We will draw a fish today in ancient folk art styles. The main reason to choose these three styles of art is that they create their images in black and white. We will visit three parts of the world and understand their style of representing a fish.

Art and craft is a way to introduce a child to a country and its culture. Teaching children about different forms of folk art help them appreciate people from other parts of the world who use new techniques to represent things that are valuable and beautiful.

Children above the age of 7 should try these forms of art. You would need an ordinary paper and black marker of different sizes.

Mexican or Mayan motif

The first one we chose is the ancient Mexican or Mayan style of folk art. The Maya civilization existed for over 1500 years as early as 500 BCE. They lived in a region called Mesoamerica, which is the modern-day Mexico and Central America.

The Maya people produced a great variety of exquisite art and craft on stone, wood, ceramics, bone and even on jade. These motifs beautifully illustrate all sorts of animals, birds, fishes and other elements that formed a part of their culture. They are intricate and have a distinctive black and white pattern.

Here are some of the patterns or ways to draw and fill up an ancient Mayan motif. Notice the pattern itself creates the image or shape of the object. There is no continuous outline for the object. So think of the overall shape and make the pattern as part of the outline.

Here is the easy Mayan motif fish.

Haida art

Haida art is the art of the Haida people, an indigenous ethnic group who lived in Northwest coast of America. Haida art is recognized all over the world with their totem poles and sculptures. The designs used to fill a Haida art is elaborate and organic shapes were used to fill an object rather than geometric ones. Haida art patterns have curved edges and the common shapes that were used were ovoid, u and s-forms and splits. The patterns are created one inside the other. Check for some Haida art in the youtube to draw a fish in Haida art style.

Red, black and white were used to create Haida art. Sometimes blue and red were also used with white to highlight the pattern. Here we are using only black and white pattern.

Japanese Notan

This is not folk art style but is an artform from Japan involving papercutting. Notan in Japanese language means balance between dark and light. The shapes are cut from black and white paper so that they alternate in their positive and negative shapes. One is the mirror image of the other.

Though they are paper cutouts, we will draw this on a piece of paper as it will teach us to create symmetrical objects and also create mirror images of an object.


Draw a fish and then draw the mirror image of the fish against the line of separation. Use graph paper so that you can count squares at regular intervals to create symmetrical objects. Shade one background with black and leave the other background white. For the white background, color the fish black. In this way alternate the black on the two fishes. Create them neat and with intricate designs inside them so that together they create a beautiful eye-catching image.

Find the step-by-step approach to drawing the fish in Japanese Notan style.