Art #65: Drawing Birds, Part 1

Sketching birds in pencil

New year, new subject!

Several of you have asked about drawing birds. I’ve been drawing all the birds I hear with my Merlin app for a couple years now. I’ve filled two sketchbooks and I’m working on a third.

What I’ve learned from drawing birds is that birds make an excellent starter subject. When you draw birds, you have to use all the basic drawing skills that we talked about here: negative space, contour line drawing, measuring proportions, and so on.

I don’t draw a bird every day, but when I do draw one, it’s quick! This is something I can do in under half an hour, making it a very satisfying semi-regular art project. If you draw the same kind of thing over and over again (birds, flowers, coffee cups, your own face), you’ll definitely learn some things and develop some ideas about how you like to approach that subject. Your thirtieth drawing will be better than your first, and you’ll know why that is.

Here’s a quick look at my bird sketchbook. As I flip through the pages, I explain s…