How to Draw Decorative Birds
- 1). Set up your still life. Use branches of silk or real foliage to create a realistic setting. Perch the fake birds at different levels within the branches. Start with only a couple of birds and add more birds as you progress in your drawing skills. Position your still life near a strong source of natural light.
- 2). Create your workspace. Set up an easel several feet away from your still life. Secure a sheet of drawing paper to your easel.
- 3). Rough in the basic shapes of your still life. Use a fine grade graphite pencil to lightly sketch the shapes of the branches, leaves and other peripheral matter. Map out the basics of your still life by using basic geometric shapes to create the form of your composition.
- 4). Practice drawing basic shapes. All birds, large or small, have a basic oval or egg-like shape. Take a few minutes to practice your oval drawing on a scrap piece of paper. Ovals and circles can prove challenging for some beginners. Practice drawing concentric circles and oval before sketching your birds.
- 5). Create your birds. Put your oval practice to good use by filling the bird shapes in your composition. For a bird standing upright, draw an oval with a slightly tapered end pointing downward. Draw a smaller, more spherical oval close to, but not touching, the wide end of the large oval. Refer to your still life to help you proportion your bird correctly.
- 6). Draw a horizontal line through each oval or circle to indicate the orientation of your shapes with a ruler. This will help you fill in the features of the bird.
- 7). Outline the details of your sketch. Sketch in the beak, tail-shape, wing shape, neck and feet of the bird. Draw a small circle above the beak to indicate the eye. Erase the orientation lines, and darken the contours with a medium grade pencil.
- 8). Adumbrate the feather details. Continue using a graphite pencil or switch to colored pencils to fill in the plumage of your bird. Follow the same process you did to create the bird shape; rough in basic, geometric shapes and then follow up filling in the details. Incorporate short, light strokes in your details to create the illusion of feathers.
- 9). Fill in the details of the rest of the composition. Erase guidelines as you go. Darker colored pencils and heavier pencil strokes can create shadows and darker values on your composition. Use light colored pencils and your eraser to create highlights of where the light shines the brightest. Look carefully at your composition to achieve the correct values.
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