How to draw a feather boa

Have you ever had a fabulous fashion design idea, but found that your sketch was missing the right kind of accessories? In this step by step tutorial, you will learn how to draw a feather boa and make your fashion sketches really glamorous and elegant. So grab your drawing materials and let’s have some fun!

4/10

5 min

drawing paper
pencil
eraser
colored pencils

Step 1: The pose

When you have a feather boa in mind for your design start with a model pose that is good for showing the movement of the boa. Download an appropriate pose from the Free fashion templates section or draw your own figure. At the end of the tutorial, you will find a few pose ideas.

Step 2: Center guideline

Once you have a nice pose draw a guideline to indicate the movement of the feather boa. It should have at least two supporting points (1 for each arm). The continued line illustrates where the feather boa will be seen over the body. The dashed line shows where the boa is behind the body.
Think of this Center guideline as a snake that you are wrapping around the figure.

Step 3: Mark the volume

Draw two parallel lines equally spaced from the Centerline to show how wide the boa is. Try to keep the width even everywhere.

Step 4: Clean up

It’s time to erase the unnecessary lines and double-check if the feather boa is wrapping around the body correctly.

Step 5: Soft edges

Now make the outer borders more dimensional by adding sticking out feathers. Unlike “How to draw fur” the fluffy elements are rounded and soft. They are also following the direction of the line.

Step 6: The inside

In order to give the boa a realistic look mark some feathers inside the main volume. Don’t draw them too scattered nor too close to each other.

Step 7: Coloring

You can color the feathers using all types of media – watercolors, pastels, colored pencils, and even markers. What you need to know is that the first layer of color is light and not solid. Just place random spots of paint roughly following the guidelines from the previous step.

Step 8: Adding shadows

Draw feathers in a darker color close to the places that wrap behind the body. The feathers are soft and irregular in shape.

Step 9: Drawing feather details

Draw short lines around some of the color sports to make them look like feathers. Add the same short lines to some of the sticking out feathers too.

I hope this tutorial has helped you learn how to draw a feather boa easily and bring some glamour to your fashion sketches. Here are a few poses ideas to serve you as inspiration: Fashion Template #34 and Fashion Template #38. Enjoy!

Happy drawing!