How to Draw a Peacock
1 / 12
Lay in the body mass first, in one motion.
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
A peacock drawn honestly is a small elegant bird towing an enormous decision: draw the train folded - a long tapering sweep behind the body, tipped with a few eye-spots - because the famous open fan is a different, harder drawing that buries the bird. The three-wire crest with dots on top is mandatory either way.
The build is the standard bird one - egg, head circle, beak off the skull - with this species' proportions and markings on top.
Step by step
-
Step 1
Lay in the body mass first, in one motion.
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.
-
Step 2
Add the head circle and note how small it is.
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.
-
Step 3
Connect head and body - a neck, not a stick.
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.
-
Step 4
Put the beak on, and get its angle right.
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.
-
Step 5
Draw the eye near the top of the skull.
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.
-
Step 6
Draw the near wing.
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.
-
Step 7
Suggest the feather layers.
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.
-
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.
-
Step 9
Put the tail feathers on.
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.
-
Step 10
Shape the chest and underside.
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.
-
Step 11
Add the markings that say peacock.
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.
-
Step 12
Firm up the keepers, remove the guides.
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
The skill underneath is placement against a mass: every feature reads relative to the egg, so the egg has to be right first. That order - mass, then features - is the whole method.
The peacock is a scope lesson: the honest version chooses the folded train over the spectacular one, because the spectacular version is a pattern exercise that erases the animal. Knowing which drawing you are making is a skill senior to any stroke.
Practise these: Line confidence Proportion Value range
What you need
A pencil and any paper, or a finger on the canvas above - nothing here needs special equipment. Keep the construction light if you are on paper, because the guides come off at the end.
If it's going wrong
If the train overwhelms everything, you opened the fan: fold it - a tapering sweep two body-lengths long, with three or four eye-spots near the tip, reads as peacock and keeps the bird.
If the neck is wrong, it is too thick: a peacock's neck is a slim S, swan-adjacent, rising to a small head.
If the crest is missing, add it: three thin wires standing up from the crown, each tipped with a dot - the cheapest identifier the bird has.
Print the steps
Take it away from the screen. The step sheet prints on one page.
Questions people ask
- Should I draw a peacock with the tail open or closed?
- Closed, folded into a tapering two-body-length sweep with a few eye-spots near the tip. The open fan is a separate, harder pattern drawing that buries the bird itself.
- What is on top of a peacock's head?
- The crest: three thin wires standing up from the crown, each tipped with a dot. It costs six strokes and identifies the bird instantly.
- How do I draw the eye-spots on the train?
- As small ovals-within-ovals, three or four near the train's tip only. Spots all along the train read as printed fabric rather than feathers.
- How do I start drawing a peacock?
- 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 a peacock?
- 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 a peacock?
- 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 a peacock?
- 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 a peacock?
- Smaller than instinct says - roughly a quarter of the body length. Oversized heads are what make drawn birds look like toys.