How to Draw a Shark in 8 Steps

by easydrawingtips

This tutorial shows how to draw a great white shark. It consists of eight easy to follow steps with clear illustrated examples.

The focus of the tutorial is on showing how to creating a realistic looking line drawing of a great white shark. It demonstrates how to add the animal’s various parts one at a time or in sets throughout the steps.

Overall, this is a fairly simple drawing guide that can be great if you are a beginner looking to try your hand at some fine art.

Start the drawing in pencil as you will need to erase some of the lines in a few of the steps. Also, try and keep your lines fairly light to make it easier to do so. You can darken them once you’ve defined all parts of the shark.

Step 1 – Draw the Shark’s Body

Begin the drawing with the outline of the largest part of the shark, it’s main body. Make this wider in the middle and narrower towards the front and back. Draw the front of the outline to be fairly pointy but still slightly rounded. Give the body a fairly long area towards the back that gets narrower gradually as it progresses towards the tail. Leave the very back of the outline open.

Step 2 – Draw the Tail Fin

Onto the opening in the previous outline draw the tail. Make it’s overall shape similar to a crescent moon but draw the upper part larger than the lower. Similar to the front of the shark draw the outer tips of the tail to be slightly rounded. Also, give the tail a small “bump” just a little bit below it’s top end. This is called the subterminal tip and helps the shark maneuver.

Step 3 – Draw the Mouth

Near the front of the body define the shark’s mouth. If you’ve been drawing as in the examples, you will need to erase a little bit of the body’s main outline when adding it.

Draw the mouth slightly open and with a downwards curve to it’s overall shape.

Step 4 – Draw the Back & Side Fins

Outline the largest fins. You can start with the one on top (the back fin). This fin is particularly characteristic of such an animal, although, dolphins also have similar fins.

For drawing a dolphin see:

How to Draw a Dolphin Step by Step

Draw the shark’s top fin curving backwards and getting narrower as it goes out (once gain ending with a slightly rounded tip). Also, give the fin a little notch at the bottom of it’s back end.

Next, draw the fins on the sides of the body. Make their overall shapes similar to the top fin but draw them to be slightly narrower. When adding the one at the front, you will again, need to erase a little bit of the body’s outline. The one in the back is partially hidden behind the body and the foreground fin.

Step 5 – Draw the Small Fins

Draw the smaller fins near the back of the shark. Make these much wider in relation to their height than the previous set.

Step 6 – Draw the Face (Eye & Nose)

Draw the shark’s eye and nose. Make the eye round and indicate the nose with a little curve. Position the eye near slightly closer to the upper part of the head (than the bottom). Draw the nose closer to the bottom of the head roughly halfway between it’s front tip and the eye.

After you’ve outlined the eye and added the nose, make sure your drawing looks good and shade the eye leaving a few white reflections inside it. You can also trace over your lines to darken them.

Above is a larger illustration of the head so that you can see the detail of the eye’s details.

Step 7 – Draw the Gills

Draw the gills starting from the bottom of the side fin and going towards the head. First, define these with a series of very light curved (barely visible). Next, go over these with darker somewhat wobbly lines with breaks in some of them (like those in the example). A shark’s gill are generally somewhat uneven with parts of them being more closed off and parts more open. The wobbly broken up lines will help convey this.

Step 8 – Draw the Line of Demarcation

For the final part of the drawing add the demarcation line running all the way from the front of the shark towards the tail. This line will show the separation of the shark’s lighter belly from it’s darker sides and back.

Similar to the gills, first define this area with a very light solid line. Next using this as a guide draw some broken up thin line segments running along it.

Segmenting the line will will help convey that it’s not defining an actual solid part of the body but simply a split between the shark’s colors.

Although this tutorial does not actually go into coloring the shark, usually, the animal’s the belly would be yellow and the back grey. Such colors are a part of the it’s natural camouflage so that when being looked at from below the shark mergers with the lighter sun and sky above and when being looked at from above it mergers with the darker seabed below.

Conclusion

This tutorial show how to make a realistic line drawing of a shark using a step by step breakdown for adding the various part’s of it’s body. As with most guides here on easydrawingtips.com, it illustrates an approach of (generally) working from the larger parts of your subject down to the smaller details.

If you like these kinds of easy to follow step by step drawing tutorials, you might also like the following: