How to draw birds

Welcome pretty, pink Long-tailed tit….

HOW THE DRAW BIRDS

Drawing birds is not easy for the simple reason of missing living bird models.
In 2010 I was most charmed by a Mandarin duck (see below). I used pictures from books to draw this bird. It was a pleasure to experiment with its beautiful colors, but with having no living duck in front of me, I made a drawing that didn’t enchant me. I asked my husband what was wrong. He gently mentioned the duck looked too flat. Ergo: a pancake-bird. I therefore had to solve the problem of missing living or stuffed bird models.

I found the following solutions that might work for you as well. If you can, go to a museum that has stuffed birds. Or sit in your garden and hope a few birds will sit still longer than a few seconds. Help might also come from fake models, like toys. My daughter’s toy birds (see below) serve me well. The colors of our toy birds aren’t right neither are their patterns and they are too puffed, too cute and miss feet. However, I can cure these flaws. Last, but not least, you can use photo’s or pictures from good bird-books but take a photo that resembles the bird you like to draw as much as possible in color and posture to prevent making a pancake bird.

If all these tricks don’t help, you might like to try Frederick Franck’s advice: ‘…If -as I hope -the how-to tricks with ellipses don’t work for you either, there is no other way of drawing a sparrow or an eagle than to draw it ad infinitum, until the brushes on your paper are fuller of birds than any bushes ever were, and you know sparrow and eagle inside out, having been them yourself’. (p. 61, The Zen of Seeing, seeing and drawing as meditation, ISBN 978-0-394-71968).

I think you should do this anyway, how else will you learn to draw?

Besides, it is fun.

Paula

(My pancake Mandarin duck)

Toy models do work to get a 3D shape.

Paula