How to Draw a Happy Whale: Step-by-step Drawing Tutorial

This kawaii whale is very easy to draw. It’s basically a simple circle shape, except it has a triangular shape for a tail, and a some friendly fish floating by. 🙂

Drawing Tips

Use the vertical and horizontal guide lines to help you place the drawing elements.

For example, notice how the tail takes up exactly one quarter of the circle. This is also a cool trick to remember how to draw this whale later.

Colouring Tips

I coloured this drawing using Copic markers. I tried many different colouring options, including watercolours and coloured pencils. But in the end I decided to go with alcohol-based markers (Copics in this case).

Why did I choose Copics?

My first choice was watercolour… I did 4 versions in watercolour (and ruined 4 pieces of very expensive watercolour paper!). It just didn’t work. Watercolour likes to blend and flow. It does NOT like to lay flat.

That’s when I realised that the whole nature of kawaii is that it looks flat and simplified. It doesn’t work with colour gradations of watercolour. At least not in the way I use it inside a thick solid outline.

Same thing happened with coloured pencils. It’s very hard to create a flat tone with coloured pencils. And it takes a long time.

So in the end I decided to go with Copic markers.

Now I understand why EVERYONE uses them. 😉

This was my first play with the Copic markers. I think I will use them again for my next tutorial.

Share the Love

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Let’s inspire each other!