How to Draw & Paint a Peacock

Peacocks have inspired artists throughout history.

Peacocks provide colorful and bright subjects for painting and drawing. These large birds sport a regal plume and distinctive, beautiful feathers. Drawing and painting a peacock requires a combination of geometric shapes and bright blues, yellows, browns and greens. You may even mix your yellow and blue paint to create the green for your peacock. Peacock drawings may vary from photo-realistic to simple, abstracted forms. In any case, drawings and paintings of these majestic birds incorporate basic geometry and proportion.

Things You'll Need

• Straight Edge
• Compass
• Yellow Paint
• Brown Paint
• Green Paint
• Black Paint

Instructions

Draw the Peacock

1. Draw a short, horizontal line to create the base of your peacock. Bisect this line with a vertical line of the same length.

2. Draw a bowling pin shape exactly over the vertical line. Give this shape a rounded, circular top and ovular base that flattens against the horizontal line. This bowling pin shape makes the body of the bird. Make sure that it is bisected evenly by the vertical line.

3. Draw a small, upside-down triangle evenly bisected by the vertical line in the top portion of the bowling pin shape. Make sure that it falls in the lower portion of this shape, below its center. This forms the beak on the head of the peacock.

4. Use a compass or circular shape, like the base of a glass, to make a semicircle the height of your vertical line. Make the horizontal line form the base of this semicircle.

5. Locate the center point of the horizontal line. Draw 10 lines fanning out from the center of the base. Make sure there are five lines in each half of the semicircle.

6. Connect each line to the line next to it by using arching, semicircular lines. This forms the tail feathers of your peacock.

7. Draw a teardrop shape in the tip of each feather. Make the pointed tip of each teardrop point inward toward the body of the bird.

8. Draw an oval in each feather beneath each teardrop shape. Make sure these shapes remain divided from each other by a small space.

Paint the Peacock

1. Paint the body of your peacock with blue paint. Use curving motions with your brush to keep the rounded edges of the form clean and smooth. Do not paint inside of the inverted triangle.

2. Paint each of the feathers green. Do not paint inside of the ovals and teardrops. Again, keep the rounded edges of each feather clean by gently curving your brushstrokes. Allow all of your paint to dry before proceeding

3. Paint the inside of each teardrop and oval brown. Add yellow paint to the inverted triangle on your peacock's head.

4. Place two black dots above the inverted triangle to form the eyes of your peacock. Allow all paint to dry.

5. Paint three short black lines fanning out of the tip of your peacock's head. Paint a small blue circle at the tip of each line. This forms the plume of your peacock.

6. Paint a small blue circle inside of each teardrop and oval. Outline your ovals, teardrops, feathers, beak and body with black lines. This completes your peacock.

Tips & Warnings

• Study photographs of peacocks before beginning your drawing.

References

• Alderleaf Wilderness College; How to Draw Birds for a Naturalist Journal; Filip Tkaczyk
• Apartment Therapy: Fine Feathers: A Brief History of the Peacock as Decoration