and welcome to this tutorial video in this video i'm going to be showing you how to draw a feather in this example i'm using a mechanical pencil with hp leds on smooth bristol board paper and i used a blending stick to help with the smoothing but it doesn't matter the kind of equipment you're using as long as you have a pencil and paper in hand and you can do the blending with your finger if you have to and that would work absolutely fine i started off by sketching the basic outlines and shapes and trying to get that center line of the feather uh drawn first with the curved line going downwards across the page after that i worked on sketching the outer edges of the feather and i decided to add some wear and tear and some damage to the lower part of the feather and try and uh change up some of the shapes and add some more dynamic lines instead of just being a smooth feather without any um without any wear having so a few anomalies like this really helps to add to the realism of the drawing as a whole so i tried to have some parts overlapping and some parts kind of going in a different direction and kind of folded in a different way and this really helps overall with the drawing especially when you start to add some shading later on and after that was done that was the basic outlines completed and it was time to move on to the shading of the drawing and in this example i wanted to start off by adding a little bit of basic shading to the center line to begin with just to keep an eye on where that is placed in the drawing and to not lose that part of the drawing while i'm shading the other parts and then when it came to shading the sides of the feather i decided to start off by adding a smooth basic layer of shading to begin with using the pencil strokes in the direction of the lines of the feather making sure to give that the same flow going throughout the feather and not to change that up and cause any confusion in the texture and to help smooth any parts of the shading on this drawing i used a blending stick and i used the blending stick in the direction of the texture of the feather making sure to use it to draw the line outwards towards the outer edges and then once that basic layer of shading was completed i then started by adding some darker lines towards the center and kind of faded them outwards towards the outer edge by having the darker areas of the shading really push forward the highlighted areas you can also add some extra highlighted areas by using a small eraser and that's what i did with the end of my pencil just creating some really fine lines with the eraser and to help push those parts of the feather forward and i decided to have a line of highlighting going down the side of the feather having it contrast with the dark shading towards the central line it really helps to add to the depth and the dynamic shape it seems to add more of a curve overall and this really helps with the realism and once i'd added the highlights and added the shading towards the center of the feather and then added the darker shading to the parts of the feather that overlap once all of those details were completed it was time to add some texture to that side of the feather and for that i made sure my pencil was sharp and then i started adding some lines going outwards from the center almost like drawing hair just using quick fine strokes all in kind of in a parallel direction making sure not to cross hatch because that wouldn't work with the texture i followed the same process for the left side but i decided to keep this side a little bit lighter than the other um i feel like this overall gives the effect of it really helps with the depth of the drawing and it shows the change in shape if i kept the same level of shading throughout the drawing then that it would look much flatter but by keeping one side a little bit lighter and having one side having more darker shading towards the center of the feather it really helps to give the impression of a curved shape so throughout the drawing i was making sure to use the eraser to boost the highlights and then i was adding shading to the undersides of some parts of the feather where other parts overlap this is actually especially um obvious in the left side of the drawing where i had some parts kind of go in a different direction and you'll be able to see that as i work across it and you'll be able to see how i have to change the direction of the texturing just to go along with the shape that i'd already drawn and then with the left side and the right side drawn it was time to just add some final details and i smoothed some of the shading towards the center of the feather i then wanted to as the fluffy parts that you see at the base um for this i actually used the blending stick just using it in different directions to create some fluff uh having that's just kind of at the base where the feather stops and alongside the central line i also used the eraser for this which really helped with the depth by having the uh the fluff overlap in front of the base of the feather and that was the final thing i had to do overall this drawing only took about 45 minutes to complete and i really hope the video helped in some way if you work on anything similar then feel free to show me your work on twitter or facebook or instagram and if you enjoy videos like this then make sure you're subscribed any likes or shares on this video are hugely appreciated and it really means a lot to me if you want to follow me on twitter or facebook or instagram and follow along with the progress photos throughout the week then be sure to check out the links in the description box below and once again thank you so much for the support on this channel it really means a lot to me and i can't wait to work on some more videos thanks for watching this video and i'll see you all soon