Beginner Friendly Watercolor Tutorial: Majestic Peacock

1. Materials and Reference Photo: Hello, friends. Welcome to another tutorial. Today, we're going to paint this majestic peacock. For this session, these are the things that we'll be using. We're going to use a 100% cotton 300 GSM cold pressed watercolor paper. This is seven by 10 ". It's a block. Now, for the watercolors, I'm going to show you each color that we're going to use later. Of course, we're going to need a mixing palette. This is a ceramic palette, which I recommend. And then this is a leaf blade for separating the paper later on. Okay? Again, I'm using a block, and there's a small portion there where you can insert the blade, so you can separate the paper from the rest of the block. Here's a pencil that I'm using. I'm using a two B pencil, but you can use any regular pencil that you have, have a blunt tip, if you can, because that will ensure that you don't scratch your paper. For the brushes, this is a 1 " flat brush. This is good for wetting your paper. Now if you don't have a flat brush, that's fine as long as you have a round brush with you. So we're also going to use a round brush for this session. This is a size 12 synthetic round brush. Get one that's springy and has a nice fine tip. I also recommend that you have an angle brush. This is a size eight angle brush. Now, if you don't have one, you can use a size eight round brush. Okay? Next, of course, a clean bottle of water for rinsing your brush some tissue paper, and that's it. Now, before we begin, let me just show you the reference photo that I used for this artwork. Now instead of a portrait mode, we'll paint on a landscape format. 2. Drawing the Outline Sketch: Now, let's start with the outline sketch. So grab your pencil. Now, with the way that the peacock is positioned, we want it to be front and center. So first, I'd like to make a mark on the left side where the tip of the tail would be. And then we are going to do another marker on the opposite side, just so that we know the range of where the focal point should be positioned, okay? So this would be the tip of the head, okay? Now, we're going to start this sketch. So here I'm just looking at the reference photo and then trying to see the basic forms that I can observe. Now, the form of the peacock is not as straightforward as the other birds. It's not like the previous class that we've just had, wherein the bird, the warbler actually is comprised of a lot of circles, okay? So the peacock here, even the neck, even the neck, how it is formed. And well, the main body is more like a box, as I see it, and then the rest of the tail would be in the form of a leaf. But I can't say that it's easy to sketch this type of bird personally. So here, it would really take a lot of practice for you to be able to gauge the positioning and the length of the neck in proportion to the body and the tail. Okay? So here I'm just, you know, just trying to be as accurate as I can. And you can see how slowly I'm doing this because I really want to make minimal mistakes as possible so that we won't have to do a lot of erasers. But then again, the eraser can be your friend. And I really encourage that you take the time to practice sketching. If you're not, if you haven't been sketching birds, and this is your first time, I would encourage you to just pick up some scratch paper and do do some practice before you actually sketch on your watercolor paper. Okay, Let's finish the main body. Now, like what I said earlier, the central part of the peacock actually looks like a box. So here, it's more like a square with rounded corners, okay, as I see it. Now let's do the crown real quick. Just a few lines stemming from the tip of the head, k? And then let me just do some adjustments on the head. Just like that. Okay, so at this point, I'm actually happy with how the whole formation is looking, and so we can go ahead and add the tail. So I said earlier that the tail actually looks like a leaf. So let's sketch something that looks a little bit like a leaf. Now let's add the legs. Now compared to the warbler, the peacock seems to have a less complicated anatomy when it comes to legs. So again, I'm just sketching based on the reference photo. Okay? I have never studied the anatomy of the peacock or any bird for that matter. So basically, we're just relying everything on the sketch. Okay? So there's your peacock. I'm happy with that. Okay. Now, let's just quickly draw the branch that the peacock is resting on. Now, let's add the branches above. Based on the reference photo, there's a very branches and a few stemming from some of the branches. We'll just do a quick outline of that. Now at this point, I'm already happy with the branches. Let's just add a few more over here, I think that's good. Now, I just think that the tail could be a bit longer. That a bit. Okay. I think that looks a lot better. A longer tail makes the peacock look more graceful, doesn't it? All right. So let's just do a quick horizontal line for that in the background. And we can now start preparing the colors. 3. Color Mixing: Okay, so grab your ceramic palette, and with your brown brush. The first color that will be adding to our palette is burnt sienna. Now, let's add a little bit of water to that, so it's going to be about 50% color and 50% water. There you go. And then the next color that we'll be using would be Tail blue. Now, this is a very vibrant color, so we're going to add a lot of water to this. Other brands will actually have this kind of shade under peacock blue. So the next would be sap green. This is a nice, earthy color that I like a lot. It's like a moss green color. If you don't have this particular color in your water color set, you can just mix brown with green to achieve something like this. And then next we're going to mix cadmium yellow light with yellow with to blue. Now, Cadmium yellow light, if you would notice, is a bit cooler compared to cadmium yellow medium. Okay? So just pick a cool yellow from your palette if you don't have this particular color. So we have a nice peacock green shade here because of that mix. And the next, let's add Burnt Sienna with Tail blue to create a really deep brown color close to black. Usually, it's better if you're mixing some colors to create something close to black instead of using black itself. Now, the last color that we're using is indigo. Again, this is a very overpowering color, so we're going to add a lot of water to this. 4. Let’s Start Painting: Background and Tail: Now that we're done, we can actually start wetting the background area, including the tail because we would want the tail to look soft. So, we're just going to wet everything except for the head, the neck, and the body of the peacock. Now, if you've been on my previous tutorials, you'd always hear me say this, but I'll say it again in case you haven't heard it from me. Okay. So every time you're wetting your paper, make sure that the paper is adequately wet, okay? So It really depends on how fluid, you want the colors to blend on your paper. But for this particular artwork, we just want the background to be adequately wet, okay? No dripping wet, but wet enough that even when you're spending like 10 minutes adding colors to it, the paper will not get dry, k. So if you need to, go back to the previous areas that you've wet, just to be sure that they will remain wet while you're painting because especially for the background, we want to add colors in a way that we are not creating any hard edges. Now, let's start adding in some colors. We'll start with Taylor blue. This would be the sky. Now, notice how I'm holding the brush. Okay. So whenever you're painting and doing broader strokes, it would be better if you hold the brush close to the opposite end so that it's easier for you to move the brush and sway it from side to side. Now here, I accidentally added some color to the ground part, and that's fine because later on, when we add the burn scena to this part, it's going to create a nice green color. Now, at this point, let's dab the brush onto certain portions of the sky to add texture. Next, let's color the ground with burnt sienna. Just make sure that at this point, your paper is still wet so that we're not creating any hard edges. You can also just go and paint that portion for the branch. That's fine because later on, we're going to do somewhat technique, and that would actually just add color on top of this softer color. That's not going to be a problem. Now, let's grab some burnt sienna straight from our palette. So this is going to be a much thicker mixture. So I just have a damp brush. When I rinsed my brush, I tapped off the excess water and took a lot of pigment in so that we could have this darker tone onto the background area. Now at this point, we're going to paint the tail. So the mix that we did a while ago of Cadmium yellow light and tail blue. So we're going to use that color to paint the tail. Now, at this point, I'm looking at the reference photo, and definitely we are not going to paint the entire tail with this color. We're going to leave some of the areas for another color to add later on. Now, you'll see that just above that portion where we've already painted the tail. The green color actually blended with the sky, it's fine. Just leave it as is. You don't need to lift that color, okay? Now, I just realized that we needed some yellow ochre on this part of the tail. So I don't have that on my palette, so we're going to just mix cadmium yellow medium with some burned Ciena. Next, let's dab some burnt sienna on random parts of the tail. This is going to be the third and last color that we'll be adding onto the first layer of the tail. Okay, that's just it for the tail. Now, we're going to move on and add the leaves up here. For this one, we're going to use green? Now, I just switch to my size 12 round brush. For this one, we're just going to color the entire portion of the leaves like a solid block, just like that. We're not going to paint the leaves individually. So earlier, we actually outlined the leaves for this artwork. So that's just about it. We're not going to add any details for the leaves just yet. And then we're going to add the branches. Now, as you can see, we're not creating any hard lines at this point. So that means that this portion of the paper is still a bit damp, and that's how we want it. Now, in case your paper is no longer damp, don't try to brush over this area. Instead, you can get a water spray and just lightly spray over it, okay? Now, at this point, I'm going to take sap green from my palette. I didn't load my brush with more water, so this is a very concentrated brush. So we're just going to add a darker tone onto the leaves at this point. As you can see, I'm just creating random strokes in different directions for the leaves. Again, we're not going to paint the leaves individually, but we're going to create an impression of the leaves. And then we're going to do the same for the stems, So here, you'll see that I'm just lightly swaying my brush from side to side, putting pressure first, and then just lifting the brush as I go along. And I'm not going over the entire stems, just on portions of it, mostly on the joints, where the stems fold or where the stems originate. Now, let's paint the branch where the peacock is resting on. So as you can see, I've taken off the excess water from my brush. Now I'm getting burnt sienna straight from my palette. Again, this is going to be a very concentrated brush. So layer brush flat on the paper and glide it. Let's add some shadows onto this branch while it's still wet. So we're just going to grab some indigo and add it onto the topmost part of the branch, and certain other random parts, just to add dimension to it. Okay, I'm already happy with how the branch is looking. So we're going to let the paper dry a bit. So I'm going to pause this recording for a few minutes and we'll go back to this once the paper is completely dry. Okay. Now the paper has completely dried. We're ready to do the second layer of the tw. So this time we're going to do wet on dry. I'm using my size eight round brush, but you can go ahead and use a size eight angle brush if you have one, okay? Basically, I'm going to use our mix of cadmium yellow light and tail blue for this. We're going to paint majority of the tail with this color, but we're going to leave some spots so that the previous layer can be shown. Okay? So these are just random spots that I'm creating. But you'll see here that I'm more or less doing an alternate type of um, thing. And you don't really have to have the same intensity all throughout. Okay? So you'll see here that some of the parts are darker, green color, and then the others are lighter as I continue to do the brushtrokes, okay? Um, what's important is we do those random spots. We leave those random spots over there in an alternate manner ideally. They don't have to be perfect shapes. We're actually leaving these so that we can create an illusion of the eyes of the tail of the peacock. Now, we can already start with creating those hair like features on the tail. So here I'm just doing some random curved strokes, very short and very light strokes. You press and then you lift as you do the strokes, okay? And then you can gauge. Like, when the brush is not not very pigmented anymore. You can actually do lighter and longer strokes, okay? So it really depends. You have to sort of have a sense of when it can be the right time to create those very, very thin and delicate lines. Now, let's add a darker tone to the tail. Let's use the burnt sienna and tail blue mixture that we created a while ago. So this is actually a very thick mixture, about 30% water and 70% color. And I'm only going to add this to the tip of the tail. Okay? And you can see that I'm just making, very light and quick strokes. Then we're also going to add this at the bottom of the eyes to accentuate them or make them pop more. Now, you'll see that not actually reloading my brush often. And I'm going to wait until my brush is almost to create those hair like strokes. Okay? And once I sense that my brush really has no pigment left, that's when I go back and reload my brush. Now, at this point, let's grab some tail blue. I'm just going to show you how thick the color is. I'm taking it straight from the palette. And we're going to add this to the rest of the tail to make the tail look more majestic. So I really love this color. It's a very rich, vibrant color. It's perfect for the peacock's tail. We're going to do the same thing as we did with the previous color. We're going to just do very quick strokes, making sure that the previous layer of green is still being seen. Then waiting for my brush to be almost dry to create these fine hair like strokes. I'm quite happy with how this looks at this point. Now, we're going to go back and get some tailor blue and add the details for the eyes, but it's going to be a bit more diluted this time. We're just going to add very small ovals to the eyes. And we're not going to draw the full oval because the tail is in a folded state. So just half of those ovals will do just make sure that all of the eyes are covered. Now, there needs to be a darker blue inside those ovals, but we will have to wait for them to dry before we add that detail. 5. Painting the Head and Body of the Peacock: So for now, we're going to jump to the head and the neck, and we're going to use the same color. Tail blue for that. Let me just zoom in to show you the line that goes downward through the eye of the peacock. Be careful as you add this. You don't want this to be too thick. Then after that, let's get green. And we're actually going to add this to the neck and some parts of the head. Now, let's add an even darker tone using indigo. So I'm going to take the color straight from my palette. So as you can see, it's very thick, and we're just going to add it onto the head and the neck to dark contrast. Now, let's wait for this to dry before we add any details to the face. For now, let's move on to the body, and we're going to start with S green. I. L et's leave this tiny spot bear, and then let's grab some burnt sienna. We're going to add a tiny tiny strip just at the front. Then we're going to use a little thalo blue at the top, just like so. Now, next, we're going to add the Ty blue and burnt sienna mix. This is the one that will pull all the colors together. That's it for the breast part. Now we can move on and paint the wing. For this one, we're going to have yellow ochre as our base color. Now let's leave this to dry, and we can now move back to painting the details on the face. This is going to be a very small detail, so make sure that your brush is not loaded with so much water. We're just going to use burn sienna for the and the eye. Then let's draw the crown. So these are just quick downward strokes towards the head. Now, rinse your brush, and then let's add some tail blue onto the tips of these lines on the crown. Again, your brush should not be loaded with too water. A. Okay, so now grab some indigo, and we're going to add those tiny details onto the eyes. So keep them only to the right portion of each of those tail blue ovals. Now with the same color, let's also add some tiny contrast onto the crown, just to the bottom parts of those tiny dots. And then just a tiny tiny dot for the eye. Next, let's add details to the wing. So we're going to use indigo as well, and we're just going to add these diagonal lines in sections. Okay? So when I was looking at the reference photo, I noticed that these diagonal lines actually appeared to be in a linear form in sections. So we're going to do that as well as we paint the details on this wing. Okay, we're almost done. But let's add a few more shadows to complete the bird. First here, let's add some shadow underneath the wing. And then also here at the top of the head, where the neck is separated from the face. And then let's add a few more dark tones over to the tip of the tail. Oh. I'm happy with how the bird is looking, so now we can move on to paint the legs. For this one, we're just going to use burn sia, just going to the legs and the lines for the feet. Now, rinse your brush and grab some tissue paper. We're going to lift some of the parts of these legs to make them appear more realistic. Now, let's get some indigo and just add a few shadows onto the claws and the legs. Assuming that the light source is on the right, then will be on the left side of the legs and the claws. 6. Adding Details : Now, let's also add some darker tones to the branch. So I'm mixing Burnt Sienna with some indigo. Now, similar to what we have been doing earlier, every time we apply the darker tones, we try to get as little water to the brush as possible so that we could a the highest amount of intensity that we can from the water colors, ok? So here I'm just adding the des tones to the left side of the branch and also to the bottom part and the tip of the branch as well. And I'm not reloading unless I sense that the brush is really very dry or without pigment. Now, you'll see here how I've maintained a narrow tip for the branch, even though the colors have actually spread a bit too much to the background. You can still do that. Since the co, the initial color has a very diluted and fluid effect. See? So that's one of the perks of not having hard edges as you are doing the initial layers of your artwork. All right. Now, I see here that this part of the tail, I'm not so happy. It needs to be a bit more curved like this. So let's just add that and to mask. Okay. Let's add a darker tone to it. Okay. And there you go. That looks much better. 7. The Fun Part - Splatters!: We still have a lot of colors on our mixing palette. So why don't we have a bit of fun with it, okay? So what you can do is add more water to the darker mixes like these. And then we can do some splatters. Okay? So, I actually like the very sharp spots that I'm creating using this size of brush. They're not too big. They're not too wild. They don't go in a lot of directions. They just go directly below the brush. Okay. So yeah, this is the perfect brush to do this kind of splatter. Because the hairs are very limited, and and the belly is not very absorbent of water. So it's just the right amount of water that's in the brush. So that's it. This is your majestic peacock. I hope that you enjoyed painting along with me until our next class.