How to draw a Bird | Pen and Ink Drawing techniques | Watercolor plus Ink Drawing.

Hello there, nice to see you here again. In this video I'm going to draw a pigeon bird using micron archival ink pen with a vibrant watercolor wash. So stay tuned and watch the full video. As you can see I'm trying to establish a solid drawing at this stage which is very important because it will define the further efforts that I will put later on. As you can see I'm drawing freehand and I find it very pleasing to work in this way rather than working in other mechanical methods like grid or tracing. Though sometimes it may take quite longer to draw your subject perfectly but it has many advantages like while working in freehand you get to know your subject much better and in the process of drawing you will surely find yourself involved rather than being more mechanical. Apart from this freehand drawing also allows you to understand the just positions of different forms with one another and you learn to accumulate them together. Though it takes practice but after a while you will surely find this method the most organic way of drawing. Now I have just started working in the beak and the head area of this bird. As you can see I'm just laying a light layer of strokes to fill the area around the head and the beak as it is going to be the most important part of this drawing. One thing to notice here is that though I have used definite strokes to define the head but the most important rig here is the direction of the strokes. As you can notice I drew them specifically in a way that looks like the feathers in a bird's head. Though I use strokes but I still try to depict the illusion of softness in the strokes and you can achieve that using short and light strokes. I am defining the eye to catch the character of the bird as like the human face. In this case as well the eye will speak for the bird and will reveal its character. Now I am working in the body. As you can see I am keeping the direction of the strokes very specific because it is so important to follow the natural movement of the first. While working with pen and ink it is also very important to keep an eye for maintaining proper values in your drawing. So it is always preferable to work from light to dark strokes. Now there is an important tip. Dark necessarily doesn't mean to produce strokes with heavy pressure. You can also produce dark shadows increasing the density of your strokes. In that case you neither damage the truth of the paper and still get a very decent darker values. Now speaking of the paper for this drawing I am using brusto watercolor paper 300 gsm. I think you can see that the paper is quite rough and I love working in this sort of paper because of its strength. I did a portrait of gorilla in this same kind of paper and I just loved it. You can watch it in my playlist if you want. Anyways apart from paper I am seemingly using two pointed ink pens which are micron 0.1 archival ink pen and soft liner 0.05 drawing pen. Now the difference between both the pens lies in their tip as one is slightly slicker than the other so the black soft liner pen is used for very light strokes and for small intricate details while the micron is used for faster and bolder strokes in some areas. Though for the most part of the drawing I used only the soft liner 0.05 black drawing pen. Using the right kind of material for a better result is also very important. Now you can definitely use a hot press watercolor paper for this sort of drawing but the result will be different as the hot press paper has a very smooth surface to work on. But it's all about experimenting and knowing the right kind of paper that works best for you and your style. So now I have started working in the feathers and there's going to be a lot of contrast in this area thus I'm just establishing the lightest strokes at this point so that I can build the darker ones over them. It is also very important to understand the kind of strokes we need to use in order to define certain areas. For an example in order to create the contrast between the white and the black feathers I have used relatively lighter stroke for the white ones and in certain areas I left the paper white which creates even more contrast with the black feathers. Now there is a tip for drawing black feathers. If you use very heavy pressure in order to make certain areas darker in values then it will eventually corrode the tooth of the paper. Rather we need to make the areas darker by using layer of strokes with lighter pressure. For this case you can use the micron 0.1 archival ink pen because it is inbuilt to produce darker strokes with less pressure. Apart from this we also need to keep an eye on merging the areas in between the bold and the soft strokes which should be an even transition otherwise everything will look kind of isolated and distracted from one another and this particular thing is very evident in the area connecting the body of the bird with its wings. So the transition is very important in order to make them work together. I have started working in the feet. As you can see I'm just trying to catch the lightness of the skin in the feet using strokes which are relatively shorter in size. In this case as well the contrast is very important. We must leave sufficient highlights to make it look more realistic and three-dimensional. The bird is sitting on an iron wire but I'm not trying to make it in details as I'm just drawing the values correctly and the cast shadow of the feet on the wire. Doing too much on this area will shift the viewer's attention which we definitely don't want. I'm painting a watercolor wash of crimson lake mixed with scarlet red to create a dynamic background. Now at this stage the painting is almost done. I'm just adding a few more strokes here and there to call it off. Thanks a lot for your support guys. See you all with a new video in next week. Till then take care. Hey guys thanks a lot for watching. If you want to support my work then please do like, comment and share my works and also don't forget to subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon which is very important so that you get notified as soon as I post a new video.