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Owl & Parrot by zxgirl on Flickr.
As cool as they are, bird skeletons never make any sense to me, at least when I’m trying to draw one. For every other animal, I get an idea of their skeletal structure before I draw one, but with birds, it just makes me even more confused… although they help with the legs a little bit. Seriously, birds make no sense. Look at an owl skull, or better yet, the whole skeleton, which is the bigger one on the right in the picture. To the untrained eye, the only things that vaguely make it stand out as an owl are the eye sockets and the talons. If you’re trying to draw the whole animal, the only thing the skeleton helps with is proportion. You would never guess that underneath an owl’s feathers, especially the ones around the head and neck, there’s such a tiny, fragile skeleton. I mean, look at an owl! It doesn’t even look like they have necks! Parrots, for the sake of this argument, are much simpler. Much less bulk. You can clearly recognize the skull of a macaw or a parakeet versus, say, an owl. It also helps if you’ve had the misfortune of seeing a feather plucker, or any featherless bird. All of a sudden their skeleton starts to make sense, but it’s still ridiculous.
Sorry, I posted a picture of bird skeletons just to vent about my artist problems. I’ve done probably about 68376547826478 sketches of owls for a graphics project and I’m only just beginning to understand them. With all of the layers and layers of feathers that cover an owl’s head, I can never tell if I’m drawing it too big or not. And of course I’m drawing barn owls. They make the lest sense of any owl. Ugh.
I wish I was DaVinci.