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Ciameth — Ciameth's Wing Tutorial
Published: 2011-09-22 03:42:20 +0000 UTC; Views: 92626; Favourites: 3848; Downloads: 1857
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Description
I finally finished my wings and flight tutorial! Feel free to download it for personal use, but please do not repost this tutorial without my permission.One thing to keep in mind is that my drawing of the flight muscles has been modified to allow you to see the supracoracoideus. In real life, it would be packed under the pectoralis, which would touch the furcula. The furcula is springy and absorbs energy as the flight muscles push against it; it also serves as a brace to support the thoracic skeleton during flight.
In the reference folder of my gallery, you'll find a few other tutorials and lots of bird reference, including one on raptor feet, which might be of interest to people drawing hawks, gryphons, etc: ciameth.deviantart.com/art/Cia… The rest of my photography is not stock. If you want to sketch from my pictures, that's fine--just credit the original photo if you upload your drawing online.
The Feather Atlas is a growing resource of high quality feather scans by the US Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. It is a great place to learn about feather shapes, particularly if you want to compare the difference in shape between the feathers on two very different types of birds (like a seagull and sparrow). www.lab.fws.gov/featheratlas/i…
Some slow-motion videos of birds can be found at these links. Youtube uploader Ultraslo is an especially good resource: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAz1L8… www.youtube.com/watch?v=hecXup… www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPQ1vn… www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q97Nn… www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWNOUA… www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RvRO-…
My raptor foot reference:
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Comments: 181
The griffin at the bottom is amazing, that must have taken ages on just that alone.
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Not really; these were all quick sketches. My gallery has some of my more "polished" work.
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this is very helpful! i've recently been trying to draw an anatomy guide for my own headworld's griffins so this is super useful for inspiration
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This is the best, most in depth tutorial I've ever seen on the subject. Well done and thankyou.
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Thank you so much. This helped me a ton! I didn't realize how complex some wings really were.
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Wow. This is really great to have all of this in one place. Thanks a bunch.
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I can never thank you enough for this tutorial. Although the only wing-related thing I'll probably ever get into is some sort of a flying animation, every bit of information you included in this tutorial will definitely help me so much
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Niiiiiiice
for gryphs and dragons I'm an 'over the front of the leg' person, but I find it hard because I think none of the arrangements would work in real life! The split muscle is an interesting one, hadn't thought of that myself. In all of the possible ways though I can't get over the scapula of a quadruped's front limbs would get in the way all the time of the humerous of the wing and any musculature to move it with enough power to fly >.< such beasties should have ball/socket joints on their front limbs or something or wyrven gryphs should be invented!
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I think over the front of the leg works best, but I like how split pectoralis looks even though it would weaken both the flight muscles and foreleg. I still need to refine Valcaur's skeleton; right now he has a bird scapula with a base like a feline scapula, but that doesn't work well. Then again, neither does two scapulas or anything about a four-legged gryphon! Wyrven gryphon would be neat. There might already be such a creature in heraldry, which has all sorts of deviations on gryphon-like creatures with specific terms for each.
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thank God they're mythical, otherwise all they'd do is roll around on the ground bemoaning their twisted skeletons!
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I really like this. Thank you for sharing! I know I will enjoy learning new drawing skills with this tutorial.
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This is very helpful! As a griffin artist, it really helps! Thank you!
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Oh my, this one can really help, the wings I'm drawing now are terrible!
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Holy shit Ciameth! I am guilty of many mistakes on this page myself >D I loooooooooooooooove this. Beautiful. Tops tutorial! I'll be using this in the future for sure!!
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Ahh, your wings & feathers always look so nice. You get the poses down perfectly! I can't think of anything you do wrong except occasionally cut down the number of feathers which I do too when I get lazy! Windsonde partially inspire this, because of all applications I've seen with really odd wings (like those damn scoop wings with the stunted secondaries; for some reason those ones bother me the most and I wish I could eradicate them forever). I'm hoping this tutorial will assist people who understand the basics of drawing but can't seem to make their wings look right. And it was a good excuse to sketch a bunch of birds!
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This is so awesome! I've been drawing wings for a while now, but I have the hardest time visualizing the different shapes they can take in odd positions, and the hardest time finding good references. I will definitely put this to use!
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I will love you forever.
This is so awesome and helpful 
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YAY! Seriously, this is one of the best anatomy tutorials I've ever seen. You've got beautiful ink drawings of real birds, easy-to-follow differentiation between feather types, and and and my FAVOURITE part: the chart of wing types! <3 <3 <3
Oh! and the mention that dark feathers are stiffer than light feathers! <3 <3 Absolutely STELLAR job on this.
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Glad it's helpful. As for feather color and strength: not always, but often enough that is can be a generalization (for example, the white gyrfalcon [link] has stiff, strong feathers like other falcons--the dark tips and leading edges on the feathers have lots of melanin). In rehab, we sometimes have to take precautions so our high-strung light feathered birds (like white-tailed kites) don't break their feathers to bits before they are healthy enough to be released.
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Makes me wonder if leucism affects feather strength. Is stiffness affected by other pigments besides melanin? In insects, adding melanin is part of the scleritization process that hardens their exoskeleton and you can usually generalize that darker bugs have tougher exoskeletons. Interesting...
And thanks again for making an awesome tut
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Leucustic birds have very weak feathers. They fray and break easily.
I guess I should have assumed that melanin impacted the strength of exoskeletons too, but I never thought about it before now! Explains why my albino millipede is more fragile than the others despite eating plenty of calcium supplements.
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Cia - this is an amazing wealth of knowledge and information... you are an amazing wealth of knowledge and info.. it's so awesome that you put it out in tutorials for folks to learn from! Thank you so much for taking the time to compose such a well-written and informative tutorial!
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Oh my LORD. This is amazing. You are amazing.
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With a serving of pizzazzpasta.
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Topped with powerParmesan 8D
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oh thank you! i've been on a craze of drawing bird latly and wings were always my main issue, so thank you!!
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so basically to draw a bird would be, a rough sketch of its bones, then add a bit of "muscle" then add the feathers right? thanks so much!
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WOAH this is awesome. I'll be bookmarking this now for future use~ Great job!
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I love wings! This will definitely come in handy in the future. Thank you!
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If I ever get the guts to try and apply for Windsonde, this will definitely come in handy ....
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Just practice! I'm always willing to critique sketches and redline (if I have time) if you send me a note.
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Thank you very much, I'll keep that in mind :3 I'm just not very good coloring wise, I don't think I'm up to par with what Windsonde wants .... I enjoy watching the group tho lD
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wow, I'll come back to this later this day. It looks really helpful for staring with birds.
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Wow ! awesome !! 
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so many years of doing the same mistake. i'm some kind of 'lexic with the feathers.
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This is a greatly appreciated tutorial. I've been looking for something like this for so long and I'm so glad I decided to take the time to read it! Very helpful!
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It looks like you put a lot of work into this and it's pretty helpful
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