It has been a while since I participated in Draw a Bird Day. I was happy to see some bird drawings in my blog reader this morning and decided to get inspired. I’ve been mostly sketching lately and none of the results have looked quite showable. But I did have a partially coloured drawing of some bird wings. And now, it’s fully coloured!

When I look at open and folded wings in bird photos, I often wonder – how do they fold and which feathers go where? John Muir Laws came to the rescue! The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds explains all this with beautiful illustrations. My two wing drawings are based on his illustrations of a passerine wing (dark grey with two white wing bars… I don’t know the species… some kind of flycatcher???). I did a good job of illustrating the layout of the different feather groups, but…