Episode 4 of the 100 Days Sketching Challenge explores the Solar System — drawing the Sun and the planets that orbit it. It's a drawing lesson and a space science lesson rolled into one. Parikshet guides you through sketching our cosmic neighbourhood step by step.

🖍️ What You Need

  • Pencil and eraser
  • A round object to trace for circles
  • Coloured markers (yellow, orange, blue, red, brown)
  • Black pen for outlines

How to Draw the Solar System Step by Step

  1. Draw the Sun — a large circle on one side of the page, with flame-like rays or a glowing edge. The Sun is by far the biggest object, so make it large.
  2. Draw Mercury and Venus — two small circles closest to the Sun. Mercury is smallest; Venus is a bit bigger and yellowish.
  3. Draw Earth — a blue-and-green circle with white cloud swirls. Add a tiny Moon beside it.
  4. Draw Mars — a reddish-orange circle (the 'Red Planet'), a bit smaller than Earth.
  5. Draw Jupiter — the largest planet, a big circle with horizontal bands and the famous Great Red Spot (a giant storm).
  6. Draw Saturn — a circle with its spectacular rings drawn as an ellipse around it. Saturn's rings are its signature feature.
  7. Draw Uranus and Neptune — two blue circles at the far end, the most distant planets.
  8. Colour and add orbits — give each planet its real colour, and draw faint curved orbit lines showing their paths around the Sun.
💡 Parikshet's Tip: To show the planets correctly, remember they vary HUGELY in size — Jupiter is enormous while Mercury is tiny, and the Sun dwarfs them all. Drawing them at different sizes (not all the same) makes your Solar System far more accurate and interesting. Saturn's rings make it the most fun to draw!

🌟 Did You Know?

Our Solar System has eight planets orbiting the Sun. Jupiter is so big that all the other planets could fit inside it! The Sun makes up 99.8% of all the mass in the Solar System. Saturn's rings are made of billions of pieces of ice and rock, some as small as a grain of sand and others as big as a house. And a day on Venus is longer than its year — it spins so slowly that it orbits the Sun faster than it rotates!

The Eight Planets in Order from the Sun

  • Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — the small rocky inner planets
  • Jupiter and Saturn — the giant gas planets (Saturn has rings)
  • Uranus and Neptune — the distant icy blue planets
  • The Sun — the giant star at the centre, holding it all together

🎯 Try This: Make a Solar System Poster

  1. Draw the Sun and all eight planets in order across a large page.
  2. Label each planet with its name.
  3. Add one fun fact beside each planet (e.g., 'Jupiter: the biggest!').
  4. Draw the orbit paths as curved lines and add some stars.