Drawing: Birds

Learn to draw step by step

Maury Aaseng

• Publisher: Walter Foster Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781633228504
• eBook ISBN: 9781633228511
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

With Drawing: Birds, learn to render a variety of beautiful, realistic birds in graphite pencil.

Artists of all skill levels and bird enthusiasts alike will find creative inspiration and valuable drawing instruction in Drawing: Birds. This comprehensive, 10.25 × 13.75–inch book book opens with an introduction to essential drawing tools, including graphite pencils, erasers, paper, and other materials. Then learn a variety of basic drawing techniques, such as shading, stippling, hatching, crosshatching, and others. Discover helpful tips for creating a good composition, understanding and seeing value, transferring photo references, and taking artistic liberties. After learning the drawing basics, jump into the easy step-by-step projects to draw specific birds, including a barred owl, a great blue heron, a ruby-throated hummingbird, a gray parrot, a pileated woodpecker, and black-capped chickadees.

In this book, professional artist and nature enthusiast Maury Aaseng offers simple, comprehensive instruction for drawing a range of lovely birds, as well as information for achieving accurate proportions, capturing motion, and building up form. Aaseng also shows you how to create realistic textures, such as feathers, nests, tree bark, and water. With his easy step-by-step projects that start with basic shapes and progress to detailed final drawings, you can draw many birds, from the common to the exotic. Easy-to-follow instruction and art tips throughout make Drawing: Birds a complete guide for creating realistic and detailed drawings of these feathered friends. For the aspiring avian artist, this book is a must-have art-instruction reference.

Designed for beginners, the How to Draw & Paint series offers easy-to-follow guides that introduce artists to basic tools and materials and include simple step-by-step lessons for a variety of projects suitable for the aspiring artist. Drawing: Birds allows artists to develop drawing skills by demonstrating how to start with basic shapes and use pencil and shading techniques to create varied textures, values, and details for a realistic, completed drawing.

TOOLS & MATERIALS

Graphite pencil artwork requires few supplies, and fortunately they are fairly inexpensive. Choose professional pencils and paper, rather than student-grade materials; they will last longer and ensure a higher-quality presentation.

Pencils

Pencils are labeled based on their lead texture. Hard leads (H) are light in value and great for fine, detailed work, but they are more difficult to erase. Soft leads (B) are darker and wonderful for blending and shading, but they smudge easily. Medium leads, such as HB and F, are somewhere in the middle. Select a range of pencils between HB and 6B for variety. You can purchase wood-encased pencils or mechanical pencils with lead refills.

Wooden Pencil The most common type of pencil is wood-encased graphite. These thin rods—most often round or hexagonal when cut crosswise—are inexpensive, easy to control and sharpen, and readily available to artists.

Flat Carpenter’s Pencil Some artists prefer using a flat carpenter’s pencil, which has a rectangular body and lead. The thick lead allows you to easily customize its shape to create both thick and thin lines.

Carpenter’s Pencil

Mechanical Pencil Mechanical pencils are plastic or metal barrels that hold individual leads. Some artists prefer the consistent feel of mechanical pencils to that of wooden pencils; the weight and length do not change over time, unlike wooden pencils that wear down with use.

Mechanical Pencil

Woodless Graphite Pencil These tools are shaped like wooden pencils but are made up entirely of graphite lead. The large cone of graphite allows artists to use either the broad side for shading large areas or the tip for finer strokes and details.

Woodless Pencil

Graphite Stick Available in a full range of hardnesses, these long, rectangular bars of graphite are great tools for sketching (using the end) and blocking in large areas of tone (using the broad side).

Graphite Stick

Paper

Paper has a tooth, or texture, that holds graphite. Papers with more tooth have a rougher texture and hold more graphite, which allows you to create darker values. Smoother paper has less tooth and holds less graphite, but it allows you to create much finer detail. Plan ahead when beginning a new piece, and select paper that lends itself to the textures in your drawing subject.

Blending Tools

There are several tools you can use to blend graphite for a smooth look. The most popular blenders are blending stumps, tortillons, and chamois cloths. Never use your finger to blend—it can leave oils on your paper, which will show after applying graphite.

Stumps Stumps are tightly rolled paper with points on both ends. They come in various sizes and are used to blend large and small areas of graphite, depending on the size of the stump. You can also use stumps dipped in graphite shavings for drawing or shading.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Tools & Materials
• Basic Techniques
• Copyright