How to Draw Bruce the Shark

Posted on 13. Nov, 2009 by DAS Team in Cartoon, Tutorials

In this tutorial, I’ll show you guys how you can draw Bruce the Shark, from the Disney & Pixar Animation movie ‘Finding Nemo’. This artwork has been done on Photoshop CS3.

We will first start our project by creating a 1400 by 1300 file with a 300 pixel/inch resolution.

The first thing you got to do and NEVER forget doing is creating a new layer. As much as this is a simple step, but many people forget to do it. Creating a layer will make life easier when we want to do the background for the image and it will give us far more control when we want to change location or resize. With a brush size of around 10 and color #0278a6, start drawing the outline of the shark as follows:

I started first adding some color patches at the left cheek. The reason i started doing that is to help me create a some sort of proportion and size to the face. It helps show me how my eyes, nose and mouth will fit in. This is a VERY important step and when doing it, please be very patient and consider the scale that you are doing because this is what is going to define the rest of the face.

Start drawing from left to right, and step by step you should find that each facial feature gives space for the feature next to it. The cheeks is all about dark and light blue colors and it gives the extreme grin effect of the mouth. Before you start adding any teethes in the mouth, you should first add a dark base color of #36322f. The reason for that is because when we add a tooth, whether dark or light, we will be able to see it and in general it is always better to add the background first rather than coloring around a object.

Since you already choose the color, use it to color the rest of the mouth as follows:

The step where you start adding the detail of the teethes, be very patient. You first must realize how many rows of teethes there are. They start as three rows in the sides and towards the center there is about four rows. The base color of any teeth should be ranging around color code #4f4e4a while a tooth color should be ranging around color code #90bad2 (Note: towards the sides it will be a bit darker and towards the center it will be brighter).

You should end with something like this:

Be aware that there is a dominant rising triangular forehead on the head that acts as a axis of symmetry to the face. It also defines the shape of the eyes. When creating the eyes, choose base color of #cae6f4 which will then add the pupils to. It helps a lot if you create two lines in order to make sure that both eyes are on the same level.

When you are working with digital work, you should always zoom in and zoom out to see how your artwork is going on. We have applied the base color of the eyes, now start adding the pupils of the eyes. The eyes have a big black pupil and an iris made of a ocean blue color. Notice that i have applied a white filled circle in the edge between the pupil and iris and this is a magical effect that brings reality and life to the eyes.

Now i started adding details to the fins. The fin edges and tips are black (Same principles apply for the tail). In the center (brightest color) i used a color code of #31c3e8 while the darker blue used towards the sides was color #007db3. Note that the right fin is a better shorter in length than the left fin. Don’t do both fins the exact same lengths because you want to give an effect of motion. It looks more that one fin is pushing background while the other is soaring in front.

After we have applied the basic colors in our shark, it is now time to smudge. Unlike smudging human skin, shark skin has grills to it and has a lot of texture that we want to show in our art. The way we are going to give that effect is not smudging by our regular brush, but instead choose brush 39 presented below:

In fact, this brush will also be used in our painting brush too. Just adjust the size and start going over areas you want to show more texture. When creating the nose and and the area above the mouth, choose this brush (brush 39) but with a very small size.

We are now going to leave the layer we have been working on, and choose the background layer. We are going to add ocean base colors of #00c6ed, #008acb, #006ba3 & #01244c (colors are listed from brightest to darkest). You can create your own random design for the ocean but in general keep the top part more lighter than the bottom (because of the sunrays striking through).

This is now what you should have ended up with. I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial and please do leave a comment below. Thank you.

Tags: draw bruce, finding nemo, shark