How to Draw a Fish

⏱️ 6 min 📊 Beginner 🖌️ Tool: Pen

Why this matters: Fish are fascinating creatures with beautiful, flowing shapes. Learning to draw a fish teaches you about organic curves, fins, and underwater anatomy. This skill is essential for drawing marine life, creating underwater scenes, and even designing fantasy sea creatures!

🎯 A gentle reminder: Your first fish might look like a potato with a tail – and that's completely okay! What matters is understanding the basic shape and the flow of the fins. Every fish you draw will become more graceful!

🖥️ For the full interactive experience, try this tutorial on your desktop.

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Challenge

1 Setup Your Canvas

Look to the right panel – that's your live drawing app. Make sure the Pen is selected. Set your brush size to 3 or 5 (click the gear icon on the right toolbar). Pick a dark color like #2D3436 or #1A1A1A.

Optional: Turn on the Grid (Settings → Show Grid) – it can help you keep things centered!

💡 The app auto-saves every stroke. Don't worry if you refresh the page!

2 Draw the Body

A fish body is essentially an elongated oval with a pointed end. Let's start with the basic shape.

Draw a long oval in the center of the canvas – this is the body.
Make one end slightly narrower (the tail end).
The head end should be slightly rounder.
Pro tip: Fish bodies come in all shapes – round, long, flat. Start with a classic fish shape!

Try this: Draw the body with a slight curve to make your fish look like it's swimming!

🐟 Pro Tip: Look at a picture of a fish. Notice how the body is roughly the shape of an almond or a teardrop. The widest part is usually in the middle, and it tapers at both ends!

3 Add Fins & Tail

Hit Clear on the right toolbar. Draw the body again, then let's add the fins and tail.

Tail fin: Draw a V-shape at the narrow end of the body.
Dorsal fin: Add a triangular shape on the top of the body.
Pectoral fin: Add a small oval on the side of the body.
Ventral fin: Add a small triangular shape on the bottom of the body.

Try this: Draw the fins in different sizes – a big flowing tail or small delicate fins!

🐠 Pro Tip: The fins are like the fish's wings – they help it move through the water. The tail is the most important fin for swimming, so make it bold and flowy!

4 Add Details & Scales

Now let's make your fish look more realistic with some details.

Eye: Add a small circle with a tiny dot inside for the eye.
Mouth: Draw a small curved line at the front of the head.
Scales: Add small curved lines (like little C-shapes) across the body.
Gills: Draw a curved line near the head for the gill cover.

Try this: Add some bubbles coming from the fish's mouth – it adds so much life to the drawing!

🐡 Pro Tip: Scales are like a fish's fingerprint – they're unique to each species. For a simple fish, just a few curved lines across the body is enough to suggest scales!

5 🏆 The Challenge

Click "Clear" on the right toolbar. Now set a timer for 5 minutes.

Your mission: Draw three different fish – each one with a different shape or style.

Fish 1: A round fish (like a goldfish or pufferfish)
Fish 2: A long, thin fish (like an eel or needlefish)
Fish 3: A fish with a fancy tail (like a betta fish or angelfish)
Bonus: Add seaweed, rocks, or coral to create an underwater scene!

When the timer is up, hit the Save button to download your fish collection!

✅ Remember: Every artist starts with potato-shaped fish. The more you draw, the more graceful they become. Keep swimming – your perfect fish is just a few drawings away!

✨ What's next?

⬅️ Previous: How to Draw a Bird – learn to draw birds!
➡️ Next: How to Draw a Snail – learn to draw slow-moving creatures!