20 Octopic Drawing Ideas With a Technique Note for Each
An octopus is eight chances to get a curve wrong, which is why it is worth drawing. No skeleton to hide behind, no symmetry to lean on — every arm has to taper, twist and land somewhere believable on its own.
Below are 20 octopic drawing ideas, each matched to a reference on this page, with a note on what that particular image is good for practising. Some are five-minute line studies, some will eat an afternoon.
If tapering, curling limbs are the part you want to practise, the same problem shows up in these jellyfish sketching ideas, where trailing tentacles have to twist and thin out at the tips.
20 Octopus Drawing Ideas to Sketch
1. Kawaii Octopus in a Mason Jar
Start here for a quick win. The whole design is two shapes — jar and rounded mantle — with the arms drawn as spirals filling the leftover space. Every curl coils inward toward the centre; that inward pull is what stops it looking like a tangle of noodles.
The eyes carry the charm, and they follow one rule: pupils large, highlights on the same side of both eyes. Different spots and the face goes cross-eyed — the same trick behind most easy cute animal drawings for kids.
2. Minimal Line Octopus
A single-weight contour with nothing filled in. The difficulty is confidence, not shape — a wobbly line has nowhere to hide. Draw each arm as one stroke, thick at the body and thinning to a hair at the tip. Add the water lines last; they cost nothing and tell the eye which way is down.
3. Hatched and Shaded Octopus
The arms fan out in every direction, so shading does the depth work. Hatch across the form, not along it — lines wrapping each tentacle like thread on a spool are what turn a flat ribbon into a cylinder.
Arms crossing behind the body need to sit a shade darker than the ones in front. That one value difference beats any amount of extra detail, the same value-first approach used in these realistic animal pencil drawing ideas.
4. Elephant-Octopus Hybrid
A wrinkled elephant head with tusks, dissolving below the trunk into suckered arms. The join is the whole drawing: let the trunk’s wrinkle bands become the ring of suction cups so nobody can point to the transition. Heavy creases on the hide, smooth rubbery gradients on the arms.
5. Underwater Scene Coloring Page
Coral on the left, boulders along the bottom, a starfish in the top corner, bubbles filling the gaps. Composition is the exercise: the octopus sits dead centre and every background element points back at it.
Vary line weight instead of adding tone — thick outlines on the octopus, thinner on the coral — and the depth survives in flat black and white. These dolphin coloring pages layer a scene the same way.
6. Sword-Wielding Octopus
Bulging eyes, a mottled dome, a heavy blade held across the body. The blade is dead straight while everything around it curls, and that contrast is the drama — use a straightedge. Wrap the arms round the hilt with suckers facing the handle; reversed, the sword looks balanced on the tentacle rather than held.
7. Bookworm Octopus
Four arms hold a book while the eyes peer over the top edge. The personality lives in where each arm grips: two on the covers, one under the spine, one curling idly aside. Draw the book first as a box in perspective with real page thickness, then wrap the arms — reverse that order and it floats.
8. Octopus in a Top Hat and Goggles
A wide brim, blacked-in round goggles, eight heavily suckered arms sprawling below. The hat sits on a soft dome, so its brim ellipse has to bend with the mantle rather than cut across it as a rigid oval. Fill the lenses solid black with one white highlight each — that fixed stare is what makes it funny.
9. Sleek Stylised Octopus
The same costume redrawn with half the marks: fewer suckers, even line weight, arms in a near-symmetrical fan. Simplifying is harder than detailing — keep only the load-bearing lines, the silhouette, hat band and goggle rims. If it still reads at thumbnail size, you cut correctly.
10. Octopus with Rising Bubbles
Really a pattern exercise. Each arm needs suckers that shrink toward the tip and stay evenly spaced along a curve, which is fiddlier than it sounds. Scatter the bubbles in varied sizes, never a straight column. If you like the repetition, the zentangle animal drawing ideas push it much further.
11. Tiny Floating Octopus
A small octopus above a single horizon line with a fine bubble trail to one side. The empty page is doing the work — it is what makes the creature feel suspended in deep water. Two dots for eyes, arms as thin trailing ribbons, no shading. A background would sink it.
12. Steampunk Gentleman Octopus
A stovepipe hat, round goggles and an enormous handlebar moustache growing where the arms meet the head. The joke works because the moustache is drawn from the same material as the tentacles — same taper, same curl. Keep the hat dark and let the arms fade to light outlines; that top-heavy value gives the formal posture.
13. Coloured Pencil Octopus
Warm orange across the mantle sliding into cool purple in the shadows, pale yellow suckers along every underside. Layer the light colour first and burnish darks over it — going dark first leaves no room to lift the value back. Real octopuses shift colour constantly, so push the hue further than looks reasonable.
14. Stippled Octopus with a Rapier
Built almost entirely from dots, dense at the crown and thinning toward the light, with a thin rapier cutting diagonally through the composition. Budget hours, not minutes.
Change dot density, never dot size, or the texture goes blotchy. Hold the pen upright and tap rather than drag. Ballpoint suits this, and there are more unique pen sketching ideas worth stealing technique from.
15. Octopus Sprawled Over a Car
A giant octopus draped over a parked sedan, arms coiling round the roof pillars and down through the wheel arches. Hard reflective panels against something entirely soft. The car is the difficult half — block it as a box in perspective and get the wheel ellipses right before a single tentacle goes down. These car coloring pages work as construction reference.
16. Baby Octopus in a Vintage Pram
A wide-eyed baby octopus peering over the edge of an ornate Victorian pram: spoked wheels, scrollwork panels, a deep folded hood. Draw the spokes properly — wheels in three-quarter view compress into ellipses, and the spokes must radiate from the true centre of that ellipse, not the centre of the shape you see.
17. Octopus-Bear Hybrid
A round bear head with two small ears sitting straight on eight arms, big flat black shapes framing the sides. No neck, no shoulders — the head simply becomes the mantle. Place the black masses so they read as silhouette first and fur second. Squint at it: if they still hold together, you have it.
18. Octopus in a Teacup
A whole octopus crammed into a teacup, arms spilling over the rim. Scale is the exercise: the cup has to be small and precise so the creature reads as oversized. The rim and saucer ellipses must share one eye level, or the cup looks tipped. Draw both before anything else.
19. Expressive Sketch with a Speech Bubble
Loose graphite, oversized round eyes and a hand-lettered bubble reading “I believe in myself.” Deliberately rough, and more likeable for it. Draw the eyes bigger than feels right, then bigger again — exaggeration carries the emotion, as in these cartoon characters with big eyes. Leave the pencil marks in.
20. Cartoon Octopus Artist with Paintbrushes
A grinning octopus in a painter’s cap and smock, a brush in each raised arm. Clothing on a boneless body is the challenge: the smock has to wrinkle where an arm bends, with no elbow to bend at. Anchor the folds at the shoulders and let them radiate down and out.
Getting Tentacles Right
Most failed octopus drawings fail in the same few places. Check yours before calling it finished:
- Taper. An arm should lose about two-thirds of its width between body and tip. Arms of constant thickness read as tubes.
- Curl direction. Vary it. Eight arms coiling the same way looks stamped; let two or three cross behind the body.
- Sucker spacing. The rings shrink and crowd as the arm narrows, and compress into ovals wherever it turns away. Even circles all the way down flatten the limb.
- Eye placement. Eyes sit low and wide on the mantle, near where the arms begin — not on top of the dome.
If you want to push past comfortable, the hard sketching ideas include a couple of studies at this difficulty and are a good place to go next.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many tentacles should an octopus drawing have?
Eight, and it is worth counting — miscounted arms is the most common mistake in octopus art. Draw two in front of the body, two behind, four fanning to the sides. Strictly they are arms, not tentacles; squid have the two long tentacles.
What is the easiest octopus to draw for a beginner?
The minimal line octopus (idea 2) or the kawaii jar octopus (idea 1). Both reduce the body to one rounded shape and draw the arms as simple spirals, so you can finish one in ten minutes and still learn the taper.
How do you shade an octopus so it looks round?
Hatch across each arm rather than along it. Lines that wrap around the form describe a cylinder; lines running along the length flatten it into a ribbon. Keep the darkest values where arms overlap and on the underside of the mantle, and leave the top of the dome nearly untouched.
What pens or pencils work best for these drawings?
A 2B pencil for loose sketches, a 0.1 or 0.3 fineliner for sucker detail and stipple, a brush pen for the heavy black masses. Coloured pencil handles the colour-shifting skin better than marker because you can layer light to dark. Ballpoint is underrated for stippling — these simple pen sketching ideas go into that.
Pick One and Start
Do not try to work through all twenty in a sitting. Choose three that scare you slightly — probably the stipple, the car and the pram — and give each a full session. The cartoon versions will come out better once your hand knows what a real arm does when it curls.
Keep the reference open and check your taper against it every few minutes. That habit will do more than any new pen.
