How to Draw Birds Flying Away in the Sky Step By Step

Draw birds flying

Hi everyone and welcome to this drawing article. In this article, I'll be working on a couple of drawings of birds flying in different poses. I'm using a mechanical pencil with HB LEDs on smooth Bristol board paper along with a blending stick to help smooth it. The shading and a small eraser help add highlights. As I'm working please don't worry too much about the equipment. You're using it as long as you have a pencil and paper in front of you. You'll be absolutely fine and you'll be able to create something. The first drawing that I wanted to work on was a side view of a bird. Mid-flight and as you can see.

How to draw a bird flying in the distance

I started off by sketching the beak and the rest of the bird's head. The eye is actually very close to the corner of the bird's mouth. I proceeded to sketch the rest of the body of the bird in a very rough way. It doesn't matter about the quality of the lines. At this point is just about getting an accurate idea of the proportions. Just kind of figuring them out with some very light rough sketches. This is also really important when you're working on the wings. It would be a bad idea to work on the feathers. First, before you've got the proportions of the wings drawn out. So, I like to work on how to draw the complete outline of the wings.

How to draw birds flying away

First and then proceed to add the feathers over the top of that afterward. It took me a few attempts to get the rough outlines of the wings. First, before I started adding any sketching and any details over the top of them. Once I had placed those outlines that's when I started adding. The wing in the foreground is the most prominent and detailed part of this drawing. So, I wanted to make sure I spent a bit of extra time making sure. All of the feathers looked as correct as possible. Once those outlines were completed, I then moved on to working on the shading.

How to draw birds flying away in the sky

I started off actually by shading the bird's head and body just getting that part off. So out of the way first when it comes to adding a feather or a fur texture and it's so easy drawing for kids. I like to start off by adding some quick fine strokes with the pencil. I use the blending stick over the top of that to smooth. The shading between those lines and then after that I use the small eraser to add some highlighting. I usually go through the process a few times where I add more lot more pencil lines over the top of that use. The blending stick adds some stripes of smoothing. I use the eraser again it just kind of builds up.

Bird drawing

This layered effect and I find that this is actually a really nice and an easier way of creating a simple feather or fur texture for the bird’s beak. It really helps to make these animals stand out from the page once. I'd added the shading and the details to the bird's head. The bird's body follows the same process that I used for the bird's heads. But kind of elongating those feathers and using some longer strokes of the pencil. The same sort of process happened for the tail as well. But make sure those feathers are much more defined with some darker shading to the underside of them. Also after that, it was time to work on the most prominent part of this away drawing and that was the wing in the foreground.

Bird sketch

So, for this, I started off by working on the feathers on top of the wing. These are much finer and they require a bit of darker shading. For the top edge of this wing, I started by defining the shape of each little feather. Then I added an area of dark shading on the left side of each. One after that I used the blending stick to smooth the shading over the top of all of them. The small eraser adds a highlight along the right edge of each feather. Just kind of defining the edges with highlights and shading the shaded areas. It really helps to show that overlap effect and that the feathers are all kind of sitting on top of each other.

Simple bird drawing

I continued this process along this section of feathers even having some of the little feathers kind of going off in different random directions. Because they're kind of the smaller fluffier feathers that are less uniform than the feathers further down the wing. Once that section of feathers has been completed is then time to move on to the middle section of feathers. These feathers are a little bit larger the method of shading them is similar. But it's a little bit different because the difference between the shaded and the highlighted areas is a bit more defined. So, for each feather, I was making sure to add a line going down the middle with the left side shaded.

How to draw birds flying step by step

The right side was highlighted and when I was adding the shading. I was making sure to add it in the direction of the texture of the feather. It's also a good idea to add some shading between the feathers. This is a good way to add to the realism and to show that the feathers are overlapping adding some dark shading. Towards the top of these feathers also really helps in showing that the feathers on top are kind of overlapping them. Another way of really helping this is to use the small eraser to add some lines of feathers kind of going over the top of that dark shading. Just to help the illusion that the first section of feathers is fully overlapping.

Easy way to draw birds flying

The second section and then it was time to add the shading to the last section of feathers on this wing. These feathers are the longest and the largest and I used a similar process. I did for the second section of feathers where I add the darker shading on the left side of each feather. The highlighted section on the right side making sure to add that shading in the direction of each feathers texture. It also results at this points to have a sharpened pencil or a mechanical pencil to really add those fine detailed lines. At the tip of these wings especially because they are the closest part of the bird to the viewer. So, you want those lines to be as defined as possible also remembering again to add.

Draw birds flying cartoon

The shade in between each leather to show that they are overlapping and also adding that shading. Towards the top of these feathers to show that the second layer of feathers is overlapping them. In the final parts of this drawing, I worked on the wing in the background. This one doesn't need to be as defined. It doesn't need the sharp lines because you want it to look like. It's in the background so I added some very basic shading adding some extra shading along the left side of each feather. The blending sticks to blur to blend all of that and even blur the edges. Just kind of phase this part of the drawing into the background. Let's more learn about cartoon drawing.

Drawing of birds flying away

There is a layer of really fine feathers towards the top of the wing. I used the same process that I used forward the bird's head and body. For those feathers and then use the blending stick over the top of them. Just to kind of smooth that and kind of blur it a bit. After this drawing was completed, I decided that I wanted to work on another drawing of a bird. This time I wanted the bird to be in more of a landing pose with the wings. In more of an upright position and it would have its feet poking out as well ready to land. So, I started off by working on the basic pencil sketch drawing getting the rough outlines of the beak.

How to draw black birds flying away

The head and the eye and then drawing the rest of the body in more of a vertical position. I got the basic sketch of the outlines of the wings. First as well just to kind of get an idea of where else to place them and kind of adjusted that. As I needed to, I also sketched the shape of the bird’s little feet for each foot. They have three toes in front and one toe at the back and lastly for this sketching part. I defined the shape of each individual feather on each wing moving on to the shading. I went through the same process of adding the feathers to the bird's head and body by using the quick flying strokes of the pencil. First and then using the bending stick and small razor and then continuing that process to build up.

Drawing of birds flying in the sky

In the layers, I added similar shading to the bird's beak where I added the dark sections of shading. Left some ridges of highlights especially on the top section of the beak and then for the eye. It was the same process again of leaving that nice big highlights to really show up. The eye and make that stand out as a prominent feature. I added some longer feathers to the rest of the bird's body and then continued them. All the way down to the tail at the tail, I added some shading to each feather. Adding some darker shading on the left side of each feather and then having highlighted edges. On the right side and actually where I wanted to have the bird's body feathers.

How to draw birds flying

Overlapping the tail feathers, I used the small eraser to use quick fine strokes and show-up feathers in front of the shading of the tail. This is a really cool method and it really helps. When you want to add those highlighted feathers over the top of the shaded area. Just by using the small eraser. It really helps with the depth of the drawing. It really helps to make it look a bit more 3D drawing. I added some darker shading to the bird's feet also making sure to make use of the shading to add some wrinkles to the skin using. The small eraser added some highlights along the left side of the toes and added some darker shading to each claw.

Draw birds flying jet

It was time to work on the wings and I started off by working on the wing in the foreground. I began by adding a dark outline along the top edge of each feather. I added some smooth shading with the blending stick across all of them. But make sure to leave some highlighted areas towards the tip of the wing. After that, I added some dark shading towards the top of each feather and kind of defined that with a sharp line for the layer of feathers. Towards the top of the wing, I used the same process that I used for the rest of the bird's body. Then to kind of show up that texture of the overlapping.

For the larger feathers of the wing I used the small eraser just to add quick fine strokes and kind of add that textured layer. Then lastly in a similar style that I used for the previous drawing for the background wing. I just added some very basic shading and kind of blurred it into the background with the blending stick. After that, this drawing was completed and so I've completed two different bird poses for this article. They were both really fun to work on.

Source: Cool drawing idea