Continuing with the
idea of my previous post, I will briefly cover a few of the methods
artists have used to meaningfully portray feathers in their work.
Note that I won’t be using any of the original artwork to avoid
infringing on copyright — which is a shame, because it muddles the
point a bit.
The first several
pieces established the most common motif in the rendering of feathers
on birds: the use of curved lines to indicate the leading edge of the
feathers’ vanes. In the case of the large primaries, these took
the forms of full outlines around the feather. The smaller vaned
feathers that covered the rest of the bird only had a small portion
of their leading edges visible. These curved lines followed various
wavy patterns to indicate the almost “stepped” appearance of the
birds feather topology.
Aside from these
leading edges, the primaries were individually shaded while the other
feathers were treated as a mass with little variable shading.
Another important thing to notice is that the rachis is not visible.
The technique of
shading the leading edges of the feathers also appeared in this
style. However, the feathers on the body of the bird — and
particularly the coverts on the wing — were portrayed by blocking
out sharp, flame-like shapes of darkness that then stepped upward
towards bright white in a gradient. The primaries were again treated
individually, with basic crosshatching that followed the direction of
the barbs of the feather as opposed to arbitrary angles. Again the
rachis is not visible in any of the primary feathers.
This style appeared
to be the most popular — particularly among drawing tutorials. It
also clearly demonstrates what I mean by shading the edges of the
feathers. However, in contrast to the previous styles, this shading
is accomplished with lines seemingly meant to represent individual
barbs as opposed to entire vanes. The birds rendered in this style
were shaded according to their own volume, with little consideration
of the feathers.
This style breaks
the motif. Instead, entire regions of feathers are shaded with flat
colors that step up into differently shaped regions. Notice how the
feathers look particularly sharp, thick, and again flame-like. The
effect could be used to similarly represent long hair or fur. The
edges of the bird sport large, wavy wedges of feather to help
complete the texture.
Onto individual
feathers. This first style consisted of no shading and only used
outlines to convey the shape of the feather. The edges appeared to
be created by following a basic, whole shape with breaks in the vane
only appearing in the outlines around the clusters of barbs. The
afterfeather did not have nearly the same amount of complexity as the
vane. The basic idea of this style was to use as many tightly
configured, curved lines to indicate the barbs as possible.
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| Not my best work, I will definitely admit, heh. |
This style was very
similar to the first individual feather style, but differed in how it
portrayed the barbs. Instead of using a line for each individual
barb, it used lines to separate blocks of barbs.
Finally, a very
particular feather. This one had a very basic, rounded shape
surround the rachis to indicate the vane. Little cuts were made into
this shape to break up the vane. Some of these cuts were shallow
while others went all the way to the rachis. Rather than using lines
to indicate each of the barbs, this style used crosshatching to hint
at their existence all along the edge of the feather. Additionally,
crosshatching was used around the edges of the rachis to create a
gradient effect on the vane. The afterfeather was drawn as a huge
puff, with separate lines to indicate its extent instead of one
contiguous outline.
These were only a
handful of the numerous styles used by artists to draw feathers and
birds. There are more observations to be made by looking at the
works of other artists, and I encourage you to do your own studies.
Also, I must
apologize for the long gap between this and the previous post. I’ve
had a bit of a nightmare schedule at work and am also tackling
another project to the side. Regardless, I am hoping to return to a
somewhat normal routine of posting soon!
