How to Draw a Duck and Trace It
Animals like ducks hold broad appeal for the artist who loves to draw wildlife. Drawing animals also presents its share of challenges --- especially for the inexperienced artist. However, techniques exist that make drawing ducks less challenging, including tracing. Tracing helps to develop your artistic eye by teaching you to see and draw the duck's body correctly. Once you've mastered this, you move on to the next phase of your evolution as an artist; you'll possesses the skills to draw the duck free-hand.
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Things You'll Need
- Duck photo
- Tracing paper
- Architect's tape
- Drawing paper
- Carbon paper
- Pencils
Instructions
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Get a photo of a duck. You have a broad range of choices from cartoon ducks to wildlife pictures. Choose a photo that's large enough to see the details of the duck such as the duck's feathers, the way its wings look in flight and the duck's habitat.
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Tape a piece of tracing paper to the reference photo using architect's tape. Find this tape at art stores. It'll stick to the paper without ripping it. However, be careful; tracing paper is fragile, because it's so thin. Tape down at least all four corners, and the sides, too, if needed.
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3
Trace the outline of the duck plus any of the surrounding scenery you want in your drawing. Although you'll have the paper taped down, you may have to press down on the paper in some places to see through the tracing paper. Put in as many of the details as you can.
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Place a sheet of carbon paper on your drawing paper right in the middle and tape it down with the architect's tape.
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Position your duck tracing on top of the carbon paper and tape it down.
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Retrace the lines you traced to draw to trace the duck. Press hard enough so that the duck shape will end up on your paper through the carbon, but not so hard that you rip the tracing paper. Use a soft lead pencil like a 2B or 3B.
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Pull the carbon paper and the tracing paper up from the drawing paper.
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Draw in the details. You should have quite a few already from your tracing. Make these stronger and more detailed. Shade your drawing by placing your pencil on its side and moving your hand in a steady motion back and forth. Look often at your reference photo that you traced. Draw what you see. Notice how the lights and the darks look on the reference picture; replicate those on your own drawing. Go slowly and be willing to erase your mistakes. However, this should be a simpler process than completely detailing the drawing by hand, because many of the details you'll have already filled in from going over your tracing.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/Photos.com/Getty Images
