Drawing Wings

by Morag Lewis

Winged characters are a popular cliche in anime and manga, and look fantastic as well. But wings aren't the easiest things to draw, especially when you try and put them on something that doesn't normally have them. It's very easy to end up with awkward and disjointed wings, somehow not quite right, with funny-looking feathers pointing the wrong way. In fact, though, wings are pretty simple to draw once you've taken the time to observe the real world and practice a bit, and here I'm going to go over the rules I use when putting wings on people.

Golden angel statue, Reims. Photo courtesy of Sergei Lewis

First, the principles. If you're working in a fantastic world, you're going to need to draw things that don't exist; dragons, unicorns and so on—whatever your imagination can create. But you don't need to work entirely without reference; you can base your fantastic creatures on totally natural ones, with just a few twists. There are three main types of wing in the real, natural world: bird, bat and insect, and all can be useful as a base for your character design. Many of the ancient religious artists and sculptors did exactly that when depicting angels—the wings are clearly modelled after birds' wings.

Bird and bat wings are quite similar in their skeletons. They have elbow and wrist joints, and the 'struts' holding out the skin of a bat's wing are in fact fingers. Bird 'fingers', on the other hand, are mostly fused into a single bone that extends partway out along the leading edge of the wing. Knowing the joint structures of a wing is very important in drawing it correctly, whatever it's attached to, just like knowing where the knee and elbow joints are is important in drawing a person.

Once you have the skeleton down, bat wings are very simple; it's just membranous skin stretched between the bones. You can add stretches of colour, or tatters at the edge, or patterns and variations and horns on the joints to add a bit of individuality.

Bird wings, however, require feathers, and they're very important, because if they are wrong, the entire wing looks wrong. Find examples of bird wings (google image searching is a good way) and study how the feathers lie, usually in two or three rows and all angled similarly. Also note the multiple different shapes bird wings come in; eagles have broad, short wings for soaring, while gliding birds such as seagulls have long, narrow wings with a more obvious bend at the 'wrist'. Small birds' wings are almost triangular in shape, for manoeuvring. You can indicate feathers with surprisingly few pen strokes, but don't just scatter strokes at random. Bird feather patterns are not uniformly coloured, and neither do yours need to be.

Insect wings are quite different from the wings of vertebrates, and come in many different shapes and sizes. They consist of multiple branching and connected veins, and may be membranous or scaled, hairy or heavily modified (the spotted back of a ladybird is a modified wing, for example). If you use an insect wing shape for a comic character, make sure that can you render the veins believably, and you can do it multiple times! References are very useful.

Another way to give your characters wings is to use mechanical ones - clockwork looks good. Such wings look good when given similar shape and proportion to a bird's wing, and the intricacy of the mechanisms is very effective.

Whatever you put your wings on—horse, person, cat—try to make the joint with the body look natural. This is hardest of all, since this is the point where fantasy comes into it. If you have feathered wings, you can use a tuft of  at the joint, but try to make it as convincing as possible. Pay attention also to how birds, bats and insects fold their wings—your characters won't always stand with their wings fully stretched out, after all!

Finally, whatever your character and whatever shape their wings, don't feel too constricted by rules. Everything above is for guidance, and is there to help rather than restrict. Have fun with your character design and don't be afraid to use references to make them believable.