What You'll Be Creating

In this tutorial, I will show you how to draw a peacock with an open tail and how to draw a peacock feather.

Here's What You'll Learn in This Peacock Drawing Tutorial

How to draw a peacock
How to draw a peacock's tail
How to draw a peacock feather
How to finish a drawing of a peacock

Let's start drawing a peacock!

1. How to Draw a Peacock

Step 1

Draw an oval. This will be the torso of our peacock.

Step 2

Draw a long, S-shaped neck with an oval head at one end.

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Step 3

Sketch the legs below the ankles ("reversed knees"). Drawing them this way can help you establish the pose without getting caught up in the details.

Step 4

Draw the upper part of the legs. These will be hidden under the feathers, but it helps to know where they are.

Step 5

Sketch the curve of the beak. Peacocks are related to chickens, so you can use a chicken beak as a reference.

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Sketch the curve of the wings. Peacocks tend to keep them low when they fan their tail. The wings are covered by the tail mostly, but some parts may stay visible, so we need to know where they are.

Step 7

Draw all the toes. Again, these are just like chicken feet!

Step 8

Outline the neck, starting thin right by the head and then getting wider as you get closer to the torso.

Step 9

Finish the beak.

Step 10

Draw an oval eye.

Step 11

Add a nose hole.

Step 12

Draw the "crown" on the head.

Step 13

Add details to the legs and feet.

Step 14

Finish the wings.

2. How to Draw a Peacock's Tail

Step 1

The body is done, so now it's time to start drawing a peacock's fabulous tail! Its base is like a stiff cape that the peacock raises above its back.

Step 2

Sketch the axes of the tail. Younger birds have smaller tails, so if you want to make this drawing less challenging, you can draw the axes shorter.

Step 3

Draw the rays of feathers.

Step 4

Outline the whole tail to make sure the shape made by the feathers looks regular.

Step 5

Divide the whole shape of the tail into many regular sections. This will help you place the feathers regularly.

Step 6

Draw the "eyespots" around the tail's edge...

... and within the shape, but this time leaving regular spaces in between.

Step 7

The base of the tail is covered with little scale-like feathers. So you can use the method I use for drawing scales:

3. How to Draw a Peacock Feather

Step 1

All the guide lines are in place, so let's take a look now at the details of how to draw a single peacock feather.

Every feather must start with a straight line. Peacock feathers can be very long, but only the top has a visible vane.

Step 2

Draw an egg shape. It will be the basis for the whole eyespot.

Step 3

Draw the same shape inside, leaving a little space in between.

Step 4

Cross the smaller oval with a gentle curve. This will create the shape of the "iris".

Step 5

Draw a smaller oval inside the "iris"—the "pupil".

Step 6

Draw a reversed "V" inside this small shape.

Step 7

Outline the whole shape, creating a triangular base for the eyespot and a thick outline on its sides.

Step 8

This outline is copied on top, but here it starts to turn into individual barbs.

Step 9

The whole tail must be drawn with a slightly different approach, so let's focus on a single feather for now. The "pupil" is dark, but there's a subtle gradient inside.

Step 10

The top of the feather is the densest, and it follows the shape of the eyespot:

Step 11

The lower part is sparser:

Step 12

If you want to draw a detailed peacock feather, make the barbs fluffy and gently shade the eyespot.

Step 13

We're focusing on black and white drawing here, but if you want to draw a peacock feather in color, there are three colors that are the most important: green, blue, and brown.

4. How to Finish a Drawing of a Peacock

Step 1

All right, we're almost done! Let's draw the final lines now.

Let's start detailing our peacock outline drawing. Draw the details of the head. Because the head looks so insignificant in comparison to the impressive tail, you don't have to make it too detailed—these details will not be that visible anyway.

Step 2

Outline the body and the legs.

Step 3

Outline the scaly feathers at the base of the tail.

Step 4

Add some scales to the legs.

Step 5

Cross each "scale" on the base of the tail with a vertical line.

Step 6

Now shade the peacock. It must look dark in comparison to the tail.

Step 7

Let's go back to the tail now. Draw the spots as explained earlier, except looser here—because there are so many of the spots and they're so small that each individual one matters less.

Step 8

Draw the shafts of the feathers. Because the feathers are mostly thin, they look almost translucent in contrast to the thick and solid shafts. Add shafts to all the eyespots, but also in between, to fill the empty spaces.

Step 9

The lower part of the tail has a lot of eyespots concentrated in one place. It makes this area look thick and fluffy.

Step 10

Now draw all the feathers. It may take a while, but remember that you don't need to be very strict here—just draw a lot of lines in the same rhythm along each shaft.

Step 11

There's also one more type of peacock feather, mainly visible at the edge of the tail. They look like open 'V's.

Step 12

Accentuate the shafts some more to make them more visible.

Step 13

Since we're drawing in black and white, it's hard to create the contrast between colorful eyespots and dull feathers. However, we can use value for this—make it even denser to make the areas between the eyespots darker.

Keep in mind that the closer you are to the edge of the tail, the sparser the feathers.

Step 14

Take a final look at your drawing and see what else you can fix. I accentuated the shading some more to increase the contrast.

There it is! Now you have a beautiful peacock outline drawing made from scratch!

Beautiful!

And that's how you make a realistic peacock drawing. Now you know how to draw a peacock with an open tail from scratch! Drawing a peacock isn't as hard as you thought—it just takes some time and attention to detail.

Experiment with different angles and postures by looking at peacock images for drawing. After working with plenty of peacock images to draw, you'll make more room for experimentation. Become an expert in turning peacock pictures into drawings!

Amelie Braun

Artist & Cartoonist

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