How to Draw a Watercolor Dolphin
Dolphins are so funny and loved by children as they are incredibly intelligent and friendly animals, so if you love them like us, then this simple drawing tutorial is perfect for you. Dolphin is quite easy to draw, especially in the cartoon style, our artists used six-step in this tutorial. In this easy-to-follow tutorial, I am going to show you how you can paint and color a realistic dolphin in only six steps-perfect for kids and beginner artists.
List of Supplies:
- 72 Colors Professional Artist Watercolor Drawing Pencils
- 30 Assorted Colors Watercolor Paint Set With Tin Box
- 15 Pcs High Quality Nylon Hair Paintbrush With Birch Handle
Step 1. Draw an oval shape
Dolphins have thick, round heads, and a big smooth tail, so we are going to draw a elliptical shape at first.
Step 2. Add smaller oval shapes and triangles set the fins and tail
For the step in this Dolphin drawing tutorial, we are going to add a few lines to give a little bit more of a body. Starting by drawing a small ellipse as the mouth of the dolphin, then drawing the line defining the curve of a cartoon dolphin under the belly region. I paint an angle on the original oval which becomes the dorsal fin of the dolphin, and then I add two more ovals down along the lower portion of the dolphins' body to represent fins. The isosceles triangle was added as dolphin’s tail.
Step 3. Add some lines to refine the shapes and smooth the outlines
The outline for your dolphin drawing is nearly completed, just a few more lines are needed for it to finish. You can add some lines to on dolphin’s face and draw a bean-shape as the eye, smooth the outline of mouth and head. Then we begin adding a dorsal fin to the back of the dolphin, and add two more fins to the body of the dolphin to make arms. Split the initial isosceles triangle into two smaller triangle-shaped tails. Then you almost finished the easy dolphin sketch.
Step 4. Coloring the base and deepening the fins appropriately
It’ s time to add colors! There are tons of cool ways you can paint dolphins, but for the purposes of this step by step tutorial, we are going to be using blue paint as the main tone. I will intentionally paint unevenly to create a more natural and airy effect.
Step 5. Add dark purple to the fins and tail of dolphin as shadows
In order to add more layers to the dolphin, we can use purple color to paint the upper head and fins. You can also outline the dolphin's flanks in purple. For the tails, deep purple would be more appropriate. Purple could be mixed well with blue and create a smudged effect.
To complete your drawing, you can add some details on the belly region, as well as the mouth and gills areas. Let’s use a deep blue to draw the gills and make a color transition from blue to purple. Finally, time to color our dolphin's eyes by using deep gray colors, and outline the dolphin's smile lines with the same shade. After that, you can adjust other details until you feel comfortable.
If you enjoyed this simple dolphin drawing tutorial, please make sure you tell us what else you want the tutorial to cover in the comments. This should be very interesting, because you will have fun being creative and let your imagination go free while coloring in your awesome & cute dolphin drawings.
Thank you so much for this tutorial!