After Chatting With @courtkossai For A Bit I Had To Draw This. Our Particular Verbal/audio Communication

hi, it's another different anon, wondering if we could get more black winged cats? Thanks!!

A quick guide about my method for drawing bird wings - with focus on winged people, though this all applies to birds proper as well. It's all about weird arms with weird blankets.

Referenced tutorials: ❧ Bone structure ❧ Feather anatomy and wing shape ❧ Simplification and texture

Orca hunting herring. Filmed in Norway. From The Norwegian Fjords: Life in the Twilights (2018).

i’ve had this idea in my head fir a while now….

you know how queer people do the limp wrist to discreetly ask others if they’re gay?

WHAT IF there’s a therian version of this where we do the paw hand!

Like THIS! It’s discreet enough that other people won’t pick up on it, but other therians can see that it’s a paw! Can we make this a thing pls????

Tangible wings would solve so many of my problems

orcas

Let’s Draw Wings

I’ve gotten the question/request of how I draw wings lots and lots so I’ve decided to make a dedicated post!

Now…I’m no master, but I have found a way that I like to draw wings that’s efficient for me. There three main points: 

References

Simplification

Texture Management

First of all - References

My favorite wing reference of all time is this post by Jenn on Twitter. I have both the images saved but I use the Wing Shapes one, below, alllllll the time. Like for real all the time!

I also keep pretty extensive collections of wing photo reference. When I’m having trouble, I’ll trace a few or do studies to get back into the swing of things. Here are links to my Pinterest boards:

Broadwing Reference (passive soaring and high-speed)

Longwing Reference (active soaring)

Shortwing Reference (elliptical and hovering)

Secondly - Simplification

When I sketch wings, I simplify Jenn’s diagram even further -

For me, the key to drawing wings is simplifying the wing down - from the structure to the feathers - the goal for me is to be able to draw them quickly and have the proper information conveyed. It needs to look like a wing in the base sketch. If it doesn’t, no amount of rendering and extra feathers will help. I like to break the wing into the three main moving parts. The orange is one part, then the purple contains two main chunks feathers that you can group together and move as their own parts. 

On top of that, I like to think of wings like a sheet of paper. They can bend and fold in on themselves, with the orange meaty bits anchoring everything together. 

Lastly - Texture

I like to call wings “texture monsters”. Feathers are hard to manage and can easily make wings look over-busy and muddy. Just like before, I break the wing into chunks so I can spend less time drawing the wing and it’s feathers:

Then you can put it all together and push things further -

So yeah this is how I throw wings together! The wings I draw aren’t super technical or detailed, but I what matters for me is that they look and feel like believable wings at a glance -

~ Larn

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Keiko breaching in Iceland