Secret of flamingo. Part 1

Many people say that you need to draw without reference, because such an art is considered a partial plagiarism. But everything changes if we use our brains.


I want to draw a flamingo. There are none in my house. Do I need to go to the zoo to draw them from nature? Pay money for a ticket? If everyone says that I need to draw without reference, then I'll draw from my memory.

No. It's obvious that this flamingo doesn't look like a real flamingo. But I remember exactly how it looks. Or not...

We have one feature - we do not notice the details. Yes, I remember in general terms that a flamingo is similar to a chupa-chups lollipop with a long еneck, but this knowledge is not enough. Why? Details determine the uniqueness. And I don't remember these details. Well, in this case I need a reference. Typing a search query, I get several thousand results with photos of different flamingos. How to choose the right flamingo kind? The public knows what is popular. Therefore, we will choose the most popular breed of flamingos - pink. About the psychology of perception you can read in the next articles.

We'll not make a copy of the photo. I'll tell you how you can use a photo reference for your development of drawing skills. First of all, I draw a circle. 

This circle is the starting point of my bird head construction. I draw through its center a vertical and horizontal line - this is called the axis of symmetry. Why do we need it? This is our guide line for form building. But looking at the photo of any flamingo we will see that its head is not round. So I lengthen the circle, as close as possible to the shape of the head of this bird. The main thing is not to mix up where his head ends and the neck begins.

Now I find the location of the eyes and beak. I divide the beak into two parts - straight and curved - for a more comfortable building. Remember, I was talking about complex forms, which consist of simple forms?

 I'm done making a beak. I draw a tangent line through the edge of the circle - inside this form we will draw a neck. 

I find two points (on the head): first - where the beak is divided and the second point is the place where the upper part of the beak ends. If necessary, I create more points of reference in order to build a beak separation line. At the same time I paint the lower edge of the beak in black color as a real bird. It is mportant to be careful - ornaments on the upper and lower parts of the beak are different from each other.

And now we will deal with the detail. The more details the better. Gazing at the photo and comparing it with the art. In my case the flamingo has a fringing on the eye, skin at the base of beak, the nostril and a slight groove on the beak. In addition, I notice that the head of this flamingo has a small hill which I indicated where the tangent circle intersects with the upper part of the head. And one more thing - i create a transition of the head to the beak. The head seems to hang over the top of the beak and the lower part of the beak smoothly goes into shape.

This looks more like a real flamingo. Try to draw on without using the photo.

 I remember that flamingo has a long neck and a small body, but in fact the neck of the flamingo has a certain length. The length of the neck allows the bird to reach the tail. 

Now I remember that the average flamingo has a proportion between neck and body length. And the body can be divided into two parts - the base of neck and the body. These forms smoothly flow into each other. The body resembles a tilted bean. For this reason on the back appears hump like on a real flamingo. I draw thighs. Since the body is not flat, but voluminous, the legs will be in different dimensions. I draw a line defining the thickness of the body. Due to the angle of inclination, we can determine the location of the knee joint of the leg, which is on the second plan. draw a parallel line from the knee near the leg. I add a tail, a wing. Erase extra lines. Our flamingo is almost done.
 

We have drawn a flamingo using a photo. Knowing the dimensions, details, proportions and shapes, we can now draw flamingos on our own. I spread the flamingos using the knowledge gained. I did not use the reference. If you don't know what looks like what the object of drawing looks like, then use the references. 

Dont forget to include thinking to process the information received, remember and use it on practice in following work.