How to Draw Sea Birds

Sea gulls remain fixtures of beach art.

Sea birds provide a fixture of coastal art. They are popular studies for a naturalist's diary. They accent beach horizons in landscape art or pair with other animal drawings for wildlife scenes. A basic sea bird drawing may be accented with color using paints, pastels or colored pencils. If you wish to color your sea bird, draw it on a light pigmented paper. Later you may add white for the body of the bird. Otherwise white paper works well for this type of drawing.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Pen
• Paper
• Eraser

Instructions

Draw the Sea Bird

1. Draw a long, horizontal line. Draw an equidistant vertical line at a right angle to the first one. Connect the top of the vertical line to the right terminus of the horizontal line to form a right triangle. Draw all of these lines softly in pencil because you will erase some of them later.

2. Make a point a the top corner of your triangle. Use this point as the center of a small circle. Again, draw this in pencil since you will erase portions of it.

3. Draw a large egg shape over the right angle of your triangle. This shape should fall diagonally across the triangle. Connect this shape to your circle, using two lines that curve inward under the circle. These lines form the neck of your bird. Make these lines in pen.

4. Draw a large circle lightly in pencil. Make the center point of this circle a light mark just above the hypotenuse of your triangle. This circle should be so large it bisects your egg shape and your small circle with arching lines.

5. Follow the curving line of the circle in pen inside of your egg shape and continue to follow it for a short distance past the bottom left corner of your triangle. Do not trace over this line in pen in any other place on your drawing. This line forms the wing of your bird.

6. Draw an arching line that starts at the bottom tip of your bird's wing. Extend this line across the top of your egg, following the oval shape to make the ridge of the bird's back. Make this line in pen and connect it to the right line of the bird's neck.

7. Extend the line on the left side of your birds neck, following the left side and bottom of your egg shape until you meet the wing. This line forms the chest and belly of your sea bird. Make this line in pen.

8. Connect the right and left neck lines by following over the top and sides of the small circle to form the bird's head. Use the bisecting line of the large circle as a guide to place its eye in the center of the its head. Extend a long, beak from the front of the head. Create a shape in the form of a soft triangle with gently curving arms to form the beak. Make all of these marks in pen.

9. Draw two vertical lines extending from the bottom of your bird's belly in pen. Make half circles over the bottom of these lines to form the feet of your bird. Erase all pencil markings. This completes your bird drawing.

Tips & Warnings

• Study a photograph of a sea bird before beginning your drawing.

References

• Alder Leaf Wilderness College; How to Draw Birds for a Naturalist Journal; Filip Tkaczyk