I hope I got this in the right section. If not, shout at me and I'll move it.

Anyway. A little thing I've been meaning to redo for a long time. Covers the basic mechanics of how a bird's wing folds, but gives a fairly "generic" bird. If you want a particular bird, like a hummingbird or a buzzard or something, the best answer is to use real-life, or photographs if you can't find a living subject.

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1. Obviously, if you don’t NEED to draw realistic wings, don’t. Stylised wings are just as good – better, on some pieces. Depends what you’re going for!

2. Anyway. Wings. If you remember the mechanics, it’s all so much easier – and notice how a human arm is very similar in scope to a bird’s wing? (You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to cotton on to that). Makes it fairly handy – if you can’t force your arm into a particular pose, stands to reason a bird won’t be able to either. Just be careful of the mobility of the joints – the shoulder has a more limited mobility than an arm, and ditto on the wrist.
The lower thing is just a comparison, with your bog-standard supermarket disembodied chicken wing. The “thumb” (aka the “aulula”, or something. I’d look it up but I’m in the zone for typing this thing, I don’t want to get distracted) is more pronounced on this than on a real wing, and it’s probably not worth worrying about for now.

3. This is your basic wing – the way I usually rough out the way a wing goes. Three portions (I usually ignore the thumb and just add the feathers later), effectively equating to upper arm, forearm and hand. I only bother with the flight feathers when I’m planning feather placement, the coverlets are easy enough to add in later.

4. Basic feather placements. The lilac are the primaries, the blues are secondaries and the yellows are tertiaries/tertials. Primaries go to the bottom of the pile when the wing folds – probably because they’re most important.

5. And this is how the wing folds – where most people fall down. When a human poses like a bird, the tendency is to stand with the arm concertinaed and the hand facing OUT. A bird folds its wings in a zigzag with the hand facing more-or-less straight DOWN. Once you’ve got this cracked you’re halfway there.

6. As the wing folds, the feathers fan over each other like a stack of cards, not like a folding piece of material. I don’t normally sketch each layer individually, but I suppose this is good to explain the mechanics of it, ne?

7. Secondaries undergo a similar “fan”. If you look at a real bird’s wing, you may notice that with the wing outstretched the secondaries very slightly overlay the primaries, at the root – thus the secondaries naturally stack up OVER the primaries. This it to protect the primaries from damage, I believe, keeping them close to the body.

8. And the tertiaries go on to of the lot. Then you get all the little coverlets on top of that, hiding the roots of the flight-feathers, and so on.

9. The final wing looks a little like this.

10. And here’s a couple of examples, just to prove nothing beats drawing from life – not all birds follow this basic pattern. On some, the top of the “forearm” is visible, and on some the primaries are very short/very long. This tutorial is to help with the basics, but if you want a wing to look like a specific bird, go and look at it! A hummingbird isn't like an eagle isn't like a crow isn't like an albatross - but hey, if you don't need a particular species of bird, I hope this helps. (As a sidenote, these were very scruffy stuffed museum specimens I took photos of to draw from – a real bird is a lot neater!)