How to Draw a Bird with Dip Pens | Beginner Level

In this video, we'll draw a raven from scratch and ink it using a dip pen. This is a beginner-friendly tutorial. It includes exercises that progress like building blocks leading up to the final artwork. Starting with materials, you'll need sketching paper for the exercises and inking paper for the final drawing. For sketching, any multi-purpose paper will do, whatever you have. For our ink drawing, paper is the most important consideration when using dip pens. We know that paper comes in different textures and various qualities, and this combination matters for good outcomes using dip pens and ink. For this reason, here is a paper chart that you can screenshot and save for future reference. For today's project, I recommend that we use bristle paper with a vellum finish because it has more tooth, which makes the nib easier to control than on a smooth finish. For pencils, I'm using a Staedtler lead holder with an HB lead for sketching, but you can use a regular HB or 2B lead pencil, an H or a 2H lead for drawing our final. A kneaded eraser is ideal, or whatever you have on hand, along with a regular eraser. If you've watched my other dip pen videos, you know that I recommend Speedball as a sampler kit to start with, and I'll be using the Hunt 512 bowl nib from that very kit. Alternately, you can use a G nib if that's what you have. Either of these can also be purchased individually. Speedball Super Black India ink is my top choice because of its viscosity and drying time, meaning the formula is perfect for drawing with a dip pen. Acrylic is okay. Look for pigment-based inks and avoid the dye-based inks. You'll also need a jar for clean water, a rag or a tissue paper. Let's set the foundation for our building blocks. First is our setup. For drawing, my table is propped at a more upright angle. In this position, we avoid possible distortions in our visual perspective while drawing. Using your HB pencil, in your sketching pad, hold the pencil loosely, lock your wrist and elbow, do a circular motion from the shoulder, hovering above the paper. Let's do a series of ovals, six or so, then egg shapes, which are a bit awkward to draw, and a few long triangles. Now we'll give form to these shapes, meaning we'll add volume. Mindful of our light source coming from the top right-hand corner, using one of our existing ovals, we'll give it volume by using parallel lines. Similar to doing a values chart exercise, the lines are close together at the edge of the oval, then spread further apart at the roundest part of the form. And now using cross-contour lines, lines going across the shape, fading towards the light by using broken lines. We'll combine a triangle with two ovals to make a cone. Go ahead with cross-contour lines, and then lines that follow the form. And now with two ovals, we'll create a cylinder. Practice shading it by cross-contour lines, then with following the form, either by using broken lines or varying the spacing between the lines. Great! We've reviewed the art fundamentals for pen and ink, and we've practiced the main shapes and line techniques that we'll be using to create light and dark for shading our raven, and give volume to shapes. Let's assemble these forms to get a feel for how to construct our bird. We've practiced this, so draw an oval for the head, a cone for the beak, a line across for the mouth, and line up the eye above it. A big upside-down egg for the body, a cone shape for the tail, another egg shape for the upper wing, which extends and overlaps the tail in the shape of a sort of a rectangle cone. From here, we'll connect thighs underneath the body with ovals that we turn into cones. Then a set of cylinders for the legs, triangles for the talons, then a few connecting lines for the neck. It's a rough! All the elements are there. Let's erase the lines that are underneath. Now we plot in some visual guidelines on the rough. It takes only a few minutes to do this now, and will save us time later at the inking stage because all the major decisions about volume will already be settled. Already, we have a pretty convincing 3D bird. Keep your rough handy, we'll refer to it later. We'll repeat a similar construction process to draw our final raven, except now we'll add one more art fundamental, which is to measure proportions. Tear a sheet from the back of your bristle pad. Take a screenshot of this royalty-free image as reference for yourself. It's great if you can print it out, though this method will work from whatever device you're using. First, we'll establish guides to position our subject so that it fits on the page. About 1 inch from the top and 3 quarters in. Using a 2H lead, put a cross to indicate where you'd like the head to start. Now we'll position this post approximately an inch and a half from the bottom edge. Mark it with a horizontal line. From the top X, we'll drop a plumb line down to the post. Using your pencil and fingers, measure the head in your reference from the top of the head to the shoulder. Now count how many heads fit in the bird. It fits approximately 4-ish heads. With horizontal lines, divide your plumb line in two, then again in four equal parts. Now between the head and the upper shoulder, we'll leave a gap for the neck, so add a dash above the shoulder line to mark this. Draw a roundish oval for the head between those lines. In the reference, compare the width of the head to the beak. The beak is approximately 3 quarters the width of the head. Mark a dot for the tip of the beak. We'll make a cone for the beak, just like we did in our rough, and a slightly arched line for the mouth, running down the center, extending a quarter into the head from where we drop a circle for the eye. Take a width measurement of the girth of the bird, from chest to back, and on your paper, we'll mark that distance. This gives us a boxy guideline, and we'll draw our large upside down egg within that box. We'll draw another egg shape for the upper wing within the marks, and another egg shape wing bar underneath. Then extend the shape for the bottom wing. Looking at the reference, note the relationship of the wing with the tail, and the angle of the tail. It's more upright than the one we drew in our rough sketch. Now make another comparison against the post, and draw in a contour for that post. We'll add a cylinder shape for the thigh, then note the angle of the legs, and draw cylindrical shapes for those. Then we have a space for the talons. The talons look like two triangles on top of one another. Then we connect the head to the shoulders with a curved line, then a concave line for the throat. Let's use the kneaded eraser to remove some of the construction lines and excess graphite. If you have a plastic eraser, just dab it lightly on the surface. With this basic structure, we'll now refine the shapes. Add a few boundary lines to delimit the clusters of elements. These boundary lines will guide us in the ink application stage. Starting with an oval patch under the eye, a patch for the crown of the head, another patch on the top of the beak for those distinguishing feathers, and I'll extend the beak a little longer. I'm keeping my pencil very light. We'll touch up the shape of the wing, and make our way down to the thigh, legs, adding some details there, and the talons. Great! Looking at the reference, which elements of the bird look most round to you? Where are we seeing the brightest light? The top wing area? Yes! We'll keep the upper wing sparse to emphasize the area of light. Let's consult our rough sketch. We can see the spread and direction of the lines following a repeatable pattern. Fewer big curves in the middle. Under the shoulder, we extend lines for the feathers of the upper wing bar. Same idea, using long, slightly curved parallel lines that follow the form, giving the illusion of volume. Now we'll look at the back wing that wraps towards the back, therefore changing the angle of those lines for an effect of perspective. Now the tail feathers. Line up two dots that you can aim to draw a straight line. Twice for the rachis. There's one main tail feather and a few underneath, plus small ones overlapping on top. For the thigh in view, lay a few hair-like dashes in the direction that the feathers go, and we'll leave the legs for now. Once more, we remove the excess graphite by dabbing or rolling your kneaded eraser on the surface. Set your drawing aside. Take another sheet of bristle paper. I've cut smaller sheets from it to use for dip pen practice. Gather your water jar, tissue paper, ink, and dip pen. For inking, I prefer my table at a lower angle so the ink doesn't run with gravity. Whatever you're more comfortable with. If you're using a brand new nib out of the package, please watch this video first and follow the preparation steps to get your nib ready for this project. Dip your pen in the ink halfway up the nib, lightly below or above the eyelid. If done right, you'll not need to shake excess ink off. On your spare bristle, using light pressure, pull a line towards you. I'm using the same arm movement from the shoulder as we did with our pencil warm-ups. Using even pressure, draw eight lines that choke and spread. As though we're following a form. Using the same techniques from our initial practice, where the lines start closer together, then spread apart, then closer together again. That's what I call a choke and spread. When you run out of ink, give your nib a swirl in the water jar, wipe it, then re-dip it in ink. We'll do this each time that we need to re-dip. It's a good habit to get into. This keeps your nib in good working order as the ink can dry, accumulate on the nib, and interfere with the quality of your marks. Doing the same exercise, except we'll add pressure on the nib at the start of the line, then release so that the line fades from dark to light. You see when you press on the nib, the tines spread, and the slip gets wider, releasing more ink on the surface. So we're aiming for finesse, not too much force. Draw an egg, then we practice again, lengthwise. Then cross-contour, while playing with pressure from thick to thin. Next, draw cylinders and shape them with contour and cross-contour lines. Imagine these as bird legs. Continue to practice with varying pressure. Repeat with cone shapes. Now we're warmed up, we've progressed from simple to more complex techniques, and we know what to expect for the main forms and textures in our raven piece. We're ready for the ink application. We'll start by outlining the eye with even pressure on the nib, then adding an eye ring around it. I'm now using a glove or a sheet of paper to keep skin oils off of the paper. I fill the pupil black, leaving a speck of white reflection. We can see from the reference the direction the feathers grow on the head, moving outwards from the eye. So let's go ahead and pull lines, starting with the eye patch, using the same line techniques that we practiced earlier. The lines are tighter together near the eye, then the lines spread over the roundness of the oral-shaped patch, because it is raised and catching the light. You'll notice throughout the ink application that I rotate the paper to suit the angle I'm more comfortable with for mark making. But so it's not upside down for you, I flip the image, you can see that I'm pulling lines towards me, continuing the process around the head, following the feather direction, comparable to the line direction pattern that we established in our original rough sketch. For the feathers on top of the beak, I'm using parallel lines that come closer together, outlining the beak with a broken line for the area of highlight, and cross-contour lines for the lower part of the beak, leaving a highlight gap just under the mouth. A few more lines to round out the shape. I'm working from right to left of the picture plane, rotating the image as I go, I'm right-handed. This way we can also avoid smearing the ink as it dries. We'll come back later to address the areas of stronger shadow and finishing details after we've done a first pass of the entire bird. For the upper wing, smaller curved dashes on the edges of the wing, applying pressure on the nib where the feathers are raised and catch shadow. The curved hatches are further apart at the roundest section of the wing, then repeating the pattern in reverse as we wrap around, gradually increasing pressure on the nib, creating depth, emphasizing the illusion of roundness. I glance over to my rough sketch periodically to see where the directional lines of volume are as a reminder. For the middle wing bar, we'll continue with our protocol of line weights to maintain that continuous form of the whole wing. Thick lines, then lighter pressure with broken lines, then even pressure, and then heavy pressure. Next row of feathers, we'll repeat the line weights, plus draw a texture using parallel lines. I move my hand in a fashion that reveals the lines as I draw them, as to visually calculate the spacing as I go, so top to bottom in the section that I'm inking. For the row of feathers underneath, we'll continue with the same principle of line weights, plus adding a diagonal hatch pattern that follows our protocol. Tight lines on the back feathers, then more spaced out lines on the top overlapping feathers, then back to darker feathers to round out the wing, with those smaller tucked wing feathers. For the wing tip, we'll apply the same texture, except switch the direction of the line pattern. Moving over to the tail, we'll outline the rachis first, using light pressure on the first line, then thicker weight for the second line. We'll angle the barbs of the feathers from the rachis outwards, with a few broken lines to indicate a highlight, then loosely connect the outline of the forefront feather. Continue the line pattern protocol for the feathers underneath. Making our way over to the thigh and underbelly, using short to long hatch marks to create hair-like feathers, loosely following the form. We'll shape the back leg with flat diagonal lines, to communicate that it is in shadow and less prominent than the front leg. We'll use our cross-contour cylindrical line treatment for the front leg, leaving an area of highlight at the front of the leg. Adding texture to the post, keeping it subtle as not to detract from the main subject. And finally, we can assess the piece overall, and refine areas that need contrast by adding a few lines and adding weight to the main contours. As well, looking at the reference, I'm modifying the shape of the beak and the back of the head to more closely resemble the subject. And now our drawing of a raven using a dip pen and ink is complete! The quick exercises we practiced are easy to incorporate as warm-ups or on days when short on time. I wish you the best with your art project, and thanks again for watching!