Bird Anatomy for Artists

Foreword by Dr Penny Olsen

Birds have long been popular subjects for artists, from scientific illustrators to great masters, whether working on cave walls, watercolour paper, large canvases or sculptures.  Bird art can be realistic or conceptual, innovative or conventional, detailed or sketchy, or somewhere in between.  Its purpose might be practical, aesthetic, symbolic, humorous, joyful, spiritual, political, scientific or ecological.
As well as the skills to depict feathers, an understanding of bird anatomy is essential for the specialist bird artist.  Yet, even the most abstract depictions benefit from a knowledge of the way a bird works and its proportions - how else can a bird’s jizz (the overall impression characteristic of a particular bird species, based on any combination of shape, behaviour, colours, movements, etc.) be captured?
Birds’ ability to fly (which a few species have lost) means that they are assembled differently to more earthbound creatures.  The configuration of their skeleton and musculature is unique, their movements are complex, their feathers and therefore their body shape are changeable, perhaps more so than any other vertebrates.

Natalia Balo’s classical training at the prestigious Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, supervised by the Russian Academy of Arts, taught her that in bird portraiture, as in human or any other portraiture, an understanding of anatomy is paramount. In awareness of the limited amount of information on bird anatomy available for art students, she completed a doctorate on the subject at the University of Newcastle.  This delightfully illustrated book makes her knowledge accessible to all artists, whether drawing birds for scientific, illustrative or purely artistic purposes.
Penny Olsen