How To Draw A Bird
A new guide to bird drawing inspires a deeper connection with nature.
The snowy egret Im sketching is not cooperating. I cant get its kinked yet sinewy neck to look right. And its legsthere shouldnt be four of them! My bird looks like a pistachio stuck with a speared olive, walking on clothespins.
Meanwhile, as I scrawl with a pencil on a small sketchpad, my modela wild birdcontinues pecking at mudflats in Bolinas Lagoon, between Northern Californias Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, completely oblivious to my artistic frustrations.
Im enrolled in an avian drawing class at the Point Reyes Birding and Nature Festival. My instructor is John Muir Laws, a California-based artist, naturalist, educator, scientist, and field guide author (hes related only by spirit to the legendary naturalist). After a morning crash course on the basics, set in the classroom, Laws has led about a dozen of us adult students into a breezy, sun-streaked April day to try our hands at field sketching.
Raised by an amateur botanist and a birder, Laws learned to love nature at an early age. A family friend turned him on to drawing, a pursuit that became an essential toolLaws is severely dyslexic and supplements written observations of the natural world with sketches. Now 46, Laws has devised a novel array of tips that may not transform you overnight into the next David Sibley but are easy and rewarding to follow. They make their print debut this September in his new book, (Heyday Books). We have this myth that drawing is a gift, says Laws, but its a skill that any of us can learn. Whats more, developing that skill leads to much more than just artworkit can make you a better birder or naturalist by forcing you to pay close attention to what youre sketching. Youre seeing details that have always been there in front of you but youve never really been able to focus on, says Laws.
While I am somewhat artistic, until my course with Laws, I had virtually no experience drawing birds aside from the occasional doodle. If tasked with penciling in, say, a blue jay perched on a nearby branch, I probably would have begun by outlining its contours. But thats not the best approach, according to Laws. To get started, he instead suggests three basic steps. First, before anything, notice the birds postureis it looking up? Head down?and draw a simple line, like an axis, suggestive of that position.
Next, focus on the birds proportions. Where is the head relative to the body, and what size are the two? Using the initial line you drew as a guide, block in the proportions with circular shapes. The result should be something vaguely resembling Frosty the Snowman. At this stageand this is criticaldouble-check your work. Those who dont will learn the hard way. At the end of the drawing theyll say, My bird looks wrong, says Laws. Thats because you have a western sandpiper with a head the size of a chickadee. And at that point, theres nothing that you can really do to fix that. (You can use an eraser, but I find it cumbersome.)
Once the proportions check out, look for the birds defining angles, such as where the head and tail connect with the body. I think of carving those into these bubbles of proportion that Ive set up, says Laws. I then have a framework [in which] I can come along and start to put in the detail. To better identify these angles, take note of negative spacethat is, the area around the bird thats not bird. Focusing on this open space will bring the individuals defining edges into stark relief.
Mastering these three steps helps capture what Laws calls the birds oomph or, as some birders say, its jizzthe essence of the species. What is finchiness, finchosity? You want your chickadee to be chickadee-esque, says Laws, your magpie to be magpie-y. Think of Roger Tory Petersons silhouettes. Theyre deceptively simple, black shapes, yet they clearly represent one type of bird, even without the details.
What comes next depends on what you want to focus onindividual feathers or markings, perhaps an eye, maybe the patterns of light and dark from plumage and shadows. Understanding birds general anatomy, discussed in Lawss book, will help you make sense of your observations. But the key to field sketching is to draw what you see, and not what you think should be there. For example, even if you know that birds have three forward-facing toes but only one is visible, you can just draw one toe, says Amanda Krauss, an artist and fellow student in my class who has had trouble rendering bird feet. It was like a lightbulb went off for me.
Nature sketching guides abound, but where birds are concerned, Laws thinks his fills a void. Some books will have illustrations that are really inspiring, he says, but they dont explain how the drawings are made. I wanted to really deconstruct what is happening when I make my lines, where Im looking, where I suggest that people focus.
Hes breaking new ground, says Hannah Hinchman, a nature journalist and artist who once taught Laws in a workshop and reviewed an early draft of his book. Theres nothing static, she says. He just refuses to see these mobile, fluid birds as objects. He sees them as alive, and thats the way they come across on the page.
Drawing outside is crucial to creating a realistic bird in two dimensions. The easiest species may even be one thats most accessible, like your backyard cardinal or house finch. As you observe, jot down notes in addition to sketching, and ponder out loud, asking yourself questions such as, What does this bird remind me of? or I wonder why it has markings like that? (At Bolinas, one classmate suggested that a flock of swimming cormorants resembled Phoenician ships.) While the very act of drawing helps solidify a memory, verbalizing what youre seeing ingrains it that much more. Should the bird fly off, youll still have a few details in mind to flesh out your drawing.
Sketching outdoors will also help you achieve what Laws considers one of the most important goals in drawing birds: forging a more meaningful connection with nature. In other words, dont aim for the perfect picture; youll only get frustrated if it doesnt turn out right. Instead, draw to observe more deeply and to remember those precious moments removed from the mechanized world. The more focused you are on experiencing what youre seeing, the less youll care about your masterpiece, and that frees you up to make lots of drawings, says Laws. As a pleasant by-product, the more you draw, the better it gets.
Im still learning the ropes. My snowy egret is hardly a mirror image, but now I know that I can ignore my inner art critica liberating concept. Even so, establishing a drawing habit is hard; Ive practiced a few times since my class. On one gorgeous, mild day in May I visit a lake near my Brooklyn apartment. Spying several mute swans, I settle down with my sketchpad near a tree. I notice how one birds neck fluidly recoils like a snake, and I admire the species dramatic, inky eyeliner. A man and a boy study the way one swimssomething I see, too, marveling at its feet like built-in paddles. Im reminded of what Laws told me: If you can get yourself to slow down and appreciate that bird, for whatever it has new to teach you, the wonders that youre going to see in even the most common things are infinite. How could I resist?