How to draw a shark – one simple and one cartoon style

We start our shark drawing with the same two arches as we did in our how to draw a fish tutorial.

They both start in the same spot. Then we draw one crossing the other, which will give us a base for a tail.

Just like this.

Next, we add fins and tail. This is what turns our standard fish body into a shark – the shape and placement of the fins. 

First is the top – dorsal – fin. That is the classic shark shape one. Draw it pointy and place it near the middle of the body.

One bottom fin will go across the body, roughly under the dorsal fin. The second one is hidden behind the body – so draw just the part sticking out, a little bit forward from the first fin.

Finally a tail. Shark has kind of a moon-shaped pointy tail – so draw it using our crossed arches for just a reference start and end points.

A few final touch-ups and details: Draw a simple triangle for a mouth. Add a small dot for an eye.  

Next few lines for the gills, just slightly in front of the bottom fin – this is another very shark specific mark. 

Finally, you can sketch two slightly bent lines: one from under the nose to the start of the bottom fin, and a second one from the other side of the fin to the tail. This will help with colouring the shark – that is the line that divides the dark top of the body from the shark’s white belly.

Now for the tracing. Use a soft, thick pencil to go over the lines you want in the finished drawing. Start with the front of the shark. 

Now trace the back half of the shark. Notice that we left out some of the lines on the shark. This is because they were guidelines to draw from, not the actual shape. Using guidelines and then refining them is a great technique, and will especially be useful for when you need to draw something complicated, so you use a more basic shape as your base. 

Now we trace the final parts of the drawing. These are the back fin and the small details: the eye, the gills, and the teeth.

Now that we have finished the outline, we can erase the sketch lines. Don’t worry if you erase a bit of the outline in the process, you can always draw it back. 

The last step in drawing this shark is to colour it in. I used a grey with bits of blue in it to emphasise. Notice that I left the underbelly of the shark plain white. This is because many real sharks have a pale underbelly as well. 

This shark is much more cartoon-looking than the last one, and it shows. This pose is very dynamic and interesting but starts off with a shape that’s a bit more complicated to draw.

It’s made up of three lines. Start with the longest back line and make sure it is curved enough, that once you add the other two lines, the body ends up seriously bulky. We are aiming for a well build muscly shark.

Now to add on the mouth, fins, and tail. Notice that most of the shapes are more rounded and more exaggerated than on the previous shark.

The bottom fin is drawn bit like a human arm with a bulging biceps, rather than just a simple straight fin.

This is part of the cartoon drawing style, which is all about being dynamic through exaggeration. 

Time to add on a few more details. Make sure the other fin doesn’t cross the line of the body (unlike the front one). Doing this will create perception, the illusion of the shark being a 3-D object. 

Although sharks don’t have eyebrows and definitely don’t use them to make expressions, we can put some on ours. Drawing is, after all, about taking what we see and putting our own spin on it.

The way the eyebrow is slanted and touching the eye can show us that the shark is angry and a bit malicious. 

Now we start to trace our shark. Use a thick, soft pencil to do this.  First, we draw the “arm” fin, so we know where it crosses the body. 

Next, the mouth – notice we have rounded off the upper lip a bit, not following the sketch exactly. 

Finally, we draw the dorsal fin and tail. 

You do not need to draw the shark strictly in this order,  but we find it the easiest. 

We continue to trace the rest of the body – back and the tail. Finally, we draw what is showing from the back fin. 

Now we trace the last part of our sketch, the eye.

You might notice that I added gills and teeth without sketching them beforehand. They are very simple shapes, so unless you want to play around with their positioning, you won’t need to draw them beforehand. 

Once we have finished tracing, we can erase the sketch lines to leave a clean, neat outline. Make sure to redraw any parts that you accidentally erase!

Just like before, you can colour in the shark after tracing it. Because this one is much less realistic, we can use less realistic colours as well!

Instead of a grey with bits of blue, we can make this shark pastel blue all over. The grey is still lighter than the blue we have used and makes the eye stand out more than if they were the same colour.

Once you have drawn a basic shark, try changing its expression and adding a bit of scenery!

This shark looks seriously disgusted by his healthy lunch!