How to Draw a Fish
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Block in the big oval of the fish.
It should fill most of your page, with a margin all round.
Drawing on paper instead?
We straighten and clean up the photo for you. Paper counts exactly the same.
About this drawing
A fish is the friendliest first drawing there is: one oval, a triangle at each end, and you are essentially done. There is no complicated anatomy to get wrong and no expression to capture.
What it quietly teaches is that a drawing is built from shapes that overlap, not from an outline traced in one go. Once you see the oval and the triangles separately you will start seeing them in everything else too.
Step by step
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Step 1
Block in the big oval of the fish.
Everything else gets measured against this, so draw it in one motion rather than in short careful passes. A slightly lopsided shape drawn confidently is more use than a perfect one built out of twelve nervous strokes, because you can correct a shape and you cannot un-see a hesitant line.
Watch out Drawing it small to leave room for detail. The big shape is most of the drawing - use the space.
Check It should fill most of your page, with a margin all round.
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Step 2
Add a triangle at the back for the tail.
The tail starts where the oval ends and opens outward. Make it big - roughly a third of the body - because an undersized tail is the single thing that makes a drawn fish read as a leaf instead.
Watch out Tucking a small tail against the body.
Check The tail should be about a third as long as the body.
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Step 3
Draw a curved line across the front for the gill.
One curve, following the round of the head, about a fifth of the way along the body. It separates head from body and does a surprising amount of work for one stroke.
Watch out Drawing it straight, which flattens the head.
Check It should curve the same way as the front of the oval.
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Step 4
Put the eye near the front, above the middle.
A fish eye sits high and forward - roughly where the gill curve meets the top third of the body. Too low or too far back and the fish stops looking alert.
Watch out Centring the eye in the head, which makes it look like a cartoon.
Check It should sit above the halfway line of the body.
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Step 5
Add the top fin, crossing the body outline.
Let the fin lines start INSIDE the body and cross the outline. That overlap is what makes it look attached rather than stuck on, and it is the whole trick of this lesson.
Watch out Drawing the fin sitting neatly on top of the line without crossing it.
Check The fin should visibly cross the body outline.
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Step 6
Draw the second fin to match the first.
Compare it to the one you just drew rather than to your idea of a fin: same size, same angle, same distance from the centre. This is the comparison habit that fixes proportion everywhere, and a pair is the easiest place to practise it because the error is obvious once you look for it.
Watch out Making the second fin smaller - it usually happens because your hand is more cramped on that side.
Check Both should sit the same distance from the centre line.
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Step 7
Add a small side fin behind the gill.
This one is nearer the viewer, so draw it fully and let it sit over the body rather than being cut by anything. Small and low, just behind the gill curve.
Watch out Making it as big as the top fin.
Check It should be clearly the smallest fin on the fish.
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Step 8
Suggest a few scales near the head only.
Three or four overlapping curves behind the gill is enough - the eye fills in the rest. Covering the whole body in scales turns the fish into a texture and loses the silhouette you worked to get.
Watch out Drawing scales across the entire body.
Check Most of the body should still be empty.
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Step 9
Draw the mouth as a short curve at the front.
A small upward or downward curve right at the point of the oval. Which way it curves sets the whole mood of the fish, so pick one deliberately.
Watch out Drawing a wide open mouth, which reads as a shark.
Check It should be small - shorter than the eye is wide.
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Step 10
Add a couple of bubbles rising from the mouth.
Two or three circles of different sizes, drifting up and slightly apart. They cost nothing and they tell the viewer the fish is underwater without you drawing any water.
Watch out Making them all the same size in a straight line.
Check The bubbles should vary in size and not be in a row.
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Step 11
Go over the lines you want to keep, and lose the guides.
This is the step that turns a construction drawing into a finished one, and it is the one most people skip. Press harder on the outline and the features; leave the small stuff light. That difference in weight is what makes a drawing look deliberate rather than traced, and it costs thirty seconds.
Watch out Going over everything at the same weight, which flattens the drawing back out.
Check The outline should be clearly darker than the smallest details.
What this one actually teaches you
This is an overlap lesson. Overlap is the cheapest depth cue in drawing - it costs one line and works at every skill level - and beginners skip it because arranging shapes side by side feels tidier.
It also drills the single most useful habit on this whole site: draw the big shape first and commit to it, then hang everything else off it.
There is a third thing hiding in here, which is that a drawing is allowed to be finished. A fish takes seven minutes and then it is done, and finishing something is a skill in its own right - the usual reason people stop drawing is not that a picture went badly but that they have a folder full of pictures that never went anywhere. Draw the fish, stop, and look at a finished drawing you made. That is the actual point of the first lesson.
Practise these: Line confidence Proportion Value range
What you need
Anything at all - a finger on a phone, a mouse, or a pencil and the back of an envelope. Keep the first oval light if you are on paper, because you will draw over part of it.
If it's going wrong
If your fish looks like a leaf, the tail is too small. A fish tail is big - often a third of the body length.
If it looks flat, you have not overlapped anything. The fins should sit ON the body, crossing its outline, not floating alongside it.
Draw the oval in one motion. It is the shape people most often build out of six nervous strokes, and it is the shape where that shows most.
Print the steps
Take it away from the screen. The step sheet prints on one page.
Questions people ask
- Why does my fish look like a leaf?
- The tail is too small. A fish tail is often a third of the body length - much bigger than people expect.
- Should the fins overlap the body?
- Yes. Overlap is what makes the fish look solid rather than flat. Let the fin lines cross the body outline.
- How do I draw the scales?
- Suggest a few near the head and stop. Drawing every scale turns the fish into texture and loses the shape.
- Can a child draw this?
- Yes - it is the easiest lesson here, and there is a finish-early button that gives a complete fish in six steps.
- Do I need to draw the water?
- No. A few short curved lines behind the fish are plenty if you want them, and none at all is fine.
- My oval is lopsided.
- Leave it. A lopsided oval becomes a perfectly good fish, and stopping to redraw it is how twenty minutes disappears.
- What should I draw after this?
- The cat. It uses the same block-in habit but adds placing features on a centre line.
- Can I colour it in?
- Of course. Keep one area light and one dark rather than colouring evenly, and it will look far more solid.