How to Draw Hawaiian Birds

Hereʻs a small selection of tutorials on drawing native Hawaiian birds. A few teachers have mentioned that videos are really helpful in the classroom.

Artist Joanna Maney aka Wandering Finch has a wonderfully simple postcard that shows how to draw native Hawaiian forest birds with simple shapes (a circle for the body, the curve of the beak, two dots for eyes, a little tail, simple lines for legs, and add color = done!)

Hawaii Wildlife center posted this cute tutorial on how to draw a seabird.

Artist Maggie Sutrov of Paint There has recorded a number of drawing lessons on her YouTube channel.

Artist Patrick Ching is a wonderful, caring art teacher with in person painting classes.

In this video, he demonstrated drawing an ʻōʻō for the Hawaiian bird festival.

In this video he shows how to draw an ‘i’iwi:

Artist Keiko Saile of The Aloha Studios demonstrates how to draw birds in her YouTube live videos. Hereʻs a selection:

Artist Emily States made this drawing tutorial of a palila bird that starts with tracing your hand to help with getting the right proportions:

And of course, there’s my tutorial on drawing the palila (if you like this, be sure to check out the post with more resources on learning about this amazing bird: https://hawaiinaturejournal.org/palila/ )

American Bird Conservancy has this video on how to draw the ‘i’iwi that also includes lots of facts and information about this beautiful but endangered bird:

This isn’t how to draw a Hawaiian bird but a general tutorial on how to draw pixel birds using free online technology: https://arcade.makecode.com/ You can also use this basic idea to create birds in your classroom using graph paper and markers!