How to Draw an Octopus
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Begin with the body shape.
The body should be symmetrical about its long axis.
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Om denne tegningen
An octopus is one bag and eight questions of where to put things: the head-body is a single soft dome, and every arm is its own S-curve that must taper from shoulder-thick to thread-thin. Vary the eight curls - some reaching, some coiled - or you have drawn a chandelier.
The build is the standard fish one: body oval first, tail second, fins crossing the outline so they attach instead of floating.
Steg for trinn
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Steg 1
Begin with the body shape.
One long oval, drawn fast. Fish bodies are smooth in a way hands are bad at producing slowly, so go round the shape in one continuous motion and keep the best pass.
Pass på A lumpy body built from careful short strokes.
Sjekk The body should be symmetrical about its long axis.
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Steg 2
Draw the tail shape.
The tail is bigger than you think - often a third of the body's length. An undersized tail is the single thing that makes a drawn fish read as a leaf.
Pass på A small tail tucked against the body.
Sjekk The tail should be about a third of the body length.
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Steg 3
Draw the gill cover.
One curve, following the round of the head, roughly a fifth of the way along. It separates head from body and does more work than any other single line on the fish.
Pass på A straight gill line, which flattens the head.
Sjekk The gill curve should bow the same way as the nose.
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Steg 4
Draw the eye above the middle line.
High and forward - roughly where the gill curve meets the top third. Round, dark centre, one highlight. Too low or too far back and the fish stops looking alert.
Pass på Centring the eye in the head.
Sjekk The eye should sit above the body's midline.
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Steg 5
Put the mouth line in.
The mouth sits at the very front, lower than the eye, and it is smaller than instinct says. A short curve is enough - an open grin turns the fish into a cartoon.
Pass på A large smiling mouth.
Sjekk The mouth should be below and forward of the eye.
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Steg 6
Add the dorsal fin over the back.
Start the fin lines INSIDE the body so they cross the outline. That overlap is what attaches the fin - drawn outside the line it floats like a flag.
Pass på A fin sitting on the outline without crossing it.
Sjekk Fin lines should visibly cross the body outline.
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Steg 7
Add the bottom fin to match.
Compare it to the top fin, not to your idea of a fin: position, rake and size all read against the one you already drew.
Pass på A bottom fin that mirrors the top exactly - they rarely match in nature.
Sjekk The two fins should differ, deliberately.
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Steg 8
Add the side fin.
The pectoral fin is the smallest and it sits just behind the gill curve, angled back. It is the one nearest the viewer, so it draws over the body.
Pass på Making the side fin as big as the others.
Sjekk It should be clearly the smallest fin.
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Steg 9
Add a hint of the pattern.
Suggest, never itemise. A handful of marks near the head lets the eye tile the rest of the body; drawing every scale turns the fish into a texture swatch.
Pass på Covering the whole body in scales.
Sjekk Most of the body should still be empty.
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Steg 10
Draw the octopus markings.
Species markings follow the body's curve and fade toward the belly. Put them on deliberately - they are the difference between a fish and this fish.
Pass på Markings drawn flat across a curved body.
Sjekk Stripes or patches should bend with the form.
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Steg 11
Shade so the body reads as a cylinder.
The underside is darker - light comes from above, even underwater in a drawing. One soft band of tone along the belly makes the whole fish read as round.
Pass på Even tone everywhere, which flattens the body.
Sjekk The belly should be clearly darker than the back.
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Steg 12
Put the octopus in water - bubbles and a ripple or two.
Three bubbles of different sizes rising off the mouth and two long ripple lines are the entire ocean - more reads as boiling. The bubbles shrink as they rise, and the ripples drift horizontal, which is what places the octopus in water instead of in white space.
Pass på A column of same-size bubbles, or ripples that wave like flags.
Sjekk The bubbles should get smaller as they rise.
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Steg 13
Press harder on what stays, remove what does not.
Darken the silhouette and the tail, keep pattern marks light, erase the construction oval. Weight contrast finishes the drawing.
Pass på Every line at the same weight.
Sjekk The outline should dominate when you squint.
Hvordan det ser ut som ferdig
Den samme tegningen med alle styrelinjer slettet og bare linjene du skulle beholde, med den vekt du mente de skulle være. Hvis dine fortsatt har midtlinjer og blokkering i former, så er dette det steget du ikke har gjort ennå – og det tar omtrent 30 sekunder.
Din vil ikke se slik ut, og det er ikke meningen. Dette er konstruksjonen med stillassene tatt bort, ikke en tegning noen laget til å bli beundret – poenget er å vise deg hvilke av linjene dine som er veiledninger.
Hva dette faktisk lærer deg
This is an overlap lesson: every fin attaches by crossing the body outline, and the drawing works exactly to the degree you commit to that.
The octopus teaches the tapering S at volume: eight related but individual curves, each drawn root-to-tip in one or two strokes, each overlapping its neighbours believably. It is a page of line-quality practice disguised as an animal.
Øv på følgende: Line confidence Proportion Value range
Hva du trenger
A pencil, kept light until the last step, and an eraser you will actually use. The construction is deliberately drawn to be removed.
Hvis det går galt
If the arms look like spaghetti, they do not taper. Each arm starts as wide as your thumb against the body and ends at nothing - the taper IS the arm.
If it reads as a spider, the arms all leave from under the body at once. Stagger the roots around the dome's lower edge, and let two arms disappear behind it.
If it looks lifeless, all eight arms curl the same way. Give every arm a different job: one reaching, one coiling, one trailing - no two matching.
Skriv ut trinnene
Ta den bort fra skjermen. Stegarket skriver ut på én side.
Spørsmål folk stiller
- How do I draw octopus arms so they look natural?
- One S-curve per arm, drawn from the body outward, tapering the whole way, and no two arms doing the same thing. Draw the two front arms fully, let the rest overlap and hide - visible roots for eight arms reads as a diagram.
- Do I need to draw all the suckers?
- Only a run of six or eight along the one or two arms nearest the viewer, shrinking as the arm thins. Suckers everywhere flatten the drawing into a pattern.
- Where do the eyes go on an octopus?
- Low on the dome, at the sides, where the head-bag meets the arms - not up top where a face wants to be. The low-set eye is what makes it look like an octopus instead of a balloon with legs.
- How do I start drawing an octopus?
- One body oval, drawn fast in one motion, then the tail before any detail. Everything else - fins, gill, eye - attaches to that oval by overlapping it, which is what keeps the parts reading as one animal.
- How big should the tail be on an octopus?
- Bigger than feels right - about a third of the body length. An undersized tail is what makes a drawn fish read as a leaf.
- Do I have to draw all the scales on an octopus?
- No, and you should not. A few marks near the head let the eye tile the rest of the body on its own; drawing every scale turns the animal into a texture swatch and loses the big shape you built first.
- Can a beginner draw an octopus?
- Yes - it is one oval, a triangle and some overlapping fins, with a finish-early step marked partway through.
- Why do the fins on my octopus look stuck on?
- They are not crossing the body outline. Start each fin line inside the body so it visibly overlaps the oval - that overlap is the attachment, and it is the single trick this whole family of lessons keeps reusing.