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6:58 AM, Monday August 16th 2021
edited at 6:59 AM, Aug 16th 2021

I'm only at Lesson 4 now so take this with a sizeable grain of salt. But hopefully given I've drawn a bunch before DAB, this can still help. Take your own inferences, this is just my opinion/process.

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The major problem looks like the shape and flow of the feathers. But again, I don't have your reference.

As you haven't provided a reference, I'll work with the "sparrow taking flight" references I found on google image search. All of them have rectangular-triangular feather.

eg.https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4055/4311284187_547d0a1056_z.jpg

eg.http://blog.martinbelan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/House_Sparrow_20141109_0001.jpg

eg.https://expertphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/birds_in_flight_photography_sparrow.jpg

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From the underside, the connection between the front limb and the body is very distinct. There's some fluff on the underside of the limb, and the end of the limb merges into a feather.

The feathers are distinct only at the farther end are distinct/serperate, as you've drawn.

But, at the lower ends, the overlapping is quite 'sharp' and distinct.

Your feathers, on the other hand, are overlapped very haphazardly.

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My construction: https://imgur.com/a/SK07U6q

My process: (Mainly used the first linked image as reference)

  1. Connected the front limb to the body. Should have drawn through, sorry for that.

  2. Defined the outer bound of the wings with a simple line.

  3. Defined the bound of the fluff with a simple line.

  4. Started drawing the feathers one by one. The upper feathers overlap the lower ones in this reference. Add some lineweight if drawing through. Note the shape of the feathers. Also note the feathers start form over the fluff. From above, there's a layer of short feathers instead of the fluff which originate from the limb connection to the body.

  5. Made sure to break the silhouette with the feathers, and avoided drawing subtractively.

===

Again, I'm not very good at this either, so don't take my word absolutely for anything here. And I am short on time so I didn't put too much time into my construction (sorry about that) .But I do hope I managed to help in some way.

Good luck!

edited at 6:59 AM, Aug 16th 2021
7:39 AM, Monday August 16th 2021

Thanks for the reply! I think you missed it but I did provide the reference image in the imgur album as well.

Anyways, please correct me if I am wrong, but your approach would be to simplify the wing into two regions, the outer feathers and the inner fluff in 2 lines which would serve to capture the gestural flow of the wing. Then add the feathers in one by one in the order of how they overlap to create the silhouette and show how the wing is layered.

That makes sense, but I am still confused on where exactly to put the line that outlines the wing feathers. Do I draw them at the very edge of the wings such that all the feathers end exactly at that line or do I draw them slightly inwards such that each feather would extend outside of the wing outline?

I think the first way would best capture the gestural flow of the wing, but it seems like it would be drawing subtractively since the final wing would be smaller than the outline, while the second one leaves the feather silhouette dangling without any construction to guide it.

8:37 AM, Monday August 16th 2021
edited at 8:38 AM, Aug 16th 2021

Whoops I'm dumb lol. Extremely sorry about the reference miss.

Anyways, personally, I'd prefer working additively, as it makes feathers well seem that they're in a single (bent) plane to me.

I can't really work well without drawing this out, so I'd determine the location of the flow line to be jus before the silhouette break in the back, and continue the flow to the front without being to worried about exactly matching the reference.

Again, this is just what I would do.

I would definetely reccomend you to draw the fluffy part at the start of the wings though (which is visible in your reference too). Not necessarily make it fluffy, but attach the feathers to something. The starts of the feathers just floating around really doesn't look right to me.

And damn, this is on hell of a difficult problem lol. Amazing question. I guess just try drawing the wing individually with a bunch of methods, and see which feels best.

I hope someone can give a good method to do this. I'll be checking this post repeatedly for a while lol.

edited at 8:38 AM, Aug 16th 2021
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