Cartoon ocean sunfish with tall spotted fins, bubbles, seaweed, coral, and two tiny fish on its side

Spotted Ocean Sunfish With Tiny Fish Friends

A round ocean sunfish glides past waving seaweed and coral while two tiny striped fish travel beside its spotted belly.

🎨 How to color it

Color the ocean sunfish soft silver-blue, its tall dotted fins teal, the tiny striped fish mango orange, and the seaweed bright kelp green. Use sharp colored pencils for the rows of spots and fin stripes, then switch to smooth marker fills on the sunfish’s big round body. Try making the background water fade from pale aqua at the bubbles to deeper blue behind the coral so the fish looks like it is cruising forward.

The story behind this coloring page

Quilla’s Bubble Dash — Past the kelp-and-coral slope, Quilla puffed one bubble, then another, then three in a wobbly row. Read the full story →

Past the kelp-and-coral slope, Quilla puffed one bubble, then another, then three in a wobbly row. She had just invented Bubble Dash: swim through your own bubbles before they reached the sunlit water above. Pop-pop-fizz! The water tasted salty and bright, and her tall fins sliced the current like two sails racing a breeze.

She looped around seaweed ribbons, skimmed over lumpy coral, and added rules as fast as she could think them. Big bubbles were gates. Little bubbles were stars. If a bubble bumped her nose, she had to make a trumpet sound. “Bworp!” Quilla called, and two tiny striped fish tucked close to her side, giggling in tickly little squeaks.

Then Quilla noticed they were not only riding with her. The tiny fish were counting the speckles on her belly as she dashed: round spot, oval spot, dot-dot-dot. Bubble Dash had a secret second game, and Quilla was the moving game board. So she slowed just enough for them to keep score, then burst ahead in a sparkling trail; next time you spot the two little riders, see if you can guess which speckle they will count after the bubbles.