How to Draw a Fish Using Simple Shapes (2024)

Drawing a fish is easy. We will begin our drawing with two arches. They both start in the same spot. Then we draw one crossing the other. Just like this.

Look, we can already tell this is going to be a fish!

Now draw a curve, which will mark out the head – that is where the fish has gills.

Next let’s add the fins. A long one on the top – that is the dorsal fin. Then two fins on the belly. The larger front one goes over the body. The smaller back one sits on the edge of the body.

Finally, close the fish tail with another arc.

Now let’s trace our fish sketch.

Grab a soft pencil or a black colouring pencil and trace the drawing. We want a nice, thick line, so draw a bit harder with your pencil, so we can use an eraser to clean up the sketch lines later.

Let’s add a few more details. Draw lots of small half circles for scales – and our fish has become a carp!

Then few lines on the gills, to make them look better.

Now it is time to grab your eraser and clean up the sketching.

Go lightly over the visible sketch lines and erase them. Do not worry if you happen to erase a bit of the outline – you can always draw it back!

Now you know how to draw a fish – and this one turned out to be a carp!

The final step is to colour in your fish.

We have decided that our carp will be green – some darker green for the body, and a lighter shade of green for the fins.

And for some fun, let’s paint that sweet heart mouth a pretty pink. And add some bubbles too! Because we can.

So let’s grab a pencil and get into it. We will start our drawing with two arches, similar to last time. Again they both start in the same spot, but this time we draw our lines only slightly curved. That way we get a thin, long body.

Just like before, crossing our lines one over the other creates the tail.

Even the second step is same as before:

Draw a curve, which will mark out the head. Do a dot for the eye.

Add the fins. One long dorsal fin on the top, and two fins on the belly, the larger one in the front and the smaller one in the back. This time we will draw both belly fins going over the body.

Do not forget to close the fish tail.

Time to grab your soft pencil for the outline.

Start tracing the belly fins first. That way you will know where to split the line for the belly, so our fins look like they are on the top.

Then trace the rest of the fish and the top fin.

As you can see, we gave our mackerel a bit of a cartoon face, by drawing a simple nose and mouth and adding two dots for eyes.

Complete the drawing with a few lines in each fin for more detail and we are done.

Let’s colour it in – mackerels are silvery, with a bit of blue for the colour.

And since we gave our fish a friendly cartoon face, we can also give it a crazy blue head.

Let’s start our sketch with two triangles. The first, large one will be the body. The second small one will be the tail.

Place the tail triangle in the middle of the straight body line, slightly overlapping the body – same as in the picture.

Next we will give our fish eyes and a mouth.

First we will draw an angled line to mark out our head. As you will see, we will not use it in the final drawing, but at this stage it helps us to place the eyes properly.

Staying with the triangle theme, let’s draw a triangle mouth at the pointy end of the body next.

Two triangle eyes sit on the upper side of the body, roughly half way up the head. (See how the head line is coming in handy?)

Now comes the fun part. Let’s draw the outline of our angelfish.Start with the mouth, followed by the inner eye. Next the line between the eye and mouth. Now you can add the second eye, which is partially hidden.

After that do the body. Start with the top and bottom straight line. Easy!

Now for the tricky part. As you can see, we have only used the sketch as a guideline. Draw a smooth curve from the top of the fin down and then turn tightly across into the tail curve. Same trick from the tip of the lower fin. Well done!

All that is left is to close the tail with another arc, so it has a nice pointy tips.

The final lines go from the tip of the top and bottom fins to the tail. These more or less follow our original triangle line, although we have bent them slightly as well.

Time to make our tropical fish pretty!

I really liked the striped version of the angelfish. Look up “pterophyllum altum angelfish”, if you want to see what the real fish looks like.

Our version is simplified into a cartoon – so we can make the stripes look like a pretty hair. That is called an “artistic license” – when we are drawing, we can draw what we want.

Finally, add some texture lines to the fins and tail.

And here is what our drawing looks like after we have cleaned up the sketch lines with an eraser.

A good looking tri-angle-angel fish, I say.

Let’s colour in our fish.

Tropical fish can be very brightly coloured. So here I have painted mine a shiny yellow with pink fins.

What colour is yours going to be?

Oh, and did you notice? I have not coloured the body in completely. I have left a white patch in the middle. That way it looks like there is a light reflecting on our fish, so it is not looking flat. Nice simple trick, isn’t it?

Our starting sketch is very easy – just a one large circle.

This will be the body of our puffer fish.

Next we draw our fish a face. Let’s draw some more circles.

One for the mouth, with another small one a bit off center on the inside.

Two more above the mouth, for eyes. Draw them close together, even touching each other.

Then add two dots into the eyes – that will make your fish look somewhere. My fish is looking down – so I have drawn my dots on the bottom of the eyes.

Then add fins and a tail. These are the same simple two arc fins and a triangle tail we have used for our first fish drawing.

When the puffer fish gets scared, it puffs up with lots of spikes sticking around to protect it. Let’s draw those spikes!

We draw a simple two sides of a triangle for a spike. And we want to draw about two circles full of spikes.

The trick is not to space the spikes too regularly along the circle. Draw some sticking a bit more out, and some tucked a bit more in.

Something like this.

That is good enough for our sketch. Let’s take our thick pencil (or black colouring pencil) and draw the puffer fish properly.

First trace the eyes and mouth.

Then all the spikes you have drawn.

As you can see, I have not traced my spikes exactly from the sketch. Rather, I have tried to place them bit more random yet again.

That is still allowed! That is what the sketching and tracing is for!

Now we have all of our spikes drawn, let’s trace the outline of the body.

We trace only the parts between the spikes – that way they stick out properly.

Once we are done with the body, trace the fins and tail from the sketch.

As usual, we can not skip adding the little details that make our drawing look that extra bit better.

So let’s add some texture lines to fins and tail.

And since this is a cartoon fish, let’s draw few arcs above the eyes. Now our puffer fish is really surprised with the way it puffed up!

Our drawing is complete. Time to clean up and erase the sketch.

And now we know how to draw a fish from circles. What a surprised-looking puffer fish!

For the final step, you can colour your puffer fish.

Again, these come in many different colours, and I have decided to make mine a nice blue.

Do not forget the trick with not colouring the body entirely. If you leave out a round white patch, it will make our flat drawing pop into a puffed up ball. There! Done.