How to draw a jellyfish — easy step by step drawing ideas

If you need jellyfish drawing ideas that work on the very first try, this is the tutorial I always reach for. A jellyfish is one of the kindest animals in the whole animal kingdom to draw, because there is no skeleton to get wrong, no legs to line up, and no face that has to look like a particular species. It is a dome, a wobbly edge, a smile, and some ribbons — and every single wobble you accidentally put in makes it look more like a jellyfish, not less.

That forgiveness is exactly why I love teaching it. In a workshop last spring I had a little girl who had spent twenty minutes getting increasingly upset with a horse, erasing the legs over and over until the paper went grey and furry. We put the horse aside and drew a jellyfish instead. Four minutes later she had a whole page of them, floating at different heights, each with a slightly different smile, and she named every one of them. The horse came back the following week and went much better.

In this tutorial we will build our jellyfish in six easy steps, matching the practice sheet below. I will share the pro tips I actually use with beginners, the small handful of mistakes that catch people out, and quick fixes for a drawing that has gone sideways. Grab a pencil and the pinkest, most purple things in your crayon box, and let us go underwater.

The 6 steps to easy jellyfish drawing ideas

Step 1 — Draw the dome bell

Start with a rounded dome shape near the top of your paper — imagine an upside-down bowl, or the top half of an egg. Draw it lightly, because this dome is the jellyfish's bell and it sets the scale for everything else. About the width of your palm makes a comfortable, colorable size.

Place it high on the page rather than in the middle. Jellyfish tentacles are long, and the most common planning mistake is starting in the center and running out of paper before the ribbons have had room to drift. Leave the bottom two thirds of the page empty and you will thank yourself in step five.

Step 2 — Add the wavy bottom rim

Now close the bottom of the dome — but not with a straight line. Draw a gentle wave that goes down, up, down, up across the opening, like a soft scalloped edge or the bottom of a lampshade. Three or four bumps is plenty. This single wavy line is what turns a plain dome into an unmistakable jellyfish.

Keep the waves shallow and rounded. Deep spiky zigzags read as a crown or a saw blade, while soft shallow bumps read as something squishy floating in water. If you are unsure, make the bumps about as tall as your pencil is wide.

Step 3 — Draw the happy face

Add two big round eyes in the lower half of the bell, spaced roughly one eye-width apart. Fill them in dark but leave a small white dot in each one for the shine — that pair of specks is doing more work than anything else on the page, because it is what makes the jellyfish look awake and friendly rather than blank.

Underneath and between the eyes, draw a small curved smile. Keep it modest: a tiny upward curve is far cuter than a big open grin, and a small mouth leaves room for the blush cheeks that come next. If your artist wants an open mouth, a small rounded shape works better than a wide one.

Placement matters more than size here. Eyes set low in the bell, closer to the wavy rim than to the top of the dome, make the jellyfish look sweet and baby-like. Eyes set high make it look tall and a little stern, which is a fun variation but not the look we are going for today.

Step 4 — Add cheeks and shine marks

Draw two small circles just outside the eyes, level with the smile — these are the blush cheeks, and they will get a soft pink fill at coloring time. Keep them fully round and do not outline them too darkly; a light circle you can color inside works better than a heavy ring.

Then, up on the top curve of the bell, add two little oval shine highlights, tilted at a slight angle and sitting near each other. These are the shapes you will leave white when you color. They suggest that the jellyfish's body is glossy and translucent, which is the one detail that makes a flat cartoon shape suddenly look wet and see-through.

Step 5 — Add the wavy tentacles

Here is the fun part. From the wavy rim, draw six long tentacles hanging down toward the bottom of the page. Draw each one as a ribbon — two wavy lines running side by side, curving and drifting, joined at the bottom in a soft rounded tip. Start each tentacle at one of the low points of the wavy rim so they connect naturally.

The key is that no two tentacles should match. Make some long and some short, curl one to the left and the next to the right, let one cross gently behind another. Matching tentacles of equal length look like a stiff hanging fringe; uneven drifting ones look like the jellyfish is genuinely floating in a current.

Step 6 — Finish and color

Darken the lines you want to keep, erase your light scaffolding, and reach for the color. Fill the bell with soft pink, then lay a little lavender along the bottom edge and inside the wavy rim so the dome looks rounded. Color the tentacles pink and light purple, and leave those two shine ovals completely white — resist the urge to fill them in, because the white is the whole trick.

To take it further, add a pale blue wash behind the jellyfish for water, a few tiny bubbles rising past the bell, and a squiggle of seaweed at the bottom of the page. A little school of three jellyfish at different heights and sizes makes a beautiful finished scene, and it is the same drawing three times, so it costs nothing in difficulty. Sign your name in the corner — every finished drawing deserves a signature.

Common mistakes to avoid

Making the bell too tall

When beginners draw the dome, they often stretch it upward into a narrow arch, which turns the jellyfish into a mushroom or a hot air balloon. A jellyfish bell is wider than it is tall — noticeably so — and that squat proportion is a big part of what makes it readable at a glance.

If your dome came out tall, you do not need to start over. Simply extend the wavy rim outward on both sides so the bell gets wider at the bottom, and the shape re-reads as a jellyfish immediately. Widening is always easier than shortening.

Drawing straight, matching tentacles

Straight tentacles of identical length are the single most common jellyfish mistake, and they drain all the life out of the drawing. They make the animal look like it is hanging in a shop window rather than drifting through water.

The fix is deliberate variety. Before you draw, decide that tentacle one is long and curls left, tentacle two is short and curls right, and so on. Consciously breaking the symmetry takes about five seconds and completely changes the finished result.

Forgetting to leave the shine white

It is very tempting to color the whole bell evenly, including the two little shine ovals, because leaving gaps feels unfinished. But those white gaps are exactly what makes the jellyfish look glassy and translucent instead of like a flat pink blob.

If you have already colored over them, you can usually rescue it. Go over the rest of the bell with a slightly deeper pink and leave the original lighter areas alone, so the contrast does the same job. A white gel pen or a dot of correction fluid also works beautifully as a last resort.

Troubleshooting

"My jellyfish looks like a mushroom"

Almost always the wavy rim is too flat or too small. Widen the bell, deepen the waves a little, and make sure the tentacles start from the rim rather than from a single point underneath. A mushroom has one stalk in the middle; a jellyfish has many ribbons spread across a wide edge.

"The tentacles all bunch up in the middle"

Spread the starting points out along the full width of the wavy rim before you draw any of them downward. Mark six little dots first, all the way from the far left of the rim to the far right, then draw a ribbon from each dot. Planning the starts prevents the crowding.

"My face looks off-center"

Lightly draw a vertical guideline down the middle of the bell before adding the eyes, and place one eye on each side of it at the same height. Erase the guideline afterward. Symmetry that is measured always beats symmetry that is guessed.

Key takeaways

FAQ

What age is this jellyfish drawing tutorial for? This is one of the easiest tutorials on the site, so ages 4 and up can manage it with a little help and most 6-year-olds can follow the sheet alone. There are no tricky proportions to get right, which makes it a wonderful confidence builder after a hard tutorial.

How many tentacles should a jellyfish have? Six looks balanced and stays easy to draw. Odd numbers like five or seven also look lovely, and real jellyfish have far more than that, so there is genuinely no wrong answer.

What materials do we need? A pencil, an eraser, paper, and something pink and purple to color with. A light blue crayon for the water behind the jellyfish is a nice bonus but completely optional.

How do I make the tentacles look like they are floating? Curve every tentacle in a different direction and give them different lengths instead of matching them up. Uneven, wavy, drifting tentacles read as underwater movement, while straight matching ones look like a hanging fringe.

That is your jellyfish! Whether it came out perfectly round or gloriously wobbly, you built a whole sea creature out of a dome and some ribbons — and that belongs on the fridge. Keep the sheet handy, fill a page with a floating jellyfish family, and come back tomorrow for a new tutorial.

More tutorials: All tutorials · How to draw a llama · How to draw an octopus · How to draw a crab