Koi Fish Outlines: 20 Single Koi, Pairs and Lotus Pond Compositions

These 20 koi are drawn in black, mostly from above, the view you get leaning over a pond. Each design is supplied twice, as a solid silhouette and as a fine-line outline, in SVG, DXF, PNG and PDF.

Twelve single fish

Each single koi has its own swimming pose. Design 01 glides on a slant with its tail fanned out, 02 curls into a tight crescent and 03 swims straight up the page. Design 05 dives head-down on a diagonal, 06 swings around in a wide U, 07 heads toward the bottom edge with its fins spread, 08 bends into an S as it turns and 11 loops almost into a full circle.

Three break from the top view. Designs 04 and 10 are side profiles, the first arching over with its dorsal fin raised and the second swimming flat across the page. Design 12 rises upright in profile, scales covering its whole body. Design 09 is the odd one out, a koi coming straight at you with its mouth, whiskers and big side fins facing the viewer and every scale drawn. It’s the busiest file in the set, with over 200 separate shapes in its outline version.

Eight pond compositions

Four of these are about how the fish swim together. In 13 two koi chase each other in a circle, head to tail, and 14 has a large and a smaller koi swimming side by side. In 15 two fish meet nose to nose across the page, and 16 puts three koi in a ring. The other four pair a single koi with something from the pond: a lotus flower (17), two lily pads (18), sweeping ripple lines (19) and a curling wave at the bottom (20).

Scales and whiskers in each style

The solid koi aren’t plain black shapes. The scales are cut into the body as white crescents, and the fins carry white ray lines. In the outline koi, those same scales, fin rays and the whiskers are traced with narrow black bands on an open body.

That outline band is fine, about 0.048 inch (1.2 mm) at the full 10-inch canvas size, according to START-HERE.txt. The notes point to small fins, whiskers and inner scales as the parts that suffer when you shrink a design, and that includes the four-up and six-up PDF sheets. For small pieces, scale the design up or simplify those details in your software.

Files and sizes

The 12 PDFs come as solid and outline, US Letter and A4, at one, four or six copies per page, with 20 pages each and one design per page, so you only print the layout you need. Each page has the design name and style at the top, outside the artwork. The SVG and PNG files share a 10 x 10 inch canvas with the koi set inside it, about 8.2 inches on its longer side. The DXF files use the same canvas, but some programs rescale DXF on import, so check the size before you cut. No physical cutting or printing test was done on these files, so try one sample in your material first.

Questions

Can I cut these into a reusable paint stencil?

Not straight from the files. The notes say they aren't bridged for paint stenciling, and some designs have separate inner shapes or more than one fish, which would drop out of a cut sheet. Add bridges in your software first, or cut them as vinyl or paper pieces and lift them with transfer tape.

How large does each koi print from the PDFs?

On US Letter, a full-page koi is about 6.2 inches on its longer side, each copy on a four-up page about 3.1 inches and each copy on a six-up page about 2.6 inches. Print at 100% so those sizes hold.