Drawing Realistic Animals with Simple Shapes: Birds

1. Introduction to Class: Drawing can be a challenge. You start a drawing and get to a good part, and start adding all the details only to realize later that everything seems out of place and wonky in the end. What if I told you that drawing can be a lot easier, if we change the way we look at it. Instead of getting lost in details, we can learn to break our subject down into basic shapes and organize those shapes in proportion with each other. Hi, my name is Marika. I'm an illustrator, author, educator and a print-maker, and I've always loved to draw animals. My drawings, paintings and prints have been shown in galleries around the world, and I love to share my passion for drawing and animals with people that I meet. I wanted to create this class, drawing realistic animals with simple shapes, birds, because I believe that everyone can learn to draw realistically, and when you learn to draw from reference and figure out how to be a good observer, then those skills will trickle down to all other areas of your art practice. The structure of the class is simple, and I gave you several exercises and handouts, so that anybody can jump in and learn the basics of drawing. I'll provide you with reference images for this class, and show you how to break down birds into the simplest of shapes so that you can then put them together correctly and draw realistic birds. For the final project, we'll use a reference photo. We'll first break the shapes down and then translate or observations onto paper into a realistic proportional drawing of an owl. I am excited to get started. Let's begin. 2. Class Project: I think a lot of teachers would agree that observation is one of those foundational skills that's most important when it comes to drawing. You might think, looking at demonstrations or beautiful paintings in a gallery that artists don't copy and they draw everything from their imagination. But actually exactly the opposite is true. You can't really learn to draw without using a reference first. Let me use myself as an example. If you asked me today to draw a horse, you might be impressed by how well I can draw one off the top of my head. But what you're seeing is just the tip of my experience showing. What you don't know is that since I was a young kid, I've practiced drawing hundreds of horses, copying them from photos, books, and magazines. The beautiful drawing today that you see is really the accumulation of experiences from observation and then drawing. In order to learn how to draw something realistically, you have to use references and look at them carefully. Since this is a beginning drawing class, I wanted to start with birds because they're fairly simple shaped. We'll look at several different kinds of birds and their shape breakdowns, and then we'll concentrate on one reference photo for our final project. I'm going to go step-by-step and explain to you my thought process when I'm observing and breaking down a subject and then reconstructing it as a drawing. These skills can also be used to draw from live objects, but because we are in a classroom, reference photos work best, so we are all looking at the same thing. We'll also briefly cover how to apply the same method to shading and adding details. Learning and practicing the basics can feel tedious at times, but learning the basics of drawing from observation comes with big rewards as it's the foundation for the rest of your art creation. Strong observation skills affect not only your drawing, but your coloring, details, compositions, and all other creating. When you know the basic rules of shapes, it's a lot easier to break them down and then that ables you to create interesting characters and illustrations. When you're finished with your final drawing, don't forget to post it in the gallery. I'm always excited to see everybody's final projects. Let's jump over to the next video, grab a handout and let's start looking at basic shapes. 3. Breaking Things Into Shapes: Let's get right down to business. When I want to draw anything, what I do is I always want to break it down into general shapes in my head, and then I figure out how those shapes relate to each other. Before we get to our birds, I just wanted to show you just a few examples of other things that I might be looking at. If I'm looking at a picture of a cat, this is how I might break it down. I might look at and think, we've got a rectangle shape for the body with a little arc at the top, and then when I'm looking at my leg, it's a triangle for the back leg and then little sticks for the rest of it, then tail isn't super interesting here. There's a straight line and then a little bump and then another one as it curls over there. The same thing for the other legs. I'm thinking this is almost like a triangle with the tip cutoff, or a rectangle that gets skinnier at one end and then you have a little power over there and then the same goes for the back leg. Then there's almost a rectangle for the neck in the same way I'm thinking the straight line and then the rest of the head is almost a triangle over here. Then the ears is also a triangle. This is how I break things down. If I'm looking at it on the side and now I'm trying to draw it, I'm looking at my reference photo and I'm trying to draw it here on the side. Now I would do the same thing. Obviously I showed you how I break it down when I'm looking at it, and so then when I'm sketching it down over here, I'd do the same thing, so then then when I'm figuring out, well, I'm trying to get this. This is the same as this. If I'm thinking, this is about this long and then my box was about this long, and so this goes over here about a little bit over two times. I have two boxes over there. Then if I figure out how big is this head compared to the rest of the body? Then I start adding, so it's going to be about that size. Then I had that the nose and then my triangle for my ear. Just looking at the relationships of everything. Then I have my tail was over here and I'm looking at when I do this, what is the angle between these two? To me it looks about like that. There's that and then I have my triangle for my leg and if I'm drawing a rectangle here, this barely just catches over there. It's almost on the same level. Then there might be a little bit of a curved line over here. Again, if I'm looking at a straight line, where does this line up with? It lines up around here. Then I know where to put my other other parts of the cat. That's how I break things down. You want to start with the big things and big shapes and then you start getting smaller and smaller. This applies for anything that I'm looking at. You can look at a car, an animal structure and so the same thing. There's a rectangle first and then there's almost a triangle on this end. A rectangle at this end with one part cut off and then obviously we have our wheels are circles and then we have a, what is this? A parallelogram over here. Then to figure out, so that would be my basic shape. If we want to tone down the piece below and then to figure out your details, then you would just start breaking the big shapes down into smaller shapes. You start breaking the the big shapes down into smaller shapes and figure out how things line up compared to each other to then start putting the details. Then as the last example, I just had this tree over here. With trees, I imagine them as being cloud shapes are round, they often have very rounded things. With this one to begin with it, we have a big area over here, we have a big area over here and then we have these little pieces that join them. That would be my basic shape of a tree and then I would figure out where my tree trunk goes and then you figure your details out as you're going, but you just want to have those basic shapes first down and then like I said, then it's easier to start working on your details once you have your basic stamp. That's how we go. Let's look at birds next. How this applies to birds. Let's look at our basic shapes of birds. Birds are really fun to draw. They're beautiful animals and they have fairly simple shapes that are easy to figure out. Here we have a bulfinch and in general, when we're looking at birds, their bodies are a tear shape, tear shape kind of a shape. Depending how they are, so they can either be, you can think of it as a shape like that, or you can think of it almost like as a letter D-shaped, whichever you feel like. With this one it's more rounded on the belly side and then it's more straight on this side. Then the second part, if we're going down first, they have two parts to the tail. They usually have this rounded part and then there's the actual tail that's goes straight or bends out a little bit depending on the bird. Then we have the wings. The wings are usually a triangular shape and then the top is usually rounded. Then the head it has a curve on one end and then a straight line usually where the beak area connects to the body, so it's straight with a curve like that. Then depending on what bird you're drawing, then they'll have different shapes of beaks and then they'll have their legs obviously. These would be our basic shapes for a bird and then after you have the basic shapes down, then you would start breaking it down smaller and smaller and smaller. After we have this down, then you could start figuring out that there's an arc over here, eyeball goes over there, and then figuring out all your smaller shapes. If I'm looking at it hits right here on the corner, so that would be right here. Looking at how the shapes relate to each other and so this is a half of a crescent shape. Then this is almost a pentagon, so just breaking and then there's a line that goes over here, and then this is our line that we already found figured out. Then the same thing we already have these. This is where we drew the shape, but there's actually a second shape. It becomes fairly simple to start and then if you have an eraser, you could erase some of the lines that are not necessarily, don't mean to be there. Then we have our bird. Now that we know the basics of how to break things down with shapes, let's look at how that applies to other kinds of birds. 4. Bird Shapes + Wings: Now that we know how to break a bird down into its basic shapes, let's look at all the different birds that there are in the world and how we can find the shapes in each one of them. I just have this. We're working on my iPad just because it makes it easier to go in and out and show you close-ups of everything. We were talking about it having that teardrop shaped body. We have that right here and then we have the arc where the top of the head and then we have our straight line for the bottom. Then that shape for the tail is underneath over here. We can't see in this photo and then we have our tail. Just breaking it down to basic shapes and then obviously our beak. Beak is a much bigger thing. When you're drawing this on the side without your reference, the way that I would calculate the beak size compared to the head shape is, you could, first of all, if I'm drawing it here and then I have my teardrop shape. One thing you could do is you could imagine if there's a line going over here. I would imagine, same line going over here. That's where my tip is. Then there's a little line right here where it starts and then I look, okay, well is the shape here same as the shape over there? That's how I would figure out how long to make this and another way would be you could take the shape of this or the width of this and then figure out this is about two times over here. Then for our leg, we just have a little triangle and then the leg goes from there. That's our basic shapes for a toucan and now let's look at a goose. Obviously they have longer necks than some other birds do. We have almost more of a, in this photo, at least, there's almost more of a like that D-shaped that I was talking about and when I'm using this reference photo our tail is very much just a short triangle. Then there is like an extra part on the bottom over here and then there's a neck that tapers towards the top. Then the same as for everything else, we have our arc and our straight line and then the beak is a triangle. Our leg and our feet and which are underneath here in the grass. The cranes and egrets and birds like that are the same as our goose and so if we look at the underneath structure over here, you can tell that this is the a teardrop shape, but this is just a piece of a feather. This is not actually part of the body over here. Then we have our wing structure, which is a triangle here and our legs. Then instead of having a straight line like a goose, the egrets, especially and pelicans, don't have a curved neck. It's almost like a S-shape. First we're going to go one way, even if you wanted to do that. Then same thing as everywhere else, we have our arc going this way, a straight line, and then our beak. Continuing with a plump little pigeon, we can find our body shape here like a tear shape. The wing is on a little bit of a different spot over here. It's got a longer tip than on some of the other ones and the wing is almost like a oblong tear shape too. We got our tail and then here, the bottom is a little bit more curved with the neck. We have a top of the head and then straight. There's almost like a parallelogram and then our beak at the top and then a little triangle for though our little rectangle shape for the leg or the top of the leg and then the feet over there. Oftentimes, owls can be boxy because they're fluffy and thick stocky animals and so if we're looking at this for a reference photo, it's a chunky tear shape. Then over here we have a little bit of the neck part and then since it's looking more straight towards us, instead of having our curve and our straight, it's more just the curved shape or you could even think of it, in this case, more of almost like a box shape with a little bit of a curve on the top. Then the ears are part of that top box over here. We have a few feathers. Our tail extends behind over here. We have our triangle for wings, and then parallelogram for our leg and then our feet go over here. Then I feel like owls and parrots are in the same category with being plumped in and rounded like that. Even though we can't see the whole body, I'm still drawing my tear shape over here, got our tail. Then we can actually see a little bit of both of the wings. I have one triangle for one wing over here and then another triangle for a wing over here. Then the curve is a little bit different than some of the other birds and then we have our little feathers on the top and our leg. Then I just thought this roadrunner was such a cute little guy. He's got a straight back, so we're more in a D-shape over here. Wing triangle and then he's got a really long tail. To figure out how long this was, again, you could look at the angle. I'll just draw our neck first. He's got a long-neck, straight and our curve and then the feathers that go off of there. Then if I'm looking at it compared to over here, these feel like they go off almost on a similar angle in this reference photo. Then if I'm drawing it on the side, again, I would probably look at where is this hitting, if I imagine. This is about twice the length and then I would figure out how long to make that. Then we just have a little bird that is, we're looking at it straight from the behind. We're still finding all of our shapes over here. He's very plumping the wintertime. You have a little triangle for our leg and then we have our tail and I would still draw it as a rectangle shape. Then you can add those details for the feathers later. Then we have two triangles for our wings, and then our straight and our curve and then our beak. Then if we just look at all of these as individual shapes, that just breaks down the shape language of each of these for you. What I've created for you, for this class is just an exercise sheet. I've created the sheet for you where you have the pictures of the birds and then very faintly a second row of birds so you can practice drawing the shapes over here or you can practice drawing the shapes over here. While we're looking at general shapes, I just wanted to look really quickly at the bird's wing shapes and structures, since that's something that's very idiosyncratic to birds. Here I've just took some several wings that are clipped off with photos and the bird wings can obviously be different shapes depending on the function. Some are good for short bursts, some are good for gliding or acrobatics in the air, but they all still follow the basic template. When we're looking at the wing, we have two major sections. If the wing goes off, this is elbow and this is the wrist. We have two sections and depending on which one of these you're looking at, it might go differently. I think over here it's about here, here, arm will be here. It's a little bit harder to see. Here. We have two major sections and each section is divided into three. On the top section, you'll have these short feathers that cover the top of everything and then there's oftentimes a secondary layer of feathers. Then there's the third layer of feathers that are the biggest one. Just when you keep that in mind, you'll notice that. So when you're drawing the birds, if you have to fudge a little bit, just knowing that there's three layers of feathers in there will help you understand the structure of the wing. The layers of feathers might be a little bit different depending on what bird you're looking at. It gets a little bit more complicated than that, but that's the basics of the wing that I want you to be aware of when you're drawing it. When the bird pulls its wing inside, what happens is is it'll go in order. This will be on the top, this will go next, and this will go third. When we're looking at these two birds, you'll notice that we'll have the short feathers over here and then we'll have this is the secondary set of feathers and these are the last set of feathers. They overlap on top of each other and just understanding how things overlap. We have one, we have two, and we have three. Obviously that's just the natural way of going if you think of rain or wind coming down and then trickles. If they overlap the opposite way, then whenever rain would come down, then the rain would go in-between the feathers. It's just a natural way of the wings of folding up into each other and so when you're looking at photographs, just understanding the basic structure of a wing will help you then figure out how to draw the feathers into it. I've also included this as a worksheet in your handout and that way you can print it out and observe the different layers and practice, finding and drawing them over here if you want. Now we can also do this exercise on any of the photos that you have taken or that you'll find online or when you're observing birds that you see outside. Now, let's move on to the next lesson where I'll teach you how t use negative space to check for accuracy when you're sketching. 5. Trick 1: Using Negative Space as a Guide: Now let's move on to a little bit more challenging drawing exercises. Some birds can be a little bit trickier to draw because it might be hard to find and draw the shapes in relation to each other. Birds that come to mind are like flamingos and cranes and poses where there's long parts that are hard to relate to the rest of the body. The first tip I have to assess how your shapes are lining up is to look at the negative spaces around your bird in the same way that you look at the shapes inside the bird. For example, over here, you can look at the shapes, for example, right here you can look at the shape right here, and this little thing is actually divided up really nicely over here. You could just look at the shapes that we have in relation to everything that's going on over here. Even and between the legs trying to figure out what angle the legs go away and out from each other. We have a lot of great information over here. [NOISE] If I were to be drawing that on the side over here, I would figure out this is going to be, you want to figure out your basics first. This is going to be my teardrop shaped body, and then if I figure it this is about this long, let's make it really simple over here. You can see that the legs are about the same length as the body. If I look at it over here, starting, so it's one, two, and three. That gives me the general idea of how big my bird is going to be. If this is over here, then I know that compared to where this starts, that's almost the middle over there. Then I know that it's going to be about this much over here. Then the neck starts from the top over here and then it's going to be this and this and this are about the same height. That gives me my general shapes or proportions for the bird. Now it's becomes a lot easier to figure out where things go. A smaller wing shape over here. Tail, cranes don't have very big tails. Then now remember when I just told you about the looking at the shapes of the legs. We have a little bit of a triangle over here. Then now I want to look at how they relate to each other. There's a parallelogram and then a rectangle over here, thinking this is my teardrop shape over here, and there's another wing down here and it matches up right where the leg starts, and then it continues. Now, if I imagine that there's a straight line right here, so that's actually a straight line I have over here. Then I know that this starts where I have a triangle right here, and then I have that shape. Then it actually doesn't go behind over here. It just curves and goes away, and there's another triangle right here. This is my height where I want to go. I'm aiming over here, the top of my hand straight. Then it goes along the same, gets a little bit, it's a little bit thicker over here, a little bit skinnier and then gets a little bit bigger. I'm just trying to get looking at how long this is in relation to something like that. It looks like it's maybe actually a little bit too big. Then once you have your basic proportions down, then it's much easier to start sketching it and then adding your details in. Then I wanted to bring in this cute little roadrunner just as a second little exercise to look at the negative shapes that we have in our objects, since it's a funky little thing. I've drawn a rectangle around my image, and then you can see that the tail points to the corner and it almost runs, if I would draw a straight from one angle to another, almost runs straight through, but it goes on a little bit of an angle. That helps in just figuring out. Then when you look at this whole shape as a whole, you can tell that it becomes a pentagon shape. Then if we look at the basic shape over here, to me, this is like a half of the shape upon the top, we're almost similar, so almost similar but you would have a little triangle over there. The same thing we would have over here. Then for this last shape over here, I would imagine a straight line down from here and see what shape. This is almost a triangle shape over here what we're getting. Then you could also do the same thing. Then this is almost a rectangle with a little bit of a [NOISE] curved top that ends up being down here. Then when you're looking at your space below, we got a triangle and then almost another triangle here. Then if we actually take our photo out, you can see how we can look at our bird. Our negative shapes around to figure out the correct proportions for our positive shape of our bird. Now that we know how to use the negative space around the bird as an extra reference to when we're drawing, I wanted to just show you how to use a grid as a second little tidbit on how to get your drawings more accurate. [MUSIC] 6. Trick 2: Using a Grid: [MUSIC] So using a grid is a little bit like having a cheat sheet where you're drawing. If you're drawing from nature you can use a pencil or a straight edge to check how things line up, but when drawing from a photo, you can use a grid for extra reference points. So when I use a grid, I use it in the same way as I do when I break things down into shapes, but with the help of a grid, it does a lot of the work for me because it breaks things up into smaller proportions. So usually when I'm working with a grid, I will have my photo printed out and I literally draw just lines on top of it. You can choose what size you're grid is going to be and a grid is also helpful if you want to make something bigger or smaller in scale. [NOISE] Usually, I draw my grid with just the pencil and lightly, but for the sake of this class so that you can see everything better, I decided to use a thick orange color pencil for it. So now we have our grid marked down and then you would need a grid or wherever you are drawing. So I'll draw on my paper. So let's see. Maybe I want to make my piece a little bit smaller so I'll do slightly smaller squares. [NOISE] So now we have our grids drawn. So you can see that these squares are bigger than the squares, so when I draw my image it's going to be smaller on my second one. Then now drawing my image has become quite a lot easier. So I can figure out, okay, this is the third one down and this starts from the corner and it makes a lineup like that. Then I can count that the first one is here, second one, third one, fourth one. So now instead of looking at everything, all I have to look at is the relationship of items in one little square. So it makes it a lot faster to start looking at stuff. So then when I'm looking at my next square, this one right here, I can see that this is just under halfway through. So I can measure about the same right here and then it makes a little deviate over here. Then I have along this line continues right here. Then for the next one, this is a little bit past the halfway point so around over there. Continue my line and then you can either look at your positive shape or your negative space. So the next one, I can see that this is a skinny little triangle over here and then it curves and connects. So you would just go square by square and keep connecting everything as you go. So it takes a lot of the brain work out of it in figuring out where everything goes. If you're trying to make a final piece, on your final piece you can draw your square's grid fairly lightly. Once you've got the basic shape down, then you just keep going and you add all the details in just the same way as what you did the outline. So now I can start looking at where my eyeballs are. So you literally just go one square at a time and you figure out where things are and then you'd go from there. So in your practice sheets, I have also given you a grid exercise and the grids are already marked for you so you don't have to worry about drawing them. Then you just need to worry about transferring your birds down onto the squares on the bottom. Again, you can use the grids not only for figuring out the outlines of your bird and the shape of your bird, but then you can use it for all the details of where the white and the black shapes are, where the eyeball is in relation to inside of the square. Again, just look at one square at a time and concentrate on where things are lining up as far as just the one square at a time. So if it makes it a little bit easier for you for even a second tool, you can cut a little square into a piece of paper and then now you can concentrate on one square at a time when you're drawing, if that makes it easier for you. When you have that little information then it makes it really easy to figure out what goes where. Now that we've practiced a bit and understand the basics of drawing, let's practice drawing a larger image of a bird and get to our final project. [MUSIC] 7. Final Project - Owl Sketch: Now that you've learned all the tips and the tricks of getting our birds drawn, I figured this owl would be a fun practice piece for us to get going. If we're looking at our owl, we can start by drawing our teardrop shape and if you look at this, you can see that it's a fairly long and skinny teardrop. I'm going to just figure out my general shape of things. You can do this on a regular sheet of paper, I'm using Procreate to draw. I'm just trying to get my general shape of a bird over here. Here's my body of my bird. I'm also looking at this angle right here. If my tail goes this way, it's about that straight of an angle. Then looking at how big this slice is right here. There's my wing and then let's see, the wing goes about here and then our head and there's one straight and then a bump and then a bump. I've got one bump, two bumps, and then my third bump. If you need to erase, you can erase just to make things easier. Then we start looking at more detail so we'll add looking at this corner. I actually drew it a little bit too high because I'm looking at how skinny this is. Go and then there's a leather strap right there, you could either draw it or don't draw it. Then we have our claws going down here. That's our basic drawing. Then let's look at some details so we still need a face. You can see that it's a little bit wider up towards the top than it is on the bottom. I just want to make sure this is my center of my face over here. Maybe not quite that dark. See now I almost made a mistake, look at here and look at here. This might be throwing off a little bit. I want to make sure that I have all my proportions right. There's my general shape of my bird and then as you can see, there's a ridge. Then towards end of it, ends right here, we have a beak. You can see this right here and then see this side is skinnier than this side so I want to make this skinny and it curls around. We're moving from getting our basic shapes down now to a little bit more detail. Then for our other shape, you can look the shape is skinnier here and then it's wider up here so I just want to reflect that in my sketch. I'm just adding a general shape first so now we have our face. Then let's look over here just closer at the wings just to make sure we get all of our shapes in. You can see there's a skinny shape right here at the top, so I know this one and then there's a second feather over there. I think this went too far. Let's see. Now I've got to fix, this went too far down here. See how little I have left over here compared to over here? This should be really close to over there so I need to redraw it. As you're going, you have to reassess everything that you're doing and then fix things as you're going. Keep looking at the proportions of not just one thing, but that thing's relationship to everything else. Then this is actually the backside of the wing over here and then this is our second wing. Let's look. Then we have a second shape that goes down and it's looking at how thick is this over here and how thick is this over there, so it's slightly maybe thicker right around here. We're drawing the shapes and not the individual feathers yet. Then we have the second shape and now let's see where this lines up. This lines up a little bit past. Also looking on my negative shape, this piece of the wing underneath looks for me about the same and then going down. Then it comes down to a point, something like this. My sketches are always really loosey-goosey before I start tightening them up. Then we've got where this ends. There's one feather. This one is more in the shadow and then there's a big one right here. Then there's this little shape, three lines that converge down here. There we have those. We need to use our eraser in between just to make it easier to see. Always if you make your sketch and then it ends up being too messy, you can always transfer then your final drawing onto a second sheet of paper. You could draw through or you could stick it on a window and then just draw through a window. The advantage of drawing digitally is that I can just put another layer on the top and then draw through. Let's see, I'm just going to erase a little bit over here. See how this is thicker over here than it is over here? I going to make sure I'm getting all those proportions right. Then this one, there's a little bit more of a curve over here. So this would be my basic sketch. Now that we've got the basics down, you keep doing the same thing what you've been doing until now. We've been breaking things down into shapes and we look at relationships from one shape to the other and then as you keep going, you just keep going smaller and smaller and keep breaking things down further and further. The same thing that goes for drawing the shape of the bird goes exactly the same for drawing all of the details in the bird. Now if I wanted to actually then start painting this in or coloring in, I think it would be a good example to do this first as a pencil drawing. We can work this into a pencil drawing and then start shading things up over here. Then there's a big knot right here. You can choose to draw that or not. Now that we have our sketch, now if you wanted to continue with this, now let's start actually adding some of the details in here. 8. Final Project - Adding Details: Now that we have our sketch, now let's start actually adding some of the details in here. I'm going to start another layer, and I'm going to make the second layer little bit lighter. If I was working on paper, what I would do is I would actually use an eraser and I would erase all my lines so that they weren't quite as visible. That way I could start with my shading. Let's look at face first. Now we can start breaking down the shading. If you look over here, there's almost a straight line right here, and then it goes where the beak is. All of this, I would shade, start shading part darker. I would first start with a lighter shading, and then I would start analyzing everything that goes inside over here. We look at this reference. I mentioned a little bit closer. You can see that it continues here just a little bit, and then it's a little bit darker right around here. Then it's a little bit lighter. Then we've got a dark area right here from the eye. There's a little bit of a cast shadow underneath over here. Draw our eyeball in. There doesn't seem to be much of a highlight in the eye. But if you wanted to add a highlight in there, you could. I can add a little bit of a highlight right there, and so it's a little bit lighter across here. You don't ever have to get everything down on the first pass. Then you can see there's even a little bit of a light hitting right here, and then it's darker underneath over here. Then we can come back. You can see this makes a triangle right here. I'm trying to make the same shape of a triangle and shade all that in. There we go, and now let's look at the rest of this rest of the space. This isn't completely white over here, there's a little bit of shading still coming up to this line. Then this is white. Then it's up to you whether when you're doing your shading, if you want to go along with, you can see that this is radiating out. You could shake things so that it's radiating out, or personally in general, I just like to shade all going one direction a lot of times. Then when I'm doing the details for the feathers and things like that, then those things I would usually do alongside with the way that it's shaded. If you can get photos that have great resolution, then that's always helpful. You just work little by little. You don't have to be in a rush. There's a little bit of a triangular shadow down here. If you wanted to add some details for the feathers, you could do that. Then we get to our face. That's actually our brown. When I'm trying to do just the, it's going to be a darker color, I want to just add a layer of tone on there. That'll be the basis for everything. You can see it fades over here, I'll try to do the same thing in my drawing. There's a few little darker spots over here. Now looking at just this, we have two arches. I'm going to shade those two arches in a little bit darker. But drawing and putting all these elements in just gets so much easier when you actually have everything lined up. We're going to add a little bit of shadow and then there's some little spots. Now we'll get to our shading. There's not a perfect line over here. I'm adding just lines to indicate where the wings start. Now breaking up, we can break this part up right here. You see that there's a cast shadow right here. We can just add shading here first, and everywhere evenly. Then we see this is shaded that brown color. I'm still adding just shading to this whole area since this is what I'm working on. When I'm working on my drawings I like to work in one area at a time. It can be dangerous if you start immediately with your drawing working in one area at a time. But now that we've gotten everything parceled out and we know where everything goes, then in the same way as with their grid drawing, then it becomes much easier to then work inside of these shapes and then figure out where everything goes. We're going over here, we see there's a little bit of a cast shadow right here. Then there's this, hangs out and then there's more cast shadow. If you look at it closely, there's actually little bumps over here, or angles, so I can try to emulate that. Then I'm just going to add some more shading. You have to keep an eye on and just look at proportions so you're staying on track of what you're doing, there. We've got that. Now we've got our cast shadow over here. This one, if you look at it, it also has one, two and then there's 3 and 4. Darker area right here. I'm looking at just relationships. When I'm looking at this part right here, I'm just looking okay, there's a darker and then this is lighter, but then this is darker. When I'm shading over here, I just want to make sure that I reserve even a darker coloring over here. I'll make sure that I'm getting all my feathers in, a little bit of a cast shadow. There's a little bit of a lighter, almost white right here. Darker color at the tip. One, having my cast shadow. Right now you can see that when I'm adding my cast shadow, I'm adding that on a different angle. That gives me a little bit of an advantage over here. Let's see, I'm putting my cast shadow in the wrong spot. Let's see, it needs to go here. I need to have a triangle right here. Then this is in the shade except for this part. I'm looking at this and this. This is shorter than this. But then I've got a little bit of that, something's off over here. This should be shorter and this. So maybe this just needs to be shorter down this way. I'm looking at the shape so it goes down, and then it's a little bit more blunt at this end, there. Well, I feel better about the shape, and then I need to add my shading in. If you wanted to, you can always work on smaller pieces in the beginning, almost black over here. Then if you wanted to, there's little white dots, you could add those with an eraser in there. There would be that part of the wing. Then we have our little highlights over here. Then there's a little highlight right here, that's the shape of a little half moon or something. Outline for an owl. There's some little wispy things going the wrong way, but I choose not to add those to my drawings just so it's not so distracting over here. First I'm just going to add my all over shading. If you look at just compare these two, obviously this is darker than this, so I'm adding shading but it's not going to be as dark as what I did for the wing. I'm just adding a general shading to begin with. Also this part is shaded, so I'm going to add that in except for just right here. Now that I have the general shading done, then I'll look inside of this shade and see where there's lighter and darker areas. There's obviously the lighter areas here. Darker area behind over here, darker here. This is fairly even down here, but it's a little bit darker right along this, right along that. I'm just trying to make sure that I add everything in there, and there's a little bit more shading over here. A lot of times if you have some digital tool available to you, you can always take photos and make them black and white first, so that that way having the colors on there is not going to be as distracting for you. When I'm working on pieces like this, for me the most important thing is just having clarity. It's hard to see now because we're not quite ready yet. But once we get towards the ending, finishing stages and get more closer to being done with this piece. If there's areas that I feel like they are just not working I will go back and lighten or darken some areas just for adding readability to my piece. A lot of times I'll add darker outlines just to help with figuring out what part is where. Just making sure that whoever is looking at my piece understands how it is aligned. Let's continue on our piece. I'm looking at this line and it goes right underneath those little wing tips over there. Then there's this second line right underneath it. Then there's actually a cast shadow. Right here it's a little bit hard to see what's going on. When I squint my eyes, I realized that there's a dark. Then if you look at it right here, so there's dark and a light and a dark and a light. When I'm adding that in here, I'm just making sure that I'm adding all the right bits and pieces. If you are drawing this on a smaller scale where you're not able to get this far into detail, then you have to make a decision on which one you're going to make darker and which one you're going to make lighter. In the next video, we will add the last parts of shading to this drawing. We'll do a bit more drawing and less talking. You can keep it on the background or scroll and use it as reference when you're working on your own drawing, when you've come up with issues. I'll see you there. 9. Final Project - Final Touches: [MUSIC] In this last drawing video, let's add the details that we need to finish this out. What I learned about drawing birds over the years, is that as long as you have the basic shapes down, if you miss a few feathers here or there, nobody will ever notice that. As long as you're getting most of them there, if you need to fudge some feathers or leave some feathers out, you can totally do that and nobody will be the wiser for it. So in that sense, animals can be more forgiving than drawing people because if something's not looking right on a person's face, we will immediately notice it. But if a feather is not quite right on a bird's back, one individual feather in a wing, in most cases, nobody will ever know. So in that way, when you're learning to draw, animals are really great subjects compared to people because you can learn in peace and you can get really great results that will wow people even if they're not 100 percent accurate, they'll still look nice. Here's a great example where I got too carried away with my details so I'm going to erase this. Probably nobody would have noticed, but since we're trying to do realistic, I erased it so we can go over this again. [MUSIC] I'm going to turn my background off for just a minute, making it a little bit hard to see. I'm just adding overall tone. I need to make sure I leave this white part right here. The rest of this has a mid-range color to it and then just adding the little details in there. There's a little bit of a lighter spot right here so just racing some of that up. Interesting these little feather patterns [inaudible] over here. [MUSIC] I realized that if I'm looking at this one where it aligns up right here. [MUSIC] Let's see what we're looking at. Add a little bit more shadow here. See there's a little bit of shadow right here too. [MUSIC] In the end, you can use all the skills that you learned on how to draw the owl. You'd use the same skills on how to draw this wood too. [MUSIC] There we have our owl drawn from our photo reference. Then once you button it to the point where you're starting to feel like you're close to being done with it, I usually like to just look at everything as a whole and just gauge how I'm liking it. So if I just squint my eyes and look at this both of them together, I feel maybe this is a little bit too dark over here so I might go in and erase this and make this just a hair lighter just so that my wings appear a little bit darker in general. If you're using pencil on paper, then you can either use a eraser or then [inaudible] that's multiple is really great for going back and just lightening. You roll it over areas and it'll lighten things for you. But I always like to have bright lights and then dark darks and then that way you can create a nice contrast in your piece. I'm just looking at the shape of the eye, maybe it goes out a little bit more. There's a little bit of shading there so let's see if this gives us any difference over here. Now if I'm looking at things in general, I feel like I want my wings just to have a little bit more tone. Might go back and just add just a touch in here, just to darken them, just a smidge. Try to leave some lighter areas. Just in general, bringing this just a hair darker. So now I'm not using my reference as much anymore, but I'm just using my eyes to just judge what the piece needs, and I feel I want my wings to just have just a little bit more depth to them. So as a whole, when I'm looking at the piece, I can tell that I want my wings to be darker than my actual white belly for my owl. So when I'm just adding this last little tone over here, that enables whatever brights that I have over here to just pop out even more. I feel just adding that tone over here just overall gives me a better contrast in my piece so maybe I need to go back in and erase this just a hair so even though it is in shadow, I'm still wanting it to read a specific way compared to the wings. So this is then where your artistic license takes flight. I'm pretty happy with that. There's a weird dark spot right here that's catching my eye a little bit too much. [MUSIC] There, I think I'm happy with that. Some of the things are a little bit looser like over here. But I feel as long as I have the face and some of the details in the wings, then I'm pretty happy with the way things are. Thanks so much for drawing along with me, I hope you've figured out some tips and tricks on how to take your drawings to the next level. I hope that you'll spend some time just practicing and whatever skills of the way that you break things down into shapes and to draw something, the same applies for shading and for adding all the details into your drawing. Once you figure out how to be observant and how to break things down and do the basic shapes, then the same thing goes for everything else and looking at how they are in relation to each other. So now we are done with our final project. This reference photo will be in your handouts and then if you would rather work on your own photograph, then I would love to see those pictures in our classroom too. Congrats, we're all done with our owl. Now let's meet in the last video for some final thoughts. 10. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing the class. I know that learning, drawing, and observation skills can be a little bit boring and tedious at times, but I hope that this class has made it more fun for you and encouraged you to keep practicing. We've worked on, how to find the basic shapes in birds, and then how to use negative space and grids to break your subjects down even into smaller, manageable chunks in order to draw them properly in proportion. We've looked at how to use negative space and the grid to break your subjects down into manageable chunks and how to find the basic shapes of birds. Once you learn how to observe the world around you and break it down into basic shapes, drawing anything becomes possible. All the handouts that you need to complete the class are in the Projects and Resources section of the class page. They're easiest to access and print out on a desktop computer. I encourage for you to upload a photo of your drawing practice sheets or your final drawings into the class so we can all cheer the progress that you've made. If you want feedback for your drawing, don't hesitate to mention that in your comments, and I'll be happy to do that for you. If you are on social media, you can tag me at MirkaDraws, or at MirkaHokkanen, and use the hashtag MirkaSkillshare. Remember to follow me here on Skillshare so you get notified for new classes. Take care. I hope you keep practicing, and I'll see you in my next class. Bye.