How To Draw A Bald Eagle

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Like every human, every animal has a face. Birds have faces too, including the bald eagle.

I would like to point your concentration to the eyes, eyebrow area, and beak.

Put it simply: if you capture these 3 points as exactly as possible, any of your bald eagle drawings will be just or nearly perfect.

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By tilted pencil draw outline contours of the body first. An approximate shape is perfect enough at this stage.

Just draw as many weak pencil lines as you feel necessary over each other, it is OK.

When you have a silhouette ready, erase excess lines until you get an outline, a profile that resembles most of the original (photo, drawing, etc).

Be careful in the proportional balance (size) between the head and the beak. Maybe it is a good idea to do it first by using tracing paper, just to capture the contours.

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Now comes the position of the eye. Pay special attention to this point. Among the eye, eyebrow area, and beak, the eye is the most important to get it right.

I made two weak pencil guidelines to capture the correct eye position.

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When you have the eye position just right, now you can draw a contour of the eyebrow.

The slightly lowered eyebrow part makes the expression of a bald eagle look severe or strict. This strict facial expression is exactly the point you should get.

So take your time and if necessary practice this one part on a separate paper until you get it, otherwise, you will probably not be satisfied with your bald eagle drawing.

Under the lowered part of the eyebrow is a shade. That shade extends to the eye. These small details are important!

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The moment of truth: draw the eye. Notice the direction where the bird’s eye is watching and the reflection of the light on the pupil of the eye.

I think now is a good time to finalize the exact shape of the beak too, so that you will have an almost ready drawing.

The rest of the body (in this example) is not so important. I would say if you can make it till here, then you learned how to draw a bald eagle. The rest is just scribbling…

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Draw an outline of the upper part of the wing. It is a simple ellipse-shaped curve – a good exercise.

The head of the eagle is white so I did not draw many lines on it, only the minimum to show the shades under the beak and around the eye area.

The body of the bald eagle is dark brown so here we use a softer pencil 2B or 4B.

On the wing, I drew weak guidelines of the direction of the feathers. I did not put much importance on the exactness of feathers, so you can work them out better I believe.

Drawing birds generally requires also studying the feathers a bit. We shall master these together and you will be ready to teach your friends how to draw a bald eagle.

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The tip of the feathers is of a slightly lighter color – shade. You can draw feathers by simple pencil strokes as you see in the picture, but please make your feathers drawing better, OK!

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Make some final adjustments, put some more shade here and there or erase excess lines.

Do not forget to shade the beak, but very carefully. The shade on the beak should be as weak as possible but visible.