The bird picture is gorgeous! Sure, there are some inaccuracies (I’ll get to those in a minute), but I immediately recognized the birds depicted, and am impressed that you were able to draw them this accurately from memory alone. I like the names, too. (Were you aware that the frigatebird’s lifestyle of bullying other birds for their food is scientifically known as “kleptoparasitism”?) I particularly like the way you drew Scarlet’s eyes, beak, and the pattern on her back. I also like the detail you put into Klepto’s beak, feet, and tail feathers. (I’ll worry about nitpicking him when he’s more centrally featured in a picture, but my first impressions are that he looks pretty good.
)
I had to compare your drawing with pictures of real tropicbirds to really identify any errors. This is what I came up with:
ï The barred markings on a tropicbird’s back are longer, narrower, and darker compared to your drawing, and extend partially onto the wings and the base of the tail.
ï In your picture, the leading edges of Scarlet’s wings are black. On a real tropicbird, this part of the wings is white, with the only black (besides the aforementioned barring) being towards the ends of the wings.
ï Scarlet’s tail feathers are somewhat larger than a real tropicbird’s. Also, the two long “streamers” should be right next to one another at the very center (there should be no other feathers between them).
ï Tropicbird legs (which are so short that when stretched out, their toes don’t even reach past their tail feathers; when tucked in during flight, they are barely visible) are yellow or pale gray, not red. The feet are strongly webbed (even the dewclaw is linked to the other toes with webbing) and partly black; they look kind of like the bird stepped in black paint.
(The extent to which the paint oozed over their feet seems to vary; in some it’s the whole front half of the foot, in others most of the webbing is black but the toes are still largely “clean”.
:)
Scarlet’s eye stripe is also a little differently shaped from a real tropicbird’s, but it would probably be safe to call that artistic license if you wanted.
Admittedly the wing feathers on Scarlet (especially her left wing) are a bit unnatural-looking, but it’s a good attempt, and definitely more realistic than most of the bird wings I’ve drawn.
The main problems I see is that all the remiges (the long flight feathers that fringe the trailing edge of the wing) and all of the coverts (the shorter feathers on the leading edge of the wing that overlay the remiges) are about the same length and shape.
I thought that maybe it would be helpful if I described to you the different types of feathers that make up a bird's wing:
First there are the primaries. These attach to the hand of the bird, and are the longest feathers on the wing. Their shape varies depending on the type of flight the wing is adapted for. (For example, on vultures and other inland soaring birds, the outermost primaries are deeply slotted to reduce drag.) The next group is the secondaries; these are attached to the forearm, adjacent to the primaries, and are somewhat shorter and broader. When the bird’s wing is folded, the secondaries overlap the primaries. (This is due to the wrist undergoing ulnar adduction; the human equivalent of this would be to bend your hand sideways until your pinky is parallel to your arm.) Another group of feathers is the tertials, which attach to the upper arm, and tend to be shorter and more symmetrical compared to the secondaries, but they’re not even all that visible in a lot of birds.
The coverts, as I mentioned before, are the feathers which lie atop the primaries, secondaries, and tertials. Depending on the species, there may be several overlapping rows of coverts, and their shape tends to vary according to the remiges they overlap (there are primary coverts, secondary coverts, etc.). The closer to the top (front edge) of the wing, the smaller, shorter, and less differentiated the coverts become.
One last feather group I should mention is the alula, a small cluster of short feathers attached to the thumb, which normally lie flat against the wing, but are spread forward when the bird slows down in flight (such as when coming in for a landing) to provide extra lift and thus prevent stalling.
Mind you, these groupings of feathers can’t always be identified so easily on a real bird. In different species, they may be more or less distinct. As far as tropicbirds go, it’s a bit of a challenge even to make out the coverts against the remiges (except against the outermost primaries).
If you looking for references,
this page has several rather nice photos and videos of red-billed tropicbirds. (One video contains several real-life enactments of your picture!
And you should see the photos of tropicbird chicks; they’re so cute!
)
This illustration also provides a good dorsal view of a tropicbird; it could be useful as a reference for the barring and other markings.
I also found some bird wing tutorials on DeviantArt, which I thought might help you with actually drawing the wings and feathers:
1,
2,
3,
4Since I know literally nothing about
Jackie Chan Adventures, I can't come up with much to say about the latter two pictures.
Still, they look very well done, and if the Chupacabra screenshot you posted in the captions section is anything to go by, they look like they match the art style of the show perfectly. For some reason, they remind me of something
Wayne Barlowe would draw (the first demon especially). I find myself particularly liking the first one; I think it's the color scheme and the design of the head and hands (all four of them
).
Keep making and posting artwork!
As I’ve demonstrated, I won’t always be able to review right away,
but I’ll certainly check out any new pictures you post.
