspective and the "Flyer" View
Cheerleading happens in 3D space. You’ve got bases, back-spots, and flyers. If you’re drawing a stunt, you have to deal with foreshortening. This is where most artists quit.
Foreshortening is basically the art of drawing things getting smaller as they go away from you or bigger as they come toward you. If a cheerleader is reaching her hand toward the "camera," her hand might be as big as her entire torso in the drawing. It feels wrong while you're doing it. You'll think, "This looks ridiculous." But once you finish the arm, it looks like she’s popping off the page.
Check out Andrew Loomis’s books on figure drawing. He’s the gold standard for this. He talks about "mannequinization"—breaking the body into cylinders and spheres. For a cheerleader, think of the limbs as flexible tubes.
The Face: Expression vs. Effort
Here is a weird paradox: Cheerleading is exhausting, but you have to look like you’re having the time of your life. When you’re learning how to draw cheerleader faces, you have to balance the strain of the muscles with the brightness of the expression.
- The Eyes: Keep them wide. High eyebrows.
- The Mouth: Huge smile, but show the teeth. Don't just draw a line.
- The Hair: It’s almost always in a high ponytail with a massive bow. The bow is basically a character of its own. It should be stiff, usually "tails up," and should mirror the movement of the jump.
If the cheerleader is mid-stunt, maybe add a little bit of tension in the neck muscles. Just two slight lines to show she’s working hard to hold that balance. It adds a layer of realism that separates a "cute drawing" from a "professional illustration."
Lighting the Performance
Most cheerleading happens under stadium lights or harsh gym fluorescent bulbs. This means high contrast. You want deep shadows and bright highlights.
If she’s outdoors, the sun is hitting her from above. This creates shadows under the chin, under the skirt, and behind the legs. Use these shadows to "carve" the muscles. Cheerleaders are incredibly fit. You don’t need to draw every abdominal muscle, but a subtle shadow along the side of the torso (the obliques) goes a long way in showing that athletic build.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Don't make the sneakers look like regular Keds. Cheer shoes are specific. They’re sleek, usually have finger grooves for the bases to grip, and have very flat soles. Drawing a bulky basketball shoe on a cheerleader looks clunky.
Also, watch the hands. When they aren't holding poms, cheerleaders often use "blades" (fingers tight together, palms flat) or "fists" (thumb on the outside). If you draw relaxed, floppy hands, the "tightness" of the cheer aesthetic is lost.
Practical Steps to Master the Pose
To really get good at this, you need to move beyond static images.
- Gesture Drawing: Go to YouTube and find a competition video. Pause it at random intervals. Give yourself 30 seconds to sketch the basic "stick figure" flow of the person. Do this 50 times. Don't worry about the face or the clothes. Just the flow.
- The "Box" Method: Once you have the flow, draw boxes for the hips and chest. Connect them with a curved line for the spine. This builds the 3D volume.
- Detail Layering: Only after the anatomy is solid should you add the uniform, the hair bow, and the poms.
- Inking: Use a fine-liner for the facial features and a thicker brush pen for the outer silhouette of the body. This makes the character "pop" from the background.
Experiment with different angles. Try drawing a "basket toss" from a worm's eye view, looking straight up. It’s terrifying to draw, but the result is a dynamic, high-impact piece of art that looks like it belongs in a sports magazine or a high-end comic book.
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Focus on the "snap" of the movement. Cheerleading is about sharp, punctuated motions. If your lines reflect that sharpness, you’ve mastered the hardest part of the craft.