Wings in Art

When I was growing up, we had ducks, white ones and mallards. I had one, Louie, who would fly after me if I ran, and when I stopped and put my arm out, he would land on it. Wasn't quite as cool as falconry, but it's what I had. In having ducks, I developed an understanding of wings and how they catch air.

In order to prevent a bird from flying away, it is a common practice to trim the feathers along the wing close to the body, as this is where a lot of the lift comes from to stay aloft. Most of the time you would only have to do one wing and it would make them sort of fly sideways a bit, but it was enough to allow them to fly if they needed to without them going a great distance.

Knowing that, I see many paintings of dragons, griffons, or any other animal of flight, that simply could not do so with the artistically rendered wings.



This is a good example. Although Toothless has bat-like wings that reach farther down his body than his fellow dragons, the majority of his friends would never get off the ground, because the essential area for flight is missing.

In order to make something that does not exist in nature look realistic, it still has to play nice with physics and biology in order to be believable. Although animals look very different, their skeletal structures and muscles tend to follow a common pattern, and the same holds true with wings.