Poppy Playtime's Poppy the Doll is a striking character to draw — a vintage-style porcelain doll with enormous blue eyes, bright red curled hair, and an unsettling perfect smile. Part of the 6-minute 100 Days Sketching Challenge, this guide captures Poppy's doll-like proportions and eerie charm.

🖍️ What You Need

  • Pencil and eraser
  • Red or auburn marker for the hair
  • Blue for the large eyes
  • Pink for the dress and cheeks
  • Black fine-tip pen for outlines

How to Draw Poppy the Doll Step by Step

  1. Draw the head — a smooth oval, slightly wider at the top. Porcelain dolls have very rounded, perfect faces.
  2. Add the enormous eyes — two very large oval eyes taking up much of the upper face. Poppy's eyes are her most striking feature — make them big, with large blue irises, dark pupils, and bright highlight dots.
  3. Draw the eyelashes and brows — long curled lashes on the upper lids and thin arched eyebrows. These give Poppy her doll-like, slightly artificial expression.
  4. Add the nose and smile — a tiny button nose and a small, perfectly curved closed smile. Add two small rosy circular cheeks.
  5. Draw the hair — Poppy's signature bright red hair, styled in large vintage curls. Draw it framing the face with rolled curl shapes at the ends and a centre parting.
  6. Add a hair bow — a decorative bow on top or to one side of the head, a classic doll accessory.
  7. Draw the body and dress — a small body in a frilly vintage dress with a wide collar, puffed sleeves, and a full skirt.
  8. Colour — pale porcelain skin, bright red hair, blue eyes, pink dress and cheeks.
💡 Parikshet's Tip: Poppy's eyes should be almost unnaturally large — nearly one-third of the face height each. This oversized-eye proportion is what makes her read as a 'doll' rather than a real girl. The slightly too-perfect symmetry of the face adds to the doll effect.

🌟 Did You Know?

Poppy Playtime is a horror puzzle video game released in 2021 set in an abandoned toy factory. Poppy Playtime became a viral sensation, especially among younger gamers, spawning huge amounts of fan art. The game's characters — including Poppy the Doll and Huggy Wuggy — became some of the most-drawn fan-art subjects of the early 2020s.

Drawing Vintage Dolls: Key Features

  • Oversized eyes — the single biggest 'doll' signal
  • Perfect symmetry — both sides of the face nearly identical
  • Rosy circular cheeks — painted-on blush
  • Styled, structured hair — curls and bows rather than loose natural hair
  • Frilly vintage clothing — collars, puffed sleeves, full skirts

🎯 Try This: Draw a Doll in Two Moods

  1. Draw Poppy twice with the same face shape.
  2. Version 1: friendly — soft eyes, gentle smile, relaxed brows.
  3. Version 2: eerie — wider eyes, a too-fixed smile, slightly raised brows.
  4. Notice how tiny changes to the eyes and smile shift a doll from sweet to unsettling.