How To Paint A Koi Fish: A Step By Step Guide

Learn more about Koi fish with an easy step-by-step How to Paint a Koi Fish Tutorial and Koi Fish Coloring Page.

A tutorial for learning how to paint a Koi Fish has a lot to offer young students. The view from overhead keeps the shapes really simple and graceful. As a watercolor resist, there’s the fun of adding white crayon lines for bubbles (always fun when they appear!) and the blue and orange combination just make the fish pop off the page.

Koi fish are an ornamental species that descend from the carp family. Chinese were farming carp in rice paddies, a practice that traveled to Japan. The Japanese noticed odd color variations in some of the carp and bred them, creating the koi species. Koi used to only be found in red, white, black and blue, but have since been bred in different combinations of all the colors in the rainbow. Today, the most popular tend to be the lovely orange, white and yellow fish.

Getting Started with Drawing Guides

The best way to get students off to a good start to any drawing lesson is to show them how to use guides as a reference point.

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You may have noticed that all of the tutorials on this site have a dashed line running through the center of each step, both in the horizontal and vertical direction. If students make their own centered lines on their own paper, before drawing, they will have an easy reference to follow.

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For instance, as seen in Step 1 below, the teardrop shape needs to be sitting on the left half of the paper, and closer to the top than the bottom. It’s important to sketch that shape big enough and high enough on the sheet of paper so that there’s room for the larger fish on the right. When beginners get their drawing off to a good start, there’s a better chance of them feeling successful by the time they are done.

So how do students get their lines on their paper? Folding is not recommended for watercolors because it will leave creases, not to mention make the thick paper harder to work with. Instead, it’s recommended that teachers of young students find a quick way to add the lines in pencil before hand. Older ones that can measure and draw on their own can make the lines themselves. Just be sure to emphasis these lines must be drawn lightly, so they can get erased before painting.