Drawing a Bat, Step-by-Step

This was one of my most exciting commissions to date...a drawing of a bat for a Canadian science journal! It was very important that this bat was highly detailed and showed the structure of the wings.

Pencil
0.03 Uni fineliner pen
Stonehenge paper in White

To start, I drew the entire bat with pencil, just a rough sketch that I then finalized with fineliner pen. Once I had traced over the pencil lines with fineliner, I erased the pencil to make it easier to see my outline.

The body of the bat came first, as it told me where to position the wings. I went in with short little pen strokes to show how furry the bat's body is.

The wings were so beautiful, but quite challenging to draw. It was important that the webbing of each section was realistic and scientifically correct. While the wings took longer than anticipated, I love the final result.

Once the wing was connected to the body, it was time to move to the second wing. It was very important that I paid attention to how I had drawn the first wing and repeated the same techniques to show cohesion within the drawing.

I was so happy with how this piece turned out! After some final touches, this drawing was sent to a very happy client!