Bird Fine Art Cards are available at mindfuldrawing@gmail.com. Have a look at Purchase in the header.

How to draw birds?

Drawing birds is not easy for the simple reason of missing living 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 models, like toys. My daughter’s toy birds serve me well. The colours of most toy birds isn’t right neither are their patterns and most of them are too puffed, too cute or miss feet. However, one can cure these flaws.

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 Kuitenbrouwer