To draw birds as Audubon did is very demanding and difficult. Even though his drawings were better as art than as objective science, they really did look a lot like the birds he claimed them to represent. I have no advice for those who want to follow in his footsteps, except to go to a traditional art school for years and years.

But if you only want to draw birds simply, just apply a pencil to paper and start making some shapes. When it somewhat resembles what might be a bird, put in an eye and a beak and a topknot and it will be acceptable, maybe even funny.

Almost any shape can be made to look like a bird. It can be made out of squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, polygons, parallelograms, or any combination. You can draw a picture of anything and add an eye, some feathers, a beak, maybe a tail and it will call up the image of a bird. You can take an existing picture of a piece of fruit, a guitar, a jar, a box, a suitcase and add the features of a bird and there you are.

You could write a whole story illustrated with bird figures like these, especially a children‘s book. No need to worry about legs and feet and tails, just sort of a profile. For some examples of bird drawings visit the website below.

I was tempted to call this article Bird Droppings but the ghost of Audubon came to me and threatened to illustrate my cloacus if I dared. Article by Jack Wilson