Basic Wing Drawing Tutorial Using Illustrator

Before you begin: Set the color to none (no fill) and use a black stroke at 1 pt.

1. Use the ellipse tool to create a long oval.

2. With the direct selection tool, select the top anchor point.

3. Convert anchor point to a corner using the tool bar at the top.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 on bottom anchor.

5. Rotate shape to the right to your liking. This will be the upper part of your right wing.

6. Now you are going to use the Add Anchor Point tool to add some anchor points. Add one anchor point towards the bottom and one towards the top of the bottom path. These anchor points will help you shape your wing.

7. Use the Direct Selection tool to move your new anchor points to shape your wing. This can be done to your liking. I moved the new bottom anchor point out and the new upper anchor point inward.

8. Move center anchor point as needed for smoothness.

9. Rotate wing again to your liking or leave as is.

10. With your wing part selected, go to Edit > Copy or press Ctrl + C. Then go to Edit > Paste in Front or press Ctrl + F.

11. With the new wing part selected, go to Object > Transform > Reflect. Select Horizontal Axis and click OK.

You can use your own judgment to create the rest of your wings. These are just guidelines.

12. Move reflected part down to create the lower part of your right wing.

13. Resize and rotate lower part to your liking.

To get rid of the overlap, we are going to add and delete some anchor points.

14. Add an anchor point on the lower wing on the overlapped part and one at the intersect point of the lower and upper wing.

15. Using the Direct Selection tool, select the first anchor you added and hit the delete key.

16. Select the entire wing by using the Selection Tool and dragging a rectangle over the image.

17. Go to Object > Group to group it all together. By doing this, no matter where you click (upper or lower part of wing) the entire right wing will be selected.

Just a few more steps and your wings will be complete!

18. Select the wing and go to Edit > Copy or Ctrl +C. Then go to Edit > Paste in Front or Ctrl + F.

19. Go to Object > Transform > Reflect and select the Vertical Axis. Click OK.

20. Move new wing to the left using Shift + arrow key. I pressed the left arrow key 14 times with Shift held down and 5 times without Shift held down.

21. Group the left and right wing like you did in step 17.

Congratulations! You have made yourself a nice set of wings! Your wings will come out different every time so have fun with it!