Hiyas and welcome to my dolphin tutorial page! Dolphins are challenging but fun to draw. As when drawing any animal, it is necessary to know and understand the different facets of behavior and personality of dolphins to better express its individual features.
If possible, observe these animals in the wild or even at a marine park. However, since I know how difficult that is, do your best to watch them on TV (no not flipper!) and acquire as many photos of then as possible for reference.
In the following pages, I will demonstrate simple steps of how to draw various views and poses of the bottle nose dolphin, the best known of the dolphin species. I will present side view, front view, three-quarters view, head shots, various tips and notes to help when drawing any dolphin, stylized and abstract dolphins, caricatures, different sketches of dolphins and how to draw some of the different phin charas of the Ecco games. After that, I will give a step-by-step demonstration of how to color a dolphin with Prisma colors on white and on tinted pastel paper.
So ya wanna draw dolfinx, huh? All right. Here I have different tutorials, tips, notes, and different styles from which you can learn from.
- Drawing the Dolphin in 6 easy Steps (side view)
- Drawing The Head of a Dolphin (side view)
- Drawing the Head of a Dolphin (front view)
When drawing the head of a dolphin facing directly toward the reader, the principles of foreshortening come into play, making this view one of the most difficult to portray. In the following steps, I attempted to simplify the procedure.
Step 1
Draw a circle and divide it roughly into quarters. Sketch lightly!!! The horizontal line will be your eye-line.
Step 2
In Step 2, draw another guideline just below the horizontal line already in place, shown here in red. This line will serve as the mouth. On your original horizontal guideline, divide each half into thirds. Draw a small oval where the vertical and mouth guidelines cross and make it as wide as the inner 1/3 marks. Place the eyes at just outside of the outermost tic marks.
Step 3
Okay now it's going to get a little difficult. To draw the mouth, begin by drawing an arc that stretches from the innermost tic marks as shown. Then draw the rest of the "smile" as if completing a very flat "W". I also began to draw in a few form lines to define the melon and eye groove that parallels the mouth.
Step 4
Erase your guidelines and add details. To really make this view work it must be shaded to create the illusion of depth. Many dolphins tend to have stripes on their forehead. When defining the final structure of the head, remember that there is a slight bulge above each eye for the delphine equivalent of an eyebrow.
