Art Class for Kids & Beginners: Drawing and Watercolor Painting a Baby Bird in a Nest

1. Introduction and Supplies You Will Need: Hi, friends. How are you? I hope you're having a great day today. I'm excited about sharing this project with you. This is a drawing and watercolor painting project that I designed, especially for kids. Students do not need to have any drawing or painting experience at all to be successful with this project. I will guide students step by step through all the steps that they need to take. Today, we are going to be creating this cute baby bird in a nest. Let's talk about the supplies and the materials that you will need for this project. The first thing that you'll need is a sheet of watercolor paper. You will need a set of watercolor paints and a paintbrush. I like to use this size paintbrush, but just use what you have available to you. You will need a cup or a bowl with clean water and a black oil pastel or a black crayon. Either one will work, and you will need a paper towel. So go ahead and gather all of those supplies and materials, and I'll see you back here in the next video. 2. Step 1: Draw a Baby Bird Design: A In this step, we are going to draw our baby bird design. So let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is pick up our oil pastel or our crayon. We're going to find the middle of our piece of paper, and we're going to go up a little bit on the right. And we're going to make a pretty large circle, not giant, but pretty large. That's going to be our baby bird's head. Now we're going to make our baby bird's body, and it's going to be right here. So I'm going to do that. I'm just going to make a shape that looks like this, but if you'd like to make this shape or a different shape, you can go ahead and do that. Now I'm going to make a tail right here. So I'm going to make a straight line, another straight line and connect those lines. That's going to be the tail. Now I'm going to come back to the head right here and I'm going to make a really large eye. So I'm going to make a round circle here with a really large eye, and I'm going to put a pupil there at the top, and I'm going to color that in with my oil pastel or my crayon. Now I'm going to make a beak, so I'm going to make a triangle here and a triangle here. Now I'm going to come down here to this space, and I'm going to make a small nest. And the baby bird is going to be pretty big inside of the nest. I'm going to start the nest about right here and finish about right here. So I'm going to come around and then close up. Then I'm going to put some sticks inside of this nest. I'm just going to make some lines going every which way. Straight lines. So these are going to be some small sticks. There we go. All right, if you'd like to add any more details to your baby bird, go ahead and do that at this time. For example, if you'd like to add a small wing, go ahead and do that. If you'd like to add some details on the tail, you can go ahead and do that. It's completely up to you. Now we're going to make a branch that this nest is sitting on, so we want the nest to touch the branch. Alright? So we're going to start the branch about right here on the edge of our paper, make a straight line, jump over that nest, and then we're going to come out the other side and then branch off like this. And then we're going to do the same thing a little bit lower. So jump over that nest, come out, and then I'm going to go down the other way. There we go. Now I'm going to go like this with a V, and this is going to be the main branch where the nest is sitting. And then I have two branches that are branching off from that initial branch. Now I'm going to just add some leaves to the bottom to the top and to the actual branch. So I'm going to add some fairly large leaves, maybe one here, here. I'll put some details in there. Maybe a smaller one here so it doesn't run into my bird. And then if I want to make a couple down here, just to add a little bit of detail, maybe I'll put one there in here. The way that I like to make a simple leaf is just a curve line, another curve line, and then a line inside on the middle. Now what we can do is we can make some branches coming up, so I can make a branch coming up this way. And then a V here. See how it's coming up from the bottom. And then this just adds a little bit more detail to our design. Little branch here. There we go. Maybe I'll even add a branch here. So I'll make it come out this side like this. So just fill up the space around your bird with branches and leaves. Alrighty friends, I think I'll add one more very tiny leaf right there. There we go. If there's anything else that you'd like to add to your drawing at this time, go ahead and do that because in the next step, we will be adding some watercolor paint. If you do happen to have some oil pastel on your fingers, you can go ahead and clean that off with your handy dandy paper towel. That's completely normal to have a little bit of oil pastel on your fingers if you're using the black oil pastels, especially, that's just what they do because oil pastels are made out of oil and they're super soft, so they do tend to get a little bit messy. All right, friends, in the next step, we are going to add some watercolor paint to our baby bird design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to add some watercolor paints to our baby bird design. So let's get started. The first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to add a drop or two of water into each pan of paint. And what this will do is it will soften up our paints just a little bit so that they are easier for us to use. So I do encourage students to take a moment to make sure that they get one or two drops of water into each pan of paint. Now that our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our design. So here we have a baby bird in a nest, and the baby bird is surrounded by some branches and leaves. So what we're going to do is start painting. I'm going to paint my bird maybe red and my nest brown, and then some brown branches and green leaves. I'm going to leave my eye of my bird white. So I want my bird's eye to really stand out. That's why I'm leaving it white. We are not going to paint the background right now. We're not going to paint this area around the leaves and the branches and the bird. We're going to save that for the next step. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. I think I'm going to start with my green. So I'm going to put a little bit of water into one of my wells and then add some green and then just start painting. I'm going to try to stay inside the lines. But if I go outside of the lines a little bit, that's okay. Righty friends, I'm finished painting my design. In the next step, we are going to paint the background. So I will see you back here in the next video. 4. Step 3: Paint the Background: In this step, we are going to paint our design. So let's get started. So what we're going to do is we are just going to start up here at the top with the colors that we like to paint our background. I'm going to choose the color blue. You get to choose the color or colors that you like, but I am going to choose blue. So I'm going to put some water into one of my wells, and then I'm going to add a little bit of blue. And then I'm just going to start painting. I'm going to try to stay inside the lines. But if I go into the branches or into the leaves, that's okay. Alrighty friends, I'm finished painting the bird design. I'm really happy with the way that it turned out. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.