How To Draw: Kingfishers

A flash of blue across the surface of a river or lake is how you often see a kingfisher, but the memory will always live on whenever you do see one. Their colourful plumage and being masterful fishermen makes a kingfisher among many birdwatcher's favourite bird. If you get to see them fish from close up, you can easily get hooked into them. Kingfishers are also interesting birds to draw with their shape and plumage pattern and bright colours. So this week, I couldn't resist to show you how to draw these charasmatic birds in a few sketches.

Stage One

To draw a kingfisher, draw a large slightly tilted, upright oval for the body and a circle overlapping it for the head.

Stage Two

Next, draw the features. Start at the back of the head and draw a curve to where the base of the bill is. Mark the bill's base with a small line and at the top of this line, draw a pointed triangle for the bill, which is divided in half. Begin again at the back of the head and start dividing it up for each coloured stripe and not forgetting to draw the eye in as well. Draw each stripe from back of the head to base of the bill, with the next stripe under the other. When you get to the throat, draw downwards, curving round the oval to create the breast and then draw in the leg and foot and a rectangle for the tail. Lastly, draw a rectangle for the wing and divide it up into three parts and add lines and circles for wing pattern and feathers. Create a dark shape for the wing tip and the other wing, leaving a gap between the two wings.

Stage Three

 Redraw the outlines in pen. Feel free to adjust the size and shape of any part of the kingfisher that you are finding too big or small. Shade in the perch and wing tips.

Stage Four

With your pen, shade in each section of the plumage. Shade lightly and sparingly for the tail, back and the white patches. For the breast, orange stripe and wings, increase the level of shading. For the top of the head and blue cheek stripe, scribble in lines and circles as heavy as you like, but leaving tiny gaps. The bill is also shaded in, but if you are drawing a female kingfisher, shade a patch on the lower mandible less so than the rest of the bill.

Stage Five

Now for the colouring in. Start with the blue areas first. Use a light blue and shade in the the entire wing (including the green part), tail, back, cap and the blue stripe. Then layer over these parts with a darker blue, followed by a light layer of black pen. Leave the spots and back light blue (in fact shade in these parts more heavily in light blue). If you do accidentally colour over the spots, don't worry, just use a white pencil crayon and make lines to the area where the spots were, then use the light blue again and use a pen to highlight and shade round them (much carefully this time). The upper half of the wing is dark green. Colour the breast, leg and orange stripe orange. I also use brown to highlight texture on the white parts and for the perch. Female kingfishers have an orange patch on the lower mandible, you could say she is wearing lipstick! I then used my pen to create the pattern of lines on the cap and blue cheek stripe.

Stage One

 When hunting, a kingfisher sits on a perch or hovers in the air, staring down for fish. When they spot one, they plunge into the water to catch it. To draw a diving kingfisher, create an assortment shapes for each body part. Ovals for the head and tail, triangular or circular shapes for the wings and a rectangle for the back with lines connecting these shapes for the breast and rear end.

Stage Two

Now you can adjust these shapes and divide them up for each stripe and each section of feathers on the wing and tail, which are divided further in lines. Draw a pointed, triangular bill and the eye.

Stage Three

Draw over in pen and then shade each area just like before.

Stage Four

The colour scheme is exactly same as before and I used the pen to go over for texture in the feathers.

Stage One

My final drawing is of a kingfisher preparing to stun the fish against the perch. I used the same stages as the first sketch to draw this kingfisher, just this time I have exposed more of the breast and legs and raised the head upwards. The key part of this drawing is the bill. Draw two heavily shaded lines for each mandible with a gap between them so you can place the fish within them. For the fish, draw a sausage shape with a tail fin on one half and a head sticking out the other side of the mandibles.

Stage Two

Once you have redrawn the bird and shaded it in with a pen, draw in the features of the fish's head as well as  its fins. Then shade in the mandibles with the lower one dividing the fish in half, while the upper one has part of it behind the fish, sticking out from behind the fish's head.

Stage Three

Then you just colour in using the usual kingfisher colour scheme with the fish coloured in however you like.

And that is how to draw a kingfisher. The only thing that beats drawing one is to see one in the flesh. Find a perch overhanging a river and make yourself comfortable as you wait for some time with one eye on the perch. Hopefully, you might get lucky and have one sitting in front of you. And then you can draw its every movement.