How to Draw Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises – tutorial is fun set of instructions

Whales are so similar to fish, especially to the shark family, that it’s very easy to confuse their body traits when drawing. That’s why we need to know them better to draw Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises properly. Follow me in a journey through the world of giant, intelligent, marine mammals???and learn to distinguish them from fish once and for all!

Whale Body Features
Skeleton
Let’s look at a skeleton of a dolphin. It’s going to be similar for all the whales. What can we say about it?

The skull has elongated jaws and a distinctive braincase.
The dorsal fin doesn’t have any bones or rays inside (some dolphins don’t develop this fin).
The spine is similar to other mammals.
The tail is horizontal.
The pectoral fin (flipper) is actually a modified arm, with the same bones as in yours.
The chest with ribs is present.
There’s a remnant of a pelvis, called vestigial pelvis.

Let’s see how a dolphin (1) looks in comparison to a shark (2) and a typical fish (3). A good way to remember it is to imagine dolphins are mammals modified to look more like a fish. So you can see a skeleton of a human, a dog or a cat in your mind, and change it to be more fish-like in look.
What’s also important, whales don’t have gills. They need to breath air, and that’s why they have a blowhole at the top of their heads, in the neck area.

Eyes
The eyes of whales are very simple and we don’t need to draw them in detail. You can draw them as small dark ellipses with other ellipses as the ridges around.

Tail and Flippers
Both flukes (tail fins) and flippers (arm fins) can be drawn with the same method:

Movement
Let’s see how whales move. Since their tail is horizontal, not vertical, they move in a different way than fish.

This tutorial continues with Meet the Whale Family