How to Sketch a Football — Step-by-Step Drawing Guide

A traditional football is a truncated icosahedron: take a 20-sided icosahedron, slice the corners off, and you get a 32-faced shape with 12 regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons. Every pentagon is surrounded by 5 hexagons; every hexagon touches 3 pentagons and 3 hexagons.

This is the pattern Adidas used for the Telstar 1970 — "television star" — designed to be visible on the black-and-white TV broadcasts of the 1970 Mexico World Cup. Black pentagons against white hexagons gave the ball maximum contrast on low-resolution sets. The pattern stuck for decades, even though modern Premier League and Champions League balls now use thermally-bonded panels in different shapes (Adidas Tango, Brazuca, Al Rihla, Pro Connected).

When someone says "draw a football", they almost always mean the Telstar pattern. The geometry below assumes that.

Use a compass or trace around a coin or bowl. The circle is the outline of the sphere as you see it from the front — every panel will sit inside this circle.

The cleaner your circle, the easier everything else is. If you're working freehand, build it up with a few light pencil arcs and connect them, rather than trying to commit a perfect circle in one stroke.

Mark a point at the centre of the circle. This will be the centre of the front-facing pentagon — the panel pointing directly at the viewer.

Draw a small regular pentagon centred on that point. A regular pentagon has five equal sides at 108° interior angles. If you're freehanding, draw a small upward-pointing equilateral triangle first, then "open" it into a pentagon by extending the bottom edge — easier than starting with five equal sides.

Keep the pentagon small. As a rule of thumb: the pentagon's width should be roughly 25-30% of the circle's diameter. Larger pentagons compress the surrounding hexagons; smaller pentagons leave room for the curvature to read.

Each side of the pentagon shares an edge with a hexagon. So you draw five hexagons, one for each pentagon edge, with each hexagon sharing exactly one side with the pentagon.

Three things to keep in mind:

• Match edge lengths. The shared edge between the pentagon and each hexagon must be the same length. Eyeball this carefully — uneven edges break the symmetry.
• Slight curvature. Because the football is a sphere, the hexagons further from the centre should appear slightly compressed in the direction of the curve. The hexagons at the top, bottom, and sides of the central pentagon stretch and tilt outward as they wrap around the ball.
• Don't commit hard lines yet. Stay in light pencil — you'll adjust the outer hexagons as the second ring goes in.

Each of the five hexagons you just drew has six sides. One of those sides touches the central pentagon. The opposite side touches another pentagon in the second ring.

Draw five small pentagons, one for each hexagon's outer edge. These are the partial pentagons you see at the edges of a real football — usually only half-visible, since they sit at the curve of the sphere where the surface starts to roll away from the viewer.

Keep these pentagons the same size as the central one. Their visible portions get smaller as they near the outline of the circle, mimicking foreshortening.

Between each pair of second-ring pentagons sits a hexagon. These outer hexagons fill the remaining visible surface of the ball, with their edges touching both pentagons in the second ring and the surrounding hexagons.

By the time you've placed the second-ring pentagons and the connecting hexagons, the front-facing half of the ball is complete. The back half is hidden — you don't draw it. The visible pattern from the viewer's angle typically shows roughly 8-12 panels in full or part plus the curving outline.

Now make it read as a football. Three finishing moves:

• Ink the panel edges. Trace your final pentagon and hexagon edges with a pen or darker pencil. Erase any construction lines. Edges should be slightly thicker on panels closer to the silhouette of the ball — this implies depth.
• Fill the pentagons black, leave the hexagons white. Classic Telstar contrast. If you're drawing a modern ball (Adidas Brazuca, Al Rihla, Premier League Nike Flight) the pattern changes — but for a recognisable cartoon football, black pentagons + white hexagons is the visual shorthand the brain recognises instantly.
• Add shading. A football is a sphere, so it needs a single light source. Pick a light direction (typically top-left), then add a soft gradient of grey on the opposite side of the ball, plus a small white highlight near the light source. Even on a Telstar pattern, shading on top of the pentagons and hexagons sells the sphere.

Three frequent errors that flatten an otherwise good sketch:

• Hexagons drawn as squares. A hexagon has six sides, not four. If you're in a hurry, you'll often shortcut to squares. Slow down and confirm six clean sides on each hexagon.
• Pentagons that drift in size. Once one pentagon is wrong, the hexagons can't lock in around it. Use the central pentagon as the reference and match every other pentagon's width to it.
• No curvature. A flat panel pattern looks like a wallpaper sample, not a ball. Compress and tilt the panels closer to the circle's edge to imply the sphere curving away from the viewer.

If you want a modern Premier League or World Cup ball look rather than a Telstar, the panel patterns are simpler to draw:

• Adidas Telstar 18 / Brazuca / Al Rihla. Six identical panels arranged in a propeller pattern. Far easier than the truncated icosahedron — three panels visible on the front face, organised around a central seam meeting at three points.
• Nike Flight (Premier League). Four large panels in an asymmetric AeroSculpt design. Mostly white with coloured graphic accents.
• Mitre / classic British leather ball. 18 panels in a hexagonal grid, all the same colour. Simpler than a Telstar but less recognisable as "a football".