last week, i drew a lot of birds, a lot of birds, and i think i'm getting a lot better
at drawing wings in particular, so i just thought to talk a little bit about a very basic
structure of a generic bird wing that i could use if i'm ever stuck without a drawing reference.
curious, i copied down a very simple diagram of a bird's wing that breaks it down into
parts that i can more easily remember. if you really have to draw a bird, don't be a hero,
use that photo reference. preferably one of your own photos, although i don't have any pictures
of birds flying, so i'm just using a google image of a hawk or something for the purposes of this.
i'm going to draw one of his wings using the reference, but also using the anatomy diagram that
i drew, and i'll put it up on the screen. here's my uh simplified attempt at a body here because
i'm not really worried about that right now. i just need a place to attach my wing okay. so it
seems like a wing is sort of like our arm. he has two parts connected with a little elbow of sorts
and the first part looks a little squared off so i'm gonna start with a squarish shaped
shoulder bit here. i don't know the scientific names for these parts. i got my square,
and then i got the second half of the wing. this is where his elbow bends and he's gonna have
a nice gentle bend in this position. the second half is sort of curved at the tip. i'm going to
divide his wing lightly into the different parts on my diagram. some of them have this tiny feather
on the elbow part that kind of kind of looks like a thumb if this was a human hand i guess. this is
a large bird, so he has very noticeable axillars, or however you say that word. draw in his marginal
coverts at the top, so that's just a little strip, and then he's gonna have his secondary coverts,
and then his primary coverts on the outside part of the wing here. and these are the nice
big feathers that splay out. if i was trying to make a very scientific technical drawing,
i would probably want to count the feathers from my reference, but for our purposes,
i'm just gonna wing it, ha ha. so i noticed that the marginal coverts at the top are made of these
tiny little feathers that stick out and flap in the breeze as he's flying.
that seems simple enough. it's kind of like fish scales right?
i'm gonna outline this a little darker so you can actually see what i'm doing here. got the
baby feathers down, and then i'm going to draw in these axillars or however you say that word.
these are like his sideburns, they go all the way down his body there, mostly because he's
a large bird. smaller birds, you see a lot fewer details. you can kind of get away with only having
the main sort of triangular shape of smaller feathers and then the big feathers. these
secondary primary coverts are slightly larger feathers that are always kind of rounded, and
they come in multiple layers a lot of the times, so i'm just gonna do a nice stacked looking pile
of round feathers here. remember, when you get to the elbow, the angle of the feathers might change.
see, this looks pretty good. all right, not bad, okay. these main feathers here are often kind of
squared at the edge and are often just one layer, so i'm just gonna draw a nice little overlapping
squared edge. and as i get to the bend in the elbow, after that, the feathers start to get
a little bit pointier like little knife blades. and sometimes they'll be spread out so there's
little gaps between. sometimes the feathers might be in rough shape so you might want to add little
rough spots here and there, maybe a missing feather, make it look realistic? so the first
four feathers at the very tip of the wing, they are usually the pointiest and there's usually
four or five of them, and they're sort of like a human hand in that the one at the very top is very
pointy and then the second one is slightly longer, just like our middle finger is slightly longer.
so keep that in mind when you're shaping the edge of the wing there. personally, i think the
hardest part is trying to get the angles right. i want them to radiate out from the elbow part.
yeah and then they start to get a little bit more square shaped as you go back toward the elbow.
i felt like i could cram an extra feather in there so i erased that one and did an extra one,
and there you go, pretty decent looking bird wing. doesn't look too bad. made easier by breaking
his wing down into smaller parts. might be less detaile, like this chickadee,
or extremely detailed like this huge crane, which i thought actually looked perfect
for angel wings. so if you want to see me use this simple breakdown of a bird wing to make an
image of a girl with angel wings, subscribe to my channel because i will come out with that video
next week. i also sell original art, sketchbooks, art prints, handmade calendars, pet commissions,
and even necklace pendants on my etsy shop. and i have a patreon group for working in
our sketchbooks, where you can vote for the theme of the month, and some tiers even get
original sketches mailed to you. all my links are in the description and thanks for watching