How to Choose Bird Photos That Bring Your Drawings to Life
Let’s talk shape design!
The wrong reference photo can make even the most skillful drawing feel stiff. The right one will practically lift off the page, full of life and movement.
“A drawing from the right reference photo will practically lift off the page, full of life and movement.”
As a bird artist, I spend a lot of time hunting for those photos — the ones where pose, shape, and energy work together to create something unforgettable. In this post, I’ll show you how I evaluate photo reference through the lens of shape design, using six images of the Indian White-eye as our case study. By the end, you’ll have tools you can use to choose reference that makes your art sing.
Let’s talk about shape design
As a bird artist, I am constantly sifting through photo reference, looking for just the right image for my next drawing or painting.
There are many aspects to evaluate in any photo of a bird. The basics include lighting, focus or sharpness, and field marks or key features of plumage or other characteristics (like the bill). But the most important to me is pose or position. I believe the best bird photos for drawing depict dynamic, lively poses. One way to evaluate images is to think about shape design.
Before we leap into examples, let’s take a look at what I mean by shape design.
What is shape design?
There are two aspects of shape that matter in bird drawing: accuracy and design. Accuracy is the ability to reproduce a shape from observation with correct proportions. Shape design is the skill of noticing interesting shapes — or adjusting shapes — to increase their visual interest.
“Shape design is the skill of noticing interesting shapes — or adjusting shapes — to increase their visual interest.”
Depending on your goals, you may lean toward accuracy and realism or, alternatively, toward expression and abstraction. Personally, I favor accuracy but look for ways to create movement, tension, or emotion. Shape design is one of the ways I do that. (If you’d like to learn more about shape design, here’s a helpful video by Proko.)
Now, let’s put these ideas into practice. I’ve gathered six photos of the Indian White-eye, each with a different pose and composition. As we look at them, we’ll think about shape design — both accuracy and visual interest — to see what makes some bird poses more dynamic than others.
