Let’s make your original cartoon fish drawing. You've probably seen
some cartoon movies where the fish would be a hero, like Finding Nemo…or
maybe the Japanese recent hit movie Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea. (in
Japanese: “Iwa No Ue No Ponyo”)
The cartoon fish I drew here is a made up fantasy. I Googled a couple of images on the Internet and find some inspirations.
Yes, you’re right the colors are similar to Nemo. This fish is a girl.
I don’t know why I just made this fish a girl.
Feminine features on the fish’s face are the lips and the eyes.
Also the fins, but I shall explain about the fins during the process of drawing.
Any
type of fish is suitable to make it a cartoon. But I think that one of
the best themes to choose for cartoon fish drawing is a tropical fish.
You can play more with the shapes and colors. Your own fantasy is the limit.
You are going to love this!
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We are going to draw together this fish. It may look a bit complicated at first.
But
you should know me well enough by now that every - even seemingly
complicated drawing - turns out to be very simple and easy - as always.
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The original tropical fish body contours were like this. Prolonged head and mouth is maybe the most distinct feature.
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Outline
the fins and correct the tail a little, because it was a bit unbalanced
on previous sketch. The eye is originally this small.
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Real
cartoon fish drawing transformation from a tropical fish body contour
into a cartoonish starts maybe here. Notice that almost every cartoon
character has big eyes.
Especially females and it applies also for animal cartoon characters.
So draw larger eye(s). Since this fish is a female fish, one of the best ways to express the gender is through the eye(s).
Draw the mouth. The mouth should be a little opened and smiling because that is a very friendly look.
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Tropical
fishes have such fantastic body colors and designs. I love these
because you can play with it as you wish and you virtually cannot make a
mistake.
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Mark out the fins so they look like real fins. You can make the edges a little jagged if you want.
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By sharper pencil lines outline the final body contours including all fins.
Now I want to ask for your opinion. Don’t you think that these jagged fins look a bit too rough? Or maybe even a bit aggressive for this little fish girl?
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Well, in my opinion these rounded edges of the fins look much softer and peaceful. More feminine-like. What do you think?
So choose which type of fins you like and let’s continue your cartoon fish drawing.
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Erase all excess pencil lines. Now, with a simple pencil line draw the final outline contour of the fish.
Prepare your color pencils and we are going to draw the rest of this picture in color.
Begin
with the black pencil and draw the borders of the pattern on the fish’s
body. Leave a narrow border-space on the outer part of the fins.
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Draw
the eye. Remember to leave a small shiny dot on the eye white. That is a
reflection of light and it will make your eye drawing look more
realistic.
If you encounter some difficulty with drawing of the fish’s eye, maybe you need a small memory refreshing on how to draw manga eyes.
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We are going to make this cartoon fish drawing in two colors. Red and White.
Begin
to draw the red part first. I draw it by orange-toned-red pencil as the
basic color. This red color tone includes some yellow too.
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When
you are ready, it should look something like this. As you see, this red
is not so suitable and not so nice as the final top cover color.
Erase - clean the white parts on the body in order to get rid of the rest of graphite dust.
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With more deep and darker red pencil, fill the red part over the previous layer.
Paint
the eyelid stronger and mark out the lips. This is a girl-fish. Another
distinctive feature for cartoon girls is eyelashes. So draw a couple of
longer curled eyelashes.
click the image to enlarge
Fish
like this swims in a sea, in a clean blue seawater. It means that the
white part on the fish’s body will be slightly blue. That is a
reflection of seawater.
Take a light blue pencil and very gently color the white part blue. By darker blue pencil, draw markings of scales. The scales are better visible on the white part.
With blue pencil, fill out the space around the fish so it will look like a water.
Use
your fantasy. If you are not sure, make some test drawings and
colorings on a separate paper so that you won’t destroy your original
cartoon fish drawing.
