If you could choose to be reborn as another animal, what would you choose? I would be an eagle! At least that was my answer when my teacher asked me in 3rd grade in school. I wanted to be able to fly and an eagle is the most majestic birds in my opinion.
This is my drawing of an Bald Eagle flying over the mountains.
I used to draw animals when I was a child but that quickly changed to cars when I started to get interest in motors in my early teens. I recently challenged myself to get better at drawing portraits but I also want to develop my skills in drawing animals. Below I will share the process of how I drew this eagle.
First I make a rough sketch to get the proportions right. I use a 2H graphite pen and try to be gentle if I make some mistakes. It's easier to erase without leaving a mark. I draw the feathers on the wings to know how the structure is when I start shading later.
When I'm satisfied with the sketch I start shading the feathers and between every feather I leave a thin line that is brighter to make it look like seperate feathers. Before I started drawing every feather I shaded everything gray because the only white parts are the head and the back fin. For this I use a 4B graphite pen and press kind of hard. Some of the areas are totally black and some have a dark gray shade with brighter structure around them.
I continue this process until I have drawn all the feathers before I start filling in the details. I make some areas darker and some brighter to create the look of feathers laying on top of each other. I always look at my reference photo to make it as close to original as possible. The hardest part is to have patience and draw every detail separately.
When I'm satisfied with the eagle I start with the background of some mountain tops. In the original photo this is out of focus so I wanted to create this in my drawing aswell. Maybe I could have done it better but I'm satisfied with the result.