How to draw · Challenge · about 50 minutes
Underwater Coral Reef
You need: Paper, Pencil, Eraser. Optional: Colored pencils: blues, coral pink, purple, yellow and orange.
Thick lines: draw these now. Thin gray: already drawn. Dashed: light guides you erase later.
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1. Split your paper into three depths with two light guide lines: the far reef at the back, the middle ground, and the sandy foreground nearest you.
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2. Start with the nearest thing: a branching coral at the bottom left. Each branch splits into two thinner branches, with round tips.
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3. On the right, draw three tube sponges. Each top is an ellipse, because you see the round opening from a little above. Add a smaller ellipse inside each.
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4. Add tall blades of sea grass, two rocks and a starfish with five arms. The second rock is behind the first, so stop its line there.
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5. Draw the edge of the sand: a gentle wavy line on the lower guide. Stop it at the coral, sponges, grass and rocks in front.
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6. Draw a big fish swimming left: a long oval body with a pointed nose, a forked tail, a fin on top and one below, a gill line and an eye.
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7. Draw a small striped fish facing right near the sponges, the same way but smaller. Add a trail of bubbles above the sponges and the starfish.
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8. In the middle ground, draw a brain coral: a dome behind the rocks. Draw wavy grooves that curve around the dome, like lines on a ball: they show its shape.
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9. Behind the coral on the left, draw a sea fan: a short stem that splits again and again into thinner branches, spreading out like a fan.
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10. Far away, draw the back of the reef on the top guide with a few coral bumps and a school of tiny fish. Use thin, light lines: far things look pale under water.
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11. Erase the two guide lines.
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12. Sunlight shines down from the surface. Draw a few beams of light: pairs of long, light lines slanting down from the top, stopping behind the fish.
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13. Light comes from above, so shade the right side of each coral branch and sponge, the dome's shady side and the lower half of each fish: a middle value.
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14. Make the darkest values up close: inside the sponge openings, under the rocks and the shadows on the sand. Far things stay pale; near things get the strongest darks.
Practice here
Tip: Plan where the big fish goes before you draw the middle ground, so it does not get lost behind the coral.