The weed plant is a beautiful plant, and while for the consumers the focus will always be on the flowers, most people, users and non-users alike, tend to associate weed with its big fanning leaves.
Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re good at drawing or not, knowing how to draw a weed leaf will spice up your everyday doodles or it may help you design your own 420-logo which you can plaster on your next project.
Therefore, we prepared an easy-to-follow step-by-step tutorial to help you draw a pot leaf, and we also threw in some fun facts about weed because learning can be just as fun as drawing!
What’s So Special About the Appearance of the Cannabis Plant?
Many weed enthusiasts are used to seeing parts of the cannabis plant packed in baggies and maybe in some photos, rather than seeing it unfurl and breathe before their eyes. Well, the cannabis plant is a sight to behold, indeed. Apart from the unmistakably recognizable smell, ganja has a very unique and striking appearance.
Depending on whether it’s a Sativa or an Indica, it can be tall and majestically spread out, with the buds on each branch like ornaments, or it can look bushy and more compact, with dense, sticky, and pungent buds.
It’s the Pot Leaves
The cannabis flowers may be the most important part of the plant because that’s where all THC and CBD goodness comes from, but upon the first view, what most people notice are the weed leaves, also called fan leaves.
The marijuana leaves are quite big and striking, and they have serrated edges, making them very discernable among other plants. The pot leaves grow in groups of 5-7 smaller leaves, also called “fingers”, but there can be up to 13 in a group. Most commonly, when people draw a marijuana leaf, they draw it with 7 finger leaves. And since the weed leaves are the most noticeable part of the plant and they’re fun and easy to draw, even if drawing is not your forte, let’s see how you can draw a cannabis leaf in a few simple steps.
A Step-By-Step Guide on How to Draw a Pot Leaf
This will be an easy-to-follow tutorial on how to draw a basic pot leaf shape, and once you master it, you can experiment and add your own twist to it, and draw it in the style you like.
As for the needed materials, you can use anything like – a drawing tool and paper, or you can even use a tablet, whichever is the easiest for you. We recommend making the outline on a white background just so you can see what you’re doing.
- Prepare your tools and start by drawing an inverted T shape.
- Next, draw two lines on the right and the left that extend from the junction point of the inverted T. The lines should look similar to the letter V, only a bit wider, and their height should be about half of the vertical line of the inverted T.
- Then, draw two lines again starting from the same junction point, but this time they should be shorter and extend downwards, below the horizontal line from the inverted T, like an inverted V.
- Now, you have the most basic outline of the pot leaf. What you should do next is create the zig-zag pattern that gives them a serrated look and fill in the rest. Since having a visual representation will surely make things easier, you can also follow along with this free online drawing tutorial on YouTube.
If you want to take things to the next level, for example, if you’re planning on designing a more professionally looking weed logo for a DIY project or want to print a trendy T-shirt or a coffee mug for a present (or for yourself), you can purchase some printable templates and customize them as you wish. You can find stock photos and royalty-free vector images that can inspire you and help you realize your design ideas, even if you’re a rookie.
Before You Go and Draw, Here Are Some Fun Facts About the Marijuana Plant
Before we let you go, here are some fun facts about the marijuana plant that you may or may not know, but they sure offer a bigger perspective on how awesome cannabis is.
- The marijuana plant has been used for thousands of years by many ancient civilizations who lived before us. Scientists even found evidence that in the first millennium BCE in Central Asia people smoked weed during ceremonial rites.
- There is one marijuana-based drink called Bhang which was used in Ancient India for various purposes and as part of Hindu practices, but the most interesting thing is that it’s still popular today in modern India, and it’s drunk during the spring festival of Maha Shivaratri and Holi.
- Recreational cannabis has been legal in Alaska since 1975 and it still is today.
- AXE has a body spray called Touch that smells eerily similar to pot, so much so that consumers believe it’s not a coincidence!
- There are many theories about how 420 became a code for weed, but the most believable one is that a group of friends needed a code word for their after-school meet-ups to smoke weed together in the 1970s, which happened to be 4:20 pm. After a while, the slang caught on and has somehow remained in the weed lingo for 50 years now.
- According to his old diaries, it seems like George Washington was growing weed in his backyard, back when it was legal to do so throughout the USA.
- It also seems like The Bard himself, a.k.a. William Shakespeare, enjoyed doobies because traces of marijuana were found in his home.
- CBD (commonly used as medical marijuana) is actually extracted from a variety of the marijuana plant, botanically known as Cannabis Sativa L., but colloquially called hemp. Hemp is naturally high in CBD, higher than marijuana, its sibling, and the CBD is extracted from the hemp flowers. The hemp stalks can be used for a myriad of purposes, you wouldn’t believe how many!
- Cannabis and hops are botanically classified in the same flowering family, which makes beer and weed distant cousins.
- Skunks and many weed strains smell similar, but this is by pure coincidence and they don’t share any of the same compounds that produce their respective smells.
- Spider flowers and the Caucasian crosswort plant smell very similar to cannabis, especially the former.
- Raw marijuana isn’t psychoactive so if you consume it, it won’t get you high. Instead, it should be dried and cured which converts the cannabinoids from their inactive to their active forms. However, raw weed is actually nutritious and can be consumed raw (it comes with a very grassy flavor).
The Takeaway
The marijuana buds may be the most important due to their cannabinoid content, but visually, it’s the leaves that steal all the attention. The pot leaves are big and consist of several “fingers” which have zig-zag edges. Drawing a marijuana leaf is easy enough and it’s guaranteed to become your favorite doodle!