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As someone who has the word "angel" in their username, wings have been something I've been wanting to perfect in my drawings ever since I got interested in art, and these tips cleared up so many things for me! Definitely gonna try them out when they can; thanks so much!

Another tip if you want to expand your horizons on the subject of wings. You can explore diferent wing shapes for your characters, observe how seagull wings (made for hovering) are less bulky than peacock wings (made for brief but fast flights to escape predators) for example. Diferent wing shapes are associated with the species flying style. 🕊

i like to think that bird hybrids or avian characters who have wings also have the thing where their bones are hollow to make them weigh less along with other traits birds have that make them lighter so they'd need less wing surface to be able to fly, thus making the not super huge wings a bit more realistic.

The feather placement is something I often struggle with, so it's really helpful to see how they all come together. (I have looked at bird wings in the past to get a better visual, but my brain just can't seem to figure out what goes where.)

I absolutely love that you don’t over complicate your explanations like many other artists I see on KZfaq. Your explanations are short sweet and simple, they are incredibly easy to understand. Thank you so much!!

I would recommend practicing dragon wings before feathers! They’re much easier to get the basic shapes because the bones and stuff are visible, then adding feathers can be much easier :) Just the way I did it

So, I feel like it's important to note that you actually drew the bat wings wrong. The first two fingers are used for the furthest part of the wing, while the two remaining fingers are used for the inner membrane holding.

Winged anatomy is such a fascinating discussion! If anybody is curious enough to hear my two cents, I'll be geeking out below. You've been warned. TL;DR: You can put the wings above or below arms to have them properly anchored and other details of how that would affect the body. The thing I've struggled the most about trying to get proper anatomy for flight on a human is that there is no way that character or species would look appealing or human enough for my tastes and still have the bones and muscle arrangements that could probably actually support flight. Like when we place wings on the scapula, visually it looks cool but could never functionally work (speaking in bones and muscles). We can just handwave it and say "magic", or come up with a different idea from mine that would force the placement to work, but I've been thinking about this question for over a decade and this is the solution that I like. Birds have something called a "keel", which, like the keel of a boat is kind of a powerful static bone going down along the chest and where all the wing muscles tie off to, to be able to pull the wings down against the air. This muscle is the same as the ever-popular chicken breast btw. The top part of the keel is the sternum, so that could meld with the human sternum to make one big bone capable of supporting wings. There are somewhat complicated bones around the area where the wings connect, but just keep in mind they need a solid base the same way our clavicles are the flexible but solidly tied off bones that tie our arms to our main bodies. The rest is all muscles and the scapula (shoulder blades). Wings _also_ have their own scapula but they're more like long thin bones that run parallel to the spine. So, seeing how wings and arms need to do different things with different muscles it makes sense to have them anchored at different places (this is my opinion, you can have them sharing the same stuff, just know its double the burden, weight, and needs a bunch more shared muscles to do different things. Also, moving one limb _will_ mean moving the other significantly since they're sharing the same point of rotation.) This means that you've got one set that will be above the other one, but also that one set of muscles will be sitting above the other ones. Not a big problem, muscles come in layers in real life too, but it will change the topography of their body if you look at them without a shirt. If you've got the wings sitting on top that means a couple of important things. 1. Goodbye sexy pectorals, we've split the chest into a largely smooth surface with an indent down the middle. You might still be able to see a slight change where the arm pectorals would be sitting under the wing pectorals, but they won't be taking the same space and it'll look very alien to our human minds. 2. Flight is going to be unbalanced because you have all the arms, back and legs hanging off one side and a relatively small head on the other. This is fantasy, we don't care, humans are never going to be balanced for flight, but its worth mentioning. 3. Arm movement is going to be very restricted. Lifting your arms above your head isn't that easy when you've got a tire as wide as your shoulders sitting on your neck. Probably still possible though. If you handwave muscle mass away saying that its super technology or magic or just crazy good biology making super powerful but thin muscles, then that won't really be a problem. 4. The silhouette is going to look wonky since the shoulders will be a lot lower than we're used to and also because we're not used to seeing this kind of alien art in common media either. If you've got the wings sitting under the arms this means a few other different things. 1. You get to keep the human pectorals, but they're sitting over two large muscles that will still make an indent down the middle of the chest and cover the ribs far more than if they were above. Don't expect to ever draw your character's ribs, if you do, its because they're essentially incapable of moving their wings (or magically thin muscles of course). 2. Flight is going to be unbalanced, human legs are still very thick and heavy compared to flying birds no matter how you cut it, but it'll be less bad with the arms and head balancing the top a bit better. 3. Arms will probably be able to lift and carry less weight than normal humans, since the scapula will be above more muscle, sitting less flat, probably being fairly smaller and not as close to the spine. This is pseudoscience (all of this is, I'm imagining a human with wings), but I'm assuming that's how scapula and their many muscles work. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong! Reach and flexibility downwards with their arms will also probably be harder, what with wings and their muscles being in the way. But the arms would probably be able to easily reach backwards between the wings to preen, scratch or relax. 4. The silhouette will also look wonky, but in the chest area instead of the shoulders. The wings will be a bit lower down than people expect and the general proportions of the chest, spine and belly before reaching the hips might be proportioned differently with less flexible lower back. You don't have to do this obviously. Also, _tail feathers_ . Birds can fly without them, but they're great for giving extra control in turns. Their length and shape do all sorts of cool things, but a general rule is longer makes more drag = slower more energy-spending flight, shorter means less drag but also less minute control. Your character can and probably should use their legs to make up for control like this, but you might want to give them feathers too to help offset their weight. (Think Toothless' tail in how to train your dragon. It lets the wind counterbalance the weight of the tail, at least in our imaginations.) All in all there's a million things we could change in a human body to make them more bird-like or bat-like to be able to fly, but here are some of my ideas, hope it sparks some creativity with anyone who would bother to read the wall of text I just wrote. Have a nice day!

This is super helpful! I love drawing angels and I will be referring to this whenever I feel stuck on drawing wings.

As someone who draws wings a lot, this video is a big help. I recently practiced drawing realistic wings. It really helps to just draw them. Don't be afraid to try. And dont be afraid to use refferences and bases. You don't need to draw them perfectly on your first try.

The *Winged* Canvas teaching us how to draw wings. Seems legit.

I taught myself how to draw wings, so I never really knew the right way to position them or where the feathers should go. I always struggled with the main structure too, and now knowing that it's like an arm has helped me so much! The wings I draw look way better now, thank you :>

I'm working on a character that's inspired by a bat and these wings tips were really helpful. Your video with animal ears also helped a ton with some placement issues I was having, thanks!

I don’t usually draw wings unless they’re faerie wings, but this was actually really helpful!

To the people makings characters who are meant to be able to fly in the most realistic way possible: Remember birds can only fly because of hollow bones! It might be best to make it so your oc breaks bones easily because, well, realistically they’d have to be hollow to be able to fly. Oh, and remember to do loads of research on the breed of bird you’re mimicking!! It always helps! I love to pick up little things, like one of my OCs that’s mimicking a Great Eared Night Jar gets distracted by shiny things and is on the shorter side because Night Jars are smaller and will occasionally get distracted by shinies :)

tip: one wings doesnt have to be twice your bidy height, it has to be at least the same or a bit bigger, two wings double it. so if you say 5'3 one wing would be at least say 6' and that means the wings would be at least 12'.

I actually did the math ( equivalent to a red tailed hawk) my wingspan would be 18 ft I would have over 200 feathers on each wing, I had 10 primary 15 secondary and so on and such forth. I make costumes and I wanted to make a realistic set of wings so I worked it out. In order to fly your wings must be (about) 2.5-3 times your hight depending on type of flight, that also affects wing shape. Also song birds and birds of prey have different numbers of primaries because they need different types of flying. Basically I’m a wing nut really happy to see this video

About the placement of the wings, anatomically speaking, they are the arms of the birds, so for a human to have wings they would have to be on the side of the rib-cage instead of on the back. So wings wouldn't really come out of the shoulder-plates, but actually out of the armpits. Therefore the human would need a longe rib-cage, and a second set of shoulder-plates for the "wing's shoulders". Think of it like Garmadon, his second set of arms would be where the wings come from.

I absolutely loved this! This will definitely help thousands of artists, I’m definitely sharing this around. Tho, just to defend the wings being lower on the back, the idea is to add another set of shoulderblades dedicated to the wings, as opposed to making wing and arm share one set.

I have a whole """species""" of characters who are essentially just humans with wings based on birds (called "birdfolk", mm yes very creative). The way I get around the whole too-small-to-fly thing is just by making them magic lmao- I mean, they already live in an alternate dimension you have to believe exists in order to enter, so the magic wings aren't out of nowhere, but still... This is also how i justify normal clothes without holes and sometime drawing them without wings- they're magic, they can act however i say they do!

omg thank you ..I am drawing angelic things these days and my wings look really stiff ! This helps me ,thanks a bunch

Hey, this was really cool! Covered the basics really well and I was engaged the whole time. However, I think you missed the bit with the propatagium. That's the flap of skin spanning between the hand and roughly near the shoulder. I had a very hard time finding it on a search engine, so I get it. But wings don't extend out completely like human arms. They always have a slight bend. But the outer edge _looks_ straight because of that incredibly necessary bit of skin. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the video! Good job!

Im so happy i found this channel 😭😭- ive learnt so much already and ive only watched 3 videos i also love how logical the explanations are, like they make so much sense its barely possible to think of reasons for arguments to happens about certain parts- it just makes it so much easier to understand have a great day

I love how you described wings as being the same shape of an arm! This cleared so much up for me! Thank you!

Honestly that was really helpful! Thank you!

From what I've seen, having wings on the shoulder blades makes a character able to best fly vertically rather than horizontally, which is less aerodynamic. Having the wings start closer to the hips allows them to fly horizontally better, and is thus more realistic but it doesn't look as good, so I guess it's whether you prioritize realism or aesthetics.

TYSM for these tips to making fantasy ideas more physically realistic and easier to draw for me and probably many others!

Oh, I loved this video! As someone who technically already knows how to draw wings, but loves watching other people do it, this was amazing. Also adored the note about how big wings gotta be! Though, I will note one thing I feel you might have missed on both wings. The propatagium is the membrane that connects the wrist and the shoulder of the wing. It helps the airfoil of the wing, and in my opinion makes them look nicer by smoothing out those sharp joints. Of course, this is fantasy, so it doesn't matter too, too much, but I don't find it mentioned often.

So glad you made a video on this. I often find that this is where people struggle when drawing birds or characters with wings. I personally found that looking at bone structure helped quite a lot.

I wish I found this before spending hours on ugly wings and learning through more hours of trial and error. Thank you for saving other people, though. It was a fun video.

Great, very informative video! There's also the cute "chibi hover wings" that don't connect to the character which are like a ball + 3 ovals of gradually shortening length and usually a symbol in the ball of the wing (closest to the back).

This is probably my favorite channel for art tips, easy to understand and follow!

Favourite channel fr. This is so helpful and easy to follow!

Finally. This is how I draw wings. Good to know an artist does so

Omg as someone who literally just found your channel a few seconds ago I am absolutely IN LOVE WITH YOUR ART STYLE it’s so fluid and smooth and consistent and I LOVE THIS CHANNEL ALREADY 😭😭💖✨

Every time I draw- anything- I try to get basic proportions and body shapes into the basic sketch, and it’s important to get the sections or joints that move, and in wings I usually put three sections that move separate from each other. I really like this tutorial and concept! I gotta love a good artist. NEW SUB!

2:03 we talked about homologous structures in school. I can’t believe I never thought to apply it like this.

This tips are helping a lot, I’m glad I found this. Keep it going❤

OMG I CANT BELIVE I FIND THIS CHANNEL ONLY NOW. I love creatures with wings sm and all your videos are exactly the same type of things im interested in learning and your videos are so fun to watch and your voice is so beatiful too.

I taught myself to draw mostly but after I started watching your vids ( like 1y ago) my art has improved 1000% thank y’all so much for what y’all do

this was really helpful! And i'm so happy this vid was made cuz this helped alot for me and it was entertaining and i wouldn't get bored :)

I’m pretty happy with myself being an extremely young artist able to draw anatomically correct wings and feathers. I’m good at making things look random and natural and messy- but in a pleasing way! I love drawing wings and this definitely did give me some tips to make the wings better- thank you for a wonderful video!

this video really helped me draw my first ever set of wings. Great content and keep up the great work

You’re videos are always clear, concise, to the point, and relatively fast and easy to understand and I so very much appreciate it! You’re tips are accurate and helpful, the video isn’t too long and you don’t take long to explain why what is done this way instead of that. Love your videos, always gets me excited to redraw and try new things

your videos are so helpful!!! You help me a lot with art block

This was so simple and helpful!

You made a wonderful point about researching the anatomy of the subject you're drawing. I want to start doing more of that! Thank you for all you're great tips! I just found your channel, and I love everything I've seen. Thank you for making this available! 💜

I like how there was a note about "Hey, it's fantasy so it really doesn't matter, but if you want to make it realistic this is how"

Wow! This helped me out loads! Thanks! This is so underrated!

This helped me a lot, thank you!!

This video really helped me with my bird people character study for my new books!

Now this is helpful for drawing phoenix and their winged human form Thank you! I swear every single tutorial image I searched just didn't explain any of this and just went straight up to "yeah, this is a feather, and this is another feather"

I am literally watching every single one of your videos so that when i finally get all of my art supplies I can just go into, So thank you for posting these videos this will be really helpful in the near future.

This helped me SO MUCH, thank u!!!!!

I’ve started watching your videos and taking notes! For the bird wings, I broke up each section into simple rectangles, and I can bend and manipulate them to make bird wings! These are so helpful, thanks!

Thank you this is a very helpful tutorial, especially for my oc!

AMAZING ART GIRL!! this was so helpful, thank you so much!!

I was just thinking about making an animatic with my character having wings and this popped up Thank you so much 😊

I absolutely love drawing wings and creating winged characters, they're so interesting to create and very fun to mess around with. I've looked up a lot of wing anatomy, and this video makes several great points and definitely helps!

This video is super informative and very helpful. I'm still learning and haven't made anything great yet, but these kinds of videos really give a lot of examples and explanations on how to do stuff. Thank you so much.

i have always avoided drawing full sizes wings but this video let me draw them more confedeintly

Now it's time to learn how to draw hands :) Nice tutorial! I've really been waiting for something like this.

Thanks for the tips! Super cool can’t wait to try a few attempts lol

I needed this so much for my character designs :Dd

Your videos are some of the few video where I don't regularly end up skipping past something :3

Your drawings is so beautiful

Thanks really much, this is helpful a lot

This is so so useful- tysm for posting this and helping out younger artists!! A quick question though- when drawing characters that have winged ears, how would they function? Would they work as a miniature version of what you showed? Curious to see what you think!!

This tutorial has saved me when drawing wings, thanks!

Wings are my absolute favorite to draw and this video helped me so much, thank you!

Nice tips, I always wanted to get better at drawing and your Channel helped me a lot :)

Thank you for educating me in this cuz I struggle drawing wings a lot

This was incredibly helpful, thank you!

I was actually about to start sketching out a diagram for a dragon-human character, this popped up in my feed at the correct time.

THIS IS AMAZING! I HAVE NO CLUE HOW ELSE TO DESCRIBE IT- IT'S PERFECT

Wow, awesome, just what i was looking 4. Thank marvelous job.

Tysm going to try this with the art I've been having trouble with

Omg thank u SOOOOO FVCKEN MUCH!! I never really knew how to draw angel/bird wings and this helep soo much cause you didn't just said 'well look thats how they're supposed to look' you showed us WHY they're supposed to look like this. AND IT EVEN MAKES SENSE. And the dragon/bat wings are also so fast explained and I understood everything AAAAA THANK U!

It's a Great Tip. Anatomcally correctly Styles are one thing that i Love to do, Because the Desing looks like more Cool and Profissional.

you are really helping a lot! omg

As a small kid I use to obsess over fantasy art and thought, hey, I can do that. But when I realized I couldn't I stopped doing for a few years and when I got back to try again, I got better because I fixed up the way I drew people and proportions. Which is what I guess how im able to do it now considering the video

I have this neat lil story where a character becomes a bird hybrid but after the first transformation their wings basically take over their arms so they literally cannot leave their room. Awesome to have a solid visual for how that would look!

I looooove drawing wings anatomically correctly. Love your vid!

very informative, i like the use of examples, might watch some more videos, this is a good tutorial for realism. i also realized i have used some of your tips and may have realized a little more about where my skills sit.

THIS IS SO HELPFUL, THANK YOU SOO MUCH!!

I have to admit Jessie is my favorite teacher

Yo this is easy to understand! Thank u!

I never thought of how similar wings were to arms but looking back at my science class and thinking about it, of course they would be similar!

Ty! I have been struggling with bird wings when trying to draw my bird character Jai. I will definatly put this to use as a base!

I love winged characters, and love drawing birds. I have never been able to draw convincing wings though, so hopefully this helps with that! Thanks!

THANK YOU SO MUCH IM ACTUALLY GONNA TRY THIS

THANK YOU for this!!

U have helped me so much with drawing thanks

This was helpful thank you.

Thank u. I was just looking for this

These tips are so helpful for people (including me) who want to draw wings, both feather and skin, but I've recently wanted to draw insect-like wings on characters, as well. If you could provide some advice on drawing bee wings, dragon-fly wings, butterfly wings, etc. that'd be really helpful!

you have amazing tutorials winged canvas but why are you so underrated anyway i hope you have a good day

I'm working on getting into animatics and things like those, so this really helped me understand. Thank you so much! I'm subscribing, definitely

I wanted to redraw some *really* old drawings, and one in particular is an Angel, and I can’t draw wings- so this actually helped a lot, thanks