Learning how to draw a jellyfish becomes much easier when you separate its body into three things: a translucent bell, thicker oral arms and fine trailing tentacles. The trick is to give each part a different kind of line.
I’ll walk through six steps for drawing a jellyfish from a photograph or aquarium reference. You can follow them with a pencil or pen, and you don’t need to erase your first marks or make every curve perfect. A jellyfish looks more convincing when its lines suggest a soft animal drifting through water.
Before you begin: choose the jellyfish you’re drawing
Jellyfish have very different shapes depending on the species. Some have long, threadlike tentacles. Others have short tentacles and prominent folded structures beneath the bell.
For a first drawing, I recommend using a photograph of a sea nettle. Its rounded bell, ruffled oral arms and trailing tentacles are usually easy to distinguish. A moon jelly is another good subject, especially if you want to study transparent forms.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s jellyfish guide is useful for seeing the anatomy and movement of different jellies. You can also study the aquarium’s photographs before selecting your drawing reference.
Look for a side or three-quarter view where you can see the edge of the bell and the structures hanging beneath it. A dark background often makes a translucent jellyfish easier to observe. If you need help choosing photographs for your sketchbook, I’ve written a separate guide to finding a useful animal drawing reference.
How to draw a jellyfish in six steps
Step 1: Find the forms inside the bell
Before drawing the outside of the jellyfish, look through its transparent bell. You may notice curved internal structures, a central area of shadow or overlapping translucent shapes.
Choose the two or three most visible forms and draw their directions. They might appear as a few short curves or a darker shape near the middle of the bell.
I like beginning here because these internal marks give the drawing a sense of depth before the outside edge is added. You don’t need to identify every anatomical detail. Record what you can actually see in the reference.
If an internal feature is blurry or partly hidden, let your marks remain broken or indistinct. Avoid giving a hazy structure a hard outline simply because you’re trying to make it clear.
Step 2: Draw the curved jellyfish bell
Now follow the upper contour of the bell around the internal features you just placed.
Most jellyfish drawings begin with a dome-shaped curve, but don’t assume that the dome is a perfect semicircle. In your reference, one side may be steeper, the top may be flattened, or the entire bell may tilt as the jellyfish moves.
Draw the curve you observe. If it doesn’t feel right, compare it with the photograph and place a better line beside the first. Those overlapping thought lines are part of the sketching process.
Next, look at the underside of the bell. It may have a narrow rim, a scalloped edge or folds that curl inward. Draw those visible changes rather than closing the dome with one perfectly straight line.
Leave occasional gaps in the contour where the edge seems to blend with the surrounding water. This will help the bell feel transparent instead of solid.
Step 3: Add the folded oral arms
Look beneath the center of the bell for the thicker hanging structures. These are called oral arms, and they are different from the jellyfish’s fine tentacles.
On many jellyfish, the oral arms resemble folded fabric or long, irregular ribbons. Find the largest visible fold and follow one of its edges downward. Notice where it widens, narrows, turns or disappears behind another section.
Then draw the opposite edge of that fold. This gives the oral arm width instead of making it look like a single wavy string.
Add the neighbouring folds one at a time. Some should overlap, and others may disappear into darker areas beneath the bell. Don’t make every fold the same size or repeat an identical wave.
Pay particular attention to the point where the oral arms emerge from beneath the bell. That connection helps the drawing look like one animal rather than a dome with separate decorations hanging from it.
Step 4: Draw the long, flowing tentacles
With the larger forms in place, move to the thin tentacles.
Choose one tentacle in your reference and follow its entire path with your eyes before drawing it. Notice where it begins, which direction it travels and how its curve changes farther from the bell.
Draw that path with one long, direct mark whenever possible. Repeat with a few more tentacles, varying their lengths and the spaces between them.
They shouldn’t look like evenly spaced strands hanging from a lampshade. Some may overlap, some may be almost straight, and others may drift to one side. Groups of tentacles often create interesting areas of density beside relatively open water.
If you’re drawing with pen, let a line end naturally when a tentacle becomes too faint to see. You don’t have to complete every strand. That interruption can suggest a tentacle disappearing into the water.
The direction of the tentacles is one of the best ways to suggest motion. I explore similar observations in my tutorial on how to draw movement.
Step 5: Show transparency with tone and broken edges
A realistic jellyfish drawing needs more than an accurate outer shape. You also have to suggest which forms can be seen through other forms.
Study the bell for areas where transparent layers overlap. Those areas may appear darker than the surrounding surface. Add a few patches of value there while leaving the clearest parts of the bell relatively untouched.
With a graphite pencil, I use broad strokes from the side of the lead for soft areas of tone, then add darker marks where edges overlap. The transitions can remain visible and sketchy. They don’t need to be blended into a perfectly smooth surface.
With pen, try short groups of hatching where the oral arms fold or where the underside of the bell becomes darker. Allow some edges to remain open rather than surrounding every part with the same continuous line.
On white paper, the palest sections of a jellyfish can be difficult to see. Adding a small area of darker water beside the bell can make the translucent edge visible without outlining it heavily.
For more ways to work with graphite and varied marks, see my guide to animal drawing in pencil.
Step 6: Check the spacing and finish the drawing
Step back and look at the jellyfish as a whole.
The bell should feel connected to the oral arms, and the finest tentacles should have enough surrounding space to show their direction. If all the hanging forms stop at the same height, compare their lengths again with your reference.
It’s fine for a few long tentacles to travel beyond the edge of your page. You don’t need to curl them back into the composition to make everything fit.
Look for one or two places that would benefit from a darker overlap or a clearer contour. Avoid adding detail uniformly across the whole animal. A few carefully observed marks will usually do more than filling every available space.
How to make your jellyfish drawing look realistic
If your sketch looks like an umbrella with strings hanging beneath it, the problem is usually one of three things:
- The bell is too symmetrical. Compare the height, tilt and curvature of each side with your reference. Small differences make the form feel more natural.
- The oral arms look like tentacles. Give the oral arms changing widths, folded edges and overlapping shapes. Save your finest lines for the actual tentacles.
- Every line has the same strength. Darken selected overlaps and let translucent edges fade or break apart. Equal outlines tend to flatten soft, transparent forms.
Rather than starting again, choose the area that is least convincing and study it more closely. One corrected curve or better-observed fold can change the character of the entire drawing.
Drawing a moon jelly versus a sea nettle
You can use the same observational process for different jellyfish, but the details should come from the species you’re drawing.
Moon jelly: Pay attention to the broad, translucent bell and the internal shapes visible through it. Moon jellies have short tentacles around the bell rather than the dramatic long strands often associated with jellyfish drawings. The internal structures can become the main feature of your sketch.
Sea nettle: Concentrate on the contrast between the bell, the large ruffled oral arms and the long trailing tentacles. Their different widths and directions create much of the animal’s visual character.
These distinctions matter more than adding generic jellyfish details. A drawing that follows one actual species will often be more convincing than an elaborate drawing assembled from several different kinds of jellyfish.
A three-sketch exercise for understanding jellyfish
If you want to become more comfortable drawing jellyfish, use one photograph to make three separate sketches.
- First sketch: Draw only the bell and the most visible internal structures. Concentrate on transparency and the changes in the outer contour.
- Second sketch: Ignore most of the bell’s details. Study the folded oral arms and the movement of the long tentacles.
- Third sketch: Combine what you noticed in the first two drawings. Give the bell, oral arms and tentacles their own qualities while keeping them connected.
Keep the sketches exploratory. You don’t need to clean away the lines that show how your observations changed.
What interests me most about drawing a jellyfish is how much of its form can be suggested with relatively little information: a changing curve, a few overlapping folds and long marks that carry the eye through open space.
Once you’re comfortable with these forms, explore more subjects in my collection of sea animal drawing tutorials, including fish, manta rays and octopuses.