The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds

Product Description

With a foreword by artist and field guide author David Allen Sibley.

John Muir Laws’s guide to drawing birds is itself winged, soaring between a devotion not only to art but also to the lives, forms, and postures of the birds themselves. Here, artistic technique and the exquisite details of natural history intertwine, and drawing becomes the vehicle for seeing.

As Laws writes, “To draw feathers, you must understand how feathers grow, overlap, and insert into the body. To create the body, you must have an understanding of the bird’s skeletal structure. To pose this skeleton, you must be able to perceive the energy, intention, and life of the bird.”

This how-to guide will perfect the technique of serious arists but also, perhaps more importantly, it will provide guidance for those who insist they can’t draw. Leading the mind and hand through a series of detailed exercises, Laws delivers what he promises: that “drawing birds opens you to the beauty of the world.”

The demonstrations and material in this book has been developed and refined in hundreds of workshops and will give you the techniques and knowledge you need to draw birds.

Learn how to:

• focus on the most important aspects of a bird in a quick sketch.
• suggest the texture of bird feathers.
• observe and capture critical proportions of different species.
• understand and accurately depict a bird’s wing.
• draw bird beaks, eyes and feet.
• foreshorten and rotate your drawings to any angle.
• render the angles and curves of birds with long necks.
• draw birds in flight.
• develop techniques for adding color with colored pencil or watercolor.
• sketch in the field when your subject can move or fly away.
• avoid common pitfalls in bird drawing.

Related Resources:

How to Teach Nature Journaling
The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds
The Laws Sketchbook for Nature Journaling
The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling