I recently found a book at a gift store local to me with some wonderful photography of birds in my area. Its called Feathers – A beautiful look at a bird’s most unique feature by Stan Tekiela. I bought it to keep as a resource to do reference drawings from.

My first attempt is this Downy Woodpecker. I have one that regularly comes to my feeder and I’m always fascinated by first of all how cute it is, and secondly the contrasting black and white pattern with the very specific tiny patch of red right on the back of its head. I’ve found the feathers of this bird around my yard (which I think means it was unfortunately taken by a predator) and I love how they are black with white, imperfect polka dots on the edge.

I started this drawing with trying to get the shape of the bird right. It always takes me about four times to get it satisfactory. And even then I still don’t think it looks right! Looking at now that I’m done with it, I wish I angled it better.

I started with a light Derwent Graphic pencil. I love using these pencils as they don’t smudge too much.

At first I was just going to do only graphic pencils but then I decided to see how Prismacolors would lay over the graphic pencil.

This Prismacolor Colorless Blender really make a difference, especially when smoothing out black.

Here’s a second one I did, this time a lot quicker, in an artbook I share with my 6 year old. I’m not happy with the positioning but it came along pretty fast since I had gotten warmed up with the previous one.  I used white-out from the dollar store on this one for the white patches, which I think worked nicely. 

If you are interested in learning to draw birds, a resource I use is the book The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds.

Supplies used:

Prismacolor Premier Box of 36

Derwent Graphic Pencils

Kneaded Eraser

Prismacolor Colorless Blender

White out from the dollar store

Canson Universal Sketch Book – 8.5 x ll inches – 65lb paper