Rainbows only appear after it rains, like a colorful bridge in the sky. If the children inadvertently see a beautiful rainbow, I am afraid all of them will scream with excitement!

Rainbows are an optical phenomenon in meteorology. After it rains, when the sunlight hits the water droplets in mid-air, the light is refracted and reflected, forming an arched colorful spectrum in the sky.

The rainbow has seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet from the outer circle to the inner circle. In fact, the rainbow has an infinite number of colors, for example, there are many colors with nuances between red and orange. But for the sake of simplicity, only seven colors are used as a distinction.

How to Draw a Rainbow Step by Step

Step 1 Draw a spectrum of the rainbow

Start by drawing a long arc, with the left end high and the right end low. This is the top edge of this rainbow.

Then draw another arc below it. The spacing between them is always the same, and you can think of them as parts of two concentric circles.

For this rainbow we need to draw eight arcs, which is not an easy task for anyone. You can prepare a compass ahead of time as an aid.

Step 2 Draw two spectrums of the rainbow

Draw an arc below the already drawn spectrum to get another spectrum.

Draw another arc in a similar way to obtain a third spectrum.

You can see that each spectrum consists of two adjacent arcs, and the widths of these spectra are nearly the same.

Step 3 Draw two spectra of the rainbow again

In a similar way to the previous step, draw two short arcs below the already drawn spectrums to get the other two spectra.

You will find that although these arcs are high on the left and low on the right, the positions of their ends are not regular.

You don't need to worry about drawing exactly where their endpoints are. Because later we'll connect them when we draw the cloud.

Step 4 Draw the remaining spectrums of the rainbow

Draw the two shortest arcs below to get the last two spectra of this rainbow.

Ever feel like we're drawing an incomplete target? If you want to make your own target in the future, this tutorial will help you.

Now that we've drawn the rainbow, let's draw the cloud below it.

Step 5 Draw the top edge of the cloud

At the bottom of this rainbow, draw wavy lines from left to right to connect the ends of the arcs that make up the rainbow.

You can control the direction of the wavy lines during this step, so as to connect the ends of the rainbow arcs just right. So we remind you in the third step that you don't need to worry about the irregularity of these endpoints.

From this we get the top edge of this cloud.

Step 6 Draw the left part of the cloud

Starting at the left end of the top edge of this cloud, draw a wavy line towards the lower left.

Then start at the bottom of this newly obtained wavy line and draw wavy lines towards the bottom right.

Step 7 Draw the right part of the cloud and stars

Start at the right end of the top edge of this cloud and draw a wavy line towards the bottom right.

Draw a wavy line from the bottom of this wavy line towards the lower left. Then draw the bottom edge of this cloud completely.

Draw a star on top of the rainbow. Then draw four stars on the left of the rainbow for decoration.

Each star is symmetrical and has four corners. You can first draw four symmetrical points up, down, left and right, and then connect them with four curved lines.

The five stars are close in size. And in the next step we will draw some small stars.

Step 8 Draw stars on the rainbow

On the right of this rainbow, draw a total of four stars, two large and two small. Although they are not the same size, the shape is the same.

Then we add some small stars to the rainbow. It doesn't need to be precise, you can add stars anywhere in this rainbow.

So far we have drawn this rainbow scene.

Step 9 Color this rainbow

The rainbow consists of seven spectrums, from the outer ring to the inner ring, with seven colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. But in special cases, there are also some special rainbows, such as white rainbows, red rainbows, misty rainbows and so on.

Download the PDF

If you like this rainbow drawing, you can download its tutorial. Just click the link below and you can get the PDF on "How to Draw a Rainbow", it's free and printable. In addition to this, the pages of this PDF also contain a coloring page and the final rainbow.