Intro:

Have you ever find yourself browsing the CSP asset store looking for wings and think:

 

“Wow all of these user made assets are great, but they're not exactly what I want for my drawing. I wish I knew how to draw wings…”

 

Drawing wings isn’t as daunting as you might think! Once you understand the basics you can pretty much go nuts!

But how does one begin drawing wings? Let’s take a look.

 

The Basics!

Breaking wings down into simple shapes will give a better understanding on how to shape any wings. It can be a bit intimidating looking at the structure of a bird, bat, or insect wing but once you understand and see the shape it becomes easier to draw.

Breaking wings down into simple shapes will give a better understanding on how to shape any wings. It can be a bit intimidating looking at the structure of a bird, bat, or insect wing but once you understand and see the shape it becomes easier to draw.

 

For bird wings, I recommend drawing an S or 5 like shape you want to make something that looks like a thunderbolt. Like our arms, most birds' wings bend in the middle.

Now, once we get the wing shape down, we can begin adding feathers to the wings!

If we take a look at bird feathers we can see that they come in many different shapes and sizes. But one thing that stays consistent with many birds is the layering of feathers. More dense and fluffy at the top, and a bit more flat and spread out towards the bottom. These are the bases for any harpy, Angel, and Pegasus wings!

Wings that are inspired by bugs can be broken down with mostly oval and circular shapes. Bug wings come in some interesting shapes & colors! These are the bases for fairy/pixie type wings.

When drawing wings inspired by bats, let’s take a look at our own anatomy, specifically an arm, and hand. If you look closely at a bat's wing you can sort of see a hand shape, just with very long fingers. My recommendation is to draw a hand (even if it’s bad, it doesn’t need to be perfect) and then work from there, connecting the skin to each section. These are the baselines for succubus, dragons, and gargoyles wings.

When drawing wings folded the shape you'll want will be like this.

Side note: Wings inspired by flying squirrels or dracos are more or less flaps of skin attached to the underarm ending at the waist or connecting to the leg.

 

Tip: Something I really recommend doing when it comes to drawing organic shapes like wings, is on a blank page/canvas just draw the shape multiple times to really get a feel for it. Do what’s most comfortable for you. It does not need to be perfect.

Breaking the rules!

After learning these basics, we can break the rules and go nuts!

 

Have you ever looked at the seeds for a sycamore or great maple and thought, those would make great wings? Well, they are now, with using what we’ve learned they can become beautiful fairy-like wings! A tattered cape! Now you’ve got some rad bat-like wings!

To enhance and make your wings stand out more, you can look at the elements around you. A cup of water? Wings made of water! Sitting at a campfire fire! Fire wings! Slime? Wings made of slime! Almost anything elemental looks pretty good with wings!

Now, with all of this information let’s draw a picture utilizing what we’ve learned!

Using what we’ve learned:

(This image was made with 3D assets from the CSP asset store)

Thank you for viewing my tutorial. Please let me know if this helped you out any in the comments :)