How to Draw an Ostrich
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Draw the body as one oval and stop there.
The body should be one smooth closed shape.
Drawing on paper instead?
We straighten and clean up the photo for you. Paper counts exactly the same.
About this drawing
An ostrich is a feather duster on scaffolding: a big fluffy body carried two full body-heights off the ground on bare jointed poles, with a garden-hose neck rising just as far to a head that stays absurdly small. The contrast is the drawing - fluffy mass, hard lines, tiny head - and every part is either one or the other.
Every bird here starts the same way: one egg for the body, a small circle for the head, and a beak that grows out of the skull rather than sitting on it.
Step by step
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Step 1
Draw the body as one oval and stop there.
Nearly every bird is one egg-shaped mass with everything else attached to it. Draw the egg in one motion and let its tilt say what the bird is doing.
Watch out Building the body from several small arcs.
Check The body should be one smooth closed shape.
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Step 2
Place the head - much smaller than you think.
Bird heads are smaller relative to the body than beginners expect - usually about a quarter of the body length. Measure against the egg before you commit.
Watch out An oversized head, which turns the bird into a cartoon.
Check About four head-widths should fit along the body.
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Step 3
Run two lines from the head down into the body.
Even a short-necked bird has a neck: two curves joining head to body, front and back. Without them the head floats and the bird reads as a snowman.
Watch out Leaving the head disconnected from the body.
Check Both neck curves should touch head and body.
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Step 4
Draw the beak - it comes off the front of the skull.
The beak grows out of the skull rather than sitting on its surface, and its angle continues the line of the head. Shape and size are the strongest species cues on the whole bird.
Watch out Sticking the beak flat onto the front of the circle.
Check The top edge of the beak should line up with the skull.
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Step 5
Put the eye in, high and forward.
A bird's eye sits high and close to the beak. Small, dark, with one highlight - and its position matters far more than its rendering.
Watch out Placing the eye centrally, which deadens the whole face.
Check The eye should be nearer the beak than the back of the head.
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Step 6
Add the folded wing, overlapping the body.
The folded wing lies ON the body, crossing its outline. That overlap is what attaches it - a wing drawn inside the body outline reads as a pattern, not a limb.
Watch out Drawing the wing floating inside the silhouette.
Check The wing should cross the body outline somewhere.
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Step 7
Sketch the feather groups on the wing.
Feathers come in groups, and the groups are what you draw - two or three curved rows, not individual feathers. The eye supplies the rest reliably.
Watch out Drawing every feather, which turns the wing into a fence.
Check You should count feather GROUPS, not feathers.
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Step 8
Place the legs under the body, toward the rear.
Legs attach much further back than they appear to, because the visible leg is really the bird's foot and ankle. Get the attachment point right and the balance follows.
Watch out Legs planted centrally, which makes the bird tip forward.
Check The legs should attach behind the middle of the egg.
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Step 9
Draw the tail.
The tail continues the body's line rather than being stuck on the end. Draw it as one shape - separate feathers come last if at all.
Watch out A tail at war with the angle of the body.
Check The tail's top edge should flow from the back line.
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Step 10
Shape the breast.
The breast is the fullest curve on the bird and it carries the pose. Round it generously - a flat chest makes any bird look deflated.
Watch out A flat front, which loses the bird's volume.
Check The chest should be the roundest curve on the drawing.
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Step 11
Draw the plumage pattern.
Markings follow the body's form - they curve as the body curves. Flat pattern drawn over a round form cancels all the volume you just built.
Watch out Drawing the pattern flat, ignoring the curve underneath.
Check Any stripe or patch should bend with the body.
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Step 12
Strengthen the outline and clear the ovals.
Weight the silhouette and the beak, keep the feather marks light, erase the construction. The contrast in line weight is what separates finished from traced.
Watch out Uniform line weight over the whole bird.
Check Silhouette darker than interior - check by squinting.
What it looks like finished
The same drawing with every guide erased and only the lines you meant to keep, at the weight you meant them to be. If yours still has centre lines and blocking-in shapes in it, this is the step you have not done yet - and it takes about thirty seconds.
Yours will not look like this, and it is not supposed to. This is the construction with the scaffolding taken away, not a drawing somebody made to be admired - the point is to show you which of your lines were guides.
What this one actually teaches you
This is an attachment lesson: wing over body, beak out of skull, legs further back than they look. Everything on a bird overlaps something, and overlap is the cheapest depth cue in drawing.
The ostrich is the bird family's contrast extreme: one soft mass and four hard lines, with nothing in between. It is also its proportion dare - neck and legs that only look right drawn longer than seems sane.
Practise these: Line confidence Proportion Value range
What you need
A pencil, kept light until the last step, and an eraser you will actually use. The construction is deliberately drawn to be removed.
If it's going wrong
If the proportions look safe, they are wrong: the legs and neck are each about as long as the body is tall, and the head is barely bigger than the eye inside it.
If the legs read as bird legs, joint them: an ostrich leg bends forward at a big knee-like joint mid-way, and the bare thigh above it is thick with muscle.
If the body reads as smooth, roughen only its edge: the plume mass takes a broken, soft outline while neck and legs stay hard-lined - the sheep rule on stilts.
Print the steps
Take it away from the screen. The step sheet prints on one page.
Questions people ask
- How long are an ostrich's legs and neck?
- Each about as long as the body is tall - the bird is three stacked body-heights of which the feathered mass is only the middle one. Draw both longer than feels sane.
- How do I draw an ostrich's legs?
- As bare jointed poles: thick muscled thigh, a big forward-bending joint midway, then a thin shin to a two-toed foot. Smooth bird legs cannot carry this body.
- How small is an ostrich's head?
- Barely bigger than the eye inside it - a bump at the top of the hose. Any head that looks proportionate is too big.
- How do I start drawing an ostrich?
- With the body egg, always - never the head. The egg sets the size and tilt of everything, and a head drawn first ends up with a body that does not fit it.
- Where do the legs go on an ostrich?
- Further back than they look - behind the middle of the body egg. What reads as the leg is mostly the foot, and the real joint is up inside the feathers.
- How do I draw the feathers on an ostrich?
- As groups, never individually. Two or three curved rows on the wing are enough for the eye to fill in hundreds.
- Can a beginner draw an ostrich?
- Yes. The construction is an egg and a circle, and the species detail arrives late enough that a rough version still reads.
- What size should the head be on an ostrich?
- Smaller than instinct says - roughly a quarter of the body length. Oversized heads are what make drawn birds look like toys.