How to Draw a Mermaid: Step by Step

Start with a circle for the head, and a face cross to help us place the facial features.

Then, a little way down from the circle-head, add the mermaid’s body. This will be made from two lines – a “C” shaped curve at the top – starting from the shoulder down to the waist. Complete the body with a lower “S” curve – bent in the back and curved at the waist.

Add the chin to the face. Add a “bump” that goes slightly into the head circle at eye level. Extend the round head with a curve on each side to form the chin.

Now, start sketching the tail. First, draw the outer “S” shaped curve at the bottom, starting from the waist. Notice how the “top” curve of our “S” is much larger than the bottom one. Next, add a flipped “C” curve that starts near the middle of the first “S” curve, covers up a bit of the body, and joins up to form a nice mermaid’s tail!

Let’s learn how to draw a mermaid’s tail. This is a pretty simple step since all we’re doing is drawing a bunch of “S” curves. The trick is to make some curved and some flat.

Draw the lower more bent “S” curves first. These start at the tip of the tail and extend out to the sides in a nice flowing stroke.

Then, complete the tail fin with two more flatter “S” curves. These start a bit above the tail tip and connect at the fin tips.

That was a pretty easy way to draw a mermaid’s tail, wasn’t it?

Here we mark out the positions of the eyes with two large ovals, sitting on the horizontal face line.

Add the smiling mouth – drawn as a small triangle.

Next, mark out the position of the shell bra with two circles on the chest.

Sketch the hair by drawing lots of bouncy curves! It is hard to describe in detail, but we are drawing long, flowing hair that dances around like sea waves.

Notice the tricks used to add volume to the mermaid’s hair: The front curls starting at the forehead fringe, that go in front of the shoulder on one side and behind the shoulder on other. Then we add another layer of hair using the outer outline.

Here we add few smaller details, starting with the face.

We improve the eyes shapes by changing the bottom of the oval to a flatter line. Then add two smaller inner ovals for the irises and pupils.

Add a short line to the middle of the face for the nose, and a curve to the mouth for the tongue.

Then, add three V-shaped stripes to the chest-circles – these mark the shells’ ridges and will help us draw the shell bra.

Lastly, add fingers to the hands. Draw a line about halfway down the oval, then add three straight lines to each hand, to separate the fingers. Add small, curved bumps at the bottom of the hands for the thumbs.

Next we draw a shell for our mermaid to sit on.

Start drawing the shell from the middle segment- draw two curved down lines from under our mermaid’s tail, and connect them with the short bottom edge. Then, draw the next segments, one on each side. This time you just need a single longer down-curve for each part, closed by the short bottom edge. Repeat for the third time for the last outer shell segments.

This is very similar to adding the ribs to the pumpkin in our how to draw a pumpkin tutorial. Check that out if you want a bit more of an explanation on how to build up your shell.

Again, simply outline what’s on your sketch.

Outline the eyes. Notice we have not closed the inner bottom corners of the eyes completely.

Then draw out the nose, mouth and chin.

Here is where we start improving on our sketch.

First, draw out the shell bra. Draw out the sketched ridges. Then add the curls at the top between them and round off the outer lower part.

Draw the waistline, where the tail meets the body, with some little curves to indicate scales. Do not forget the important little detail – add a dot for a bellybutton!

And then, simply trace over the remaining parts of the tail and body.

Outline the tail sketch with nice smooth curves.

We’re almost finished drawing the mermaid!

Outline the shell, making sure to leave out the bits that are hidden by the tail.

And another improvement to the sketch: Add a wavy bit at the bottom. This is where the flesh of the mollusc within the shell is showing!

And as usual, we can always improve our drawing by adding a few extra details. We start by colouring the pupils, leaving a little white spot blank to indicate a shine.

Next, we add some wiggly lines to the tail to indicate scales.

Then, we add wavy lines to the tail fins.

And finally, we brighten up our mermaid with some water bubbles in the background.

As usual, we like to finish our drawing off with some colour pencils.

We’ve made our mermaid’s hair, eyes, bra, and tail a few different shades of ocean green.

Our clam is purple, with a pink lining. The water is, of course, blue, with the bubbles floating around coloured in a light blue to make them stand out.

Now you know how to draw a mermaid. How did you colour your mermaid in?