Feathery Birds

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These bird drawings, inspired by John James Audubon, are made extra fun with feathers glued on!

When 2nd graders learn that all birds are made up of the same basic parts, they have the tools to create any type of bird they want!


Step 1:  Introduction and Bird Drawing

Before the lesson begins, introduce your students to John James Audubon and his bird paintings.  Look at all the different parts that make up each bird: body, head, beak, tail, and wings.  

On the back of the paper (or on student whiteboards if you have them!), practice drawing a bird using simple shapes for the body and head, and adding the details of the beak, tail, feet, and wings.  Practice drawing a wide variety of different birds by varying the size and shape of the beak, tail, feet, and wings, and by adding extra details like a long neck, crest feathers on the head, or markings on the body.  I use this handout as a guide for students.


After practicing a few different types of birds, make a decision about what kind of bird you'd like to focus on for your final drawing.  It can be a real bird, or use your imagination to come up with a bird no one's ever seen before (Did you know that John James Audubon identified 25 new species of birds??).  Draw the bird nice and big on the final side of the paper.  Then, draw a background for your bird as well.

Step 2:  Coloring!

After finishing drawing the bird and background, my students outline their drawings with colorful markers, to help give their drawings a bit more definition.  Then, we color our drawings in with crayons and/or colored pencils.

Step 3: Adding Texture

By second grade, my students have had a lot of practice with implied texture (coloring to make it appear as though it has texture, like in our Jungle Drawings), but not quite as much experience with actual texture (when something truly has a texture to the touch).  This project is a fun place to incorporate actual texture - by gluing feathers to our birds!  After the drawings are colored in, each student can pick out a feather and glue it to whatever part of their bird they want.



Enjoy making these feathery friends!!

Click here for more K-8 Art Lessons inspired by great artists!

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