how to draw a piranha

Learn how to draw a piranha using this simple drawing lesson featuring a cute cartoon animal. I will show you a few basic tips to create nice textures and effects to enhance the illustration. Drawing the character itself is not a difficult challenge, but adding these special effects can be tricky. Ready? Let's proceed with the first step of this drawing tutorial.

adding a few basic shapes to begin with

First, draw a large oval shape to form the body of the fish. Then, draw a large triangle on the right of the illustration to form the caudal fin. Add two more fins using another short triangle and an irregular rectangle.

drawing the piranha using curved iines

Now that we have a template to guide us, it's time to draw the creature using short curved lines. Notice how all fins are made from several curved lines and are pointed near the end. The bottom lip is longer than the top one and the forehead is higher than the back of the cartoon piranha.

Let's create more details

The eye and the pupil are made from large circles. A strong eyebrow is added above the eye. Teeth are made from short triangles and fins are covered with short pointed lines. Great job! We are done drawing the character. It's now time to add colors and make this one visually more appealing.

Adding simple plain colors

The cartoon piranha is filled with a mix of blue colors and warm ones. First, you can add a bright blue color inside the body of the fish. All three fins are darker. Then, you can make the pupil red. The eye is colored in yellow. For now, all teeth are white.

Playing with gradient colors

Adding a second color to all shapes can be a good idea to create more depth. For instance, you can see inside the illustration below that the bottom of the pupil is darker than the top. Repeat the same technique on all shapes of the cartoon piranha.

drawing strong shadows

Learning how to draw a piranha that looks cool and appealing also means drawing additional shadows to make the image visually more interesting. In this case, all you need to do is draw new shapes (with temporary pink lines below) and make these new elements slightly transparent.

You can add shadows around the eye, on all teeth, on both bottom fins and on the jaw. You can also add a simple texture made from circles using the same process as the one described above.

more highlights to create even more volume

This lesson on how to draw a piranha is almost done. We need to go through two additional steps. First, create new shapes colored in white to form reflections and highlights on the cartoon piranha. These new shapes must also be partially transparent. We can see all new shapes below with the temporary pink outlines.

creating a simple pattern (a nice and subtle texture)

The second thing missing in this illustration is a simple pattern to create texture. This pattern is made from several small diamonds that are colored in white and also partially transparent. This texture is only applied on the body of the piranha.

Good work learning how to draw a piranha

Below you can see the final result once all textures are applied. This cartoon piranha looks pretty cool and once you are familiar with all steps, it's really not a complicated cartoon animal to illustrate.

Below you can see all steps required to draw this great predator. Have fun adding new features, new patterns, new textures and new colors to this amazing animal. You can try more cartoon animals from this series here. Don't forget to practice as often as possible and happy drawing! :)

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