Easy beginner acrylic painting: Winter Chickadees

1. A little bit about me!: Hi everyone. My name is Dan and I've been a creative since I was a little girl. As a team, I took art classes privately as well as in school. But being the oldest of four daughters growing up on a sheep and dairy farm on Vancouver Island, aren't really took a backseat to Barn chores and farmwork. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I really started to feed my artistic needs. I created costuming prompts and sets for local theater productions, and even turned my hand at theatre and special effects up when my daughters were old enough, I opened a small arts and crafts instruction studio for homeschool rz, where we would puddle in dabbled to our heart's content. This is where I realized that I really love teaching art. I truly believe that with the right instruction, a bit of patience and a lot of encouragement that everyone can be an artist. I opened foxglove hollow studio in 2016 in this small studio and open the doors to adults as well. Since then, I have shared the joy of painting with thousands of students, teaching babies step-by baby step, encouraging, coaxing and yes, sometimes badgering my students into creating. It's something they never thought they could do. Something they are proud of. So many people come to me with low expectations of their talents. I even once had a student tell me that she came to prove me wrong on her way out the door with a green stretched across her face and her prize tucked under her arm. I asked her. Now, what else did you think he couldn't do? 2. Introducing the chicks: Hi everybody. Today we're going to paint these gorgeous little chickadees. Are they sweep? They are really very simple. I'll teach you how to draw them. I'll teach you how to thank them. I'll teach you It's some really neat techniques on getting a nice textured branch. See you in the next lesson. 3. Getting started : I have my Canvas taped off. This was an 11 by 14. What we're going to do first is we're going to put a background on, and I like to use for my backgrounds, I like to use some white. And I like to use some black. There we go. We can always put more on if we need it. And also, I like to use this blue. This is a mixture. This blue, this white and black just made a sort of a gray blue. The other color I like to use on this is this sort of sandy sandy beige color. I've mixed just brown and white with a bit of yellow into this and you get a sort of Sandy beige. These are all just colors. You can mix up yourself. These two or you can mix up yourself. It doesn't have to be exact at all. These are all going to be different. We're working with paint that's usually from the dollar store. And it's whatever really, whatever you can find. So if you can get a sort of a beige, sandy color and you can get a server blue de Grey, your great. If you can't, just use white and blue. Super-duper, easy. Now staying in theme with the Dollar Store, we're going to use these fees are just a six pack of sponges you can get for $0.99. I think. They're fine. And I use them all the time for backgrounds. They're wonderful. I just take them and I usually cut them up into little chunks like this, like six from a sponge. The first thing I've taped this down, you don't have to tape it down. I like to tape this down because it makes it looks like it has a frame. When we pull the tape off, I'm just going to dip into the white and a little bit of the blue. And I'm going to just put it really a really sort of kind of a light base coat on it so you don't need to have a lot of paint on it. What I'm trying to do too is kind of steel tape down along the edges. If you do this, if you do this, you can get a really nice clean line. Whoops, see a nice, a nice straight line. We've got some brown in there, but that's okay. That's okay because well, stuff happens when you're painting. You just have to go with it. There we go. This is all just sort of underneath. We won't have a brown sky, Don't worry. Okay, I'm just gonna do that. And then I'm going to give it a quick blow dry because we've just got this for a base coat. 4. Chickadee background: That should be dry. I'll just cut myself and another piece of Clean sponge here. There we go. Good enough. I'll put that one to the side. Now I'm going to dip right back into my white again. This is so technical, I'm just gonna do this. So just smoosh it here and smoosh it. They're really, that's all you're doing. Now I'm going to dip into the blue same sponge, just like that. Anybody can put in there and here, and I love this combination is such a lovely 11 of my favorites for backgrounds. Just going to take a sponge again, same sponge in the sandy color and put it here in there in-between. The idea here is to keep it kind of cloudy. I'll put this to the side. Roll up my sleeves. I'm gonna take a cloth here. And a point to just take a lot of the paint off the sponge because there'll be loads in there. Now I'm going to do is see this little patches that don't have paint on them. I'm just gonna make sure those are covered. So I'm just going to make really light little circular motions here. Really light in-between the colors joining them all up, joining up any patches that might not have got paint on them. Do that first. This, first, this is acrylic paint and the first thing you need to know is that you can blend it when it's wet, but you cannot go into when it's dry. So you want to make sure you have paint on here so don't be stingy with your paint. It needs to be wet. Otherwise, should we be trying to blend paint, it isn't wet enough to blend. So I've got those patches all kind of joined up. Now I'm just kind of very, very gently going to blend these together. And I'm using a very light stroke, just round in circular motion very lightly and counterclockwise and clockwise. A pinch my sponge together like this, so it takes away those flat edges. And I'm just very lightly, not back-and-forth because then you'll get like it, It'll all blend together. But if I go in different areas and in little circular motions here, I'll end up with a really pretty Cloud, cloudy, soft blend. Maybe a bit more blue here. It's wet. I can still blend it. There. See isn't that lovely? Just sort of cloudy, soft there. So we're just taking off all the harsh edges. Little bit more white here and there. Just take that edge off. You can leave some brighter areas which is lovely. Don't be tempted to wind your sponge. You'll end up with kind of like a rosettes shape. Then it'll turn into a pattern. I can still blend this, it's still wet. But if it was dry, I would be out of luck and I will just have to blow dry it and start again. Just put another layer on Almost there. Little bit more white here. Totally up to you. Stop when you look at just getting rid of any little harsh spot, certain lines that are left nice and fluffy and blended softly. You throw your sponge in the water. You'll be able to keep it for next time. There we go. It's looking quite cloudy and pretty I think that will do. I'm just going to pop my sponge into the water over here. And now we'll put this to the side and learn how to draw our little chickadee. 5. Drawing our chickadees: We're going to need a piece of paper. Just a plain old piece of paper, nothing special. I'm going to use this big so you can see what I'm doing. But you'll probably want to make your chickadee may be on piece of paper, half the size. I'll do two different versions of them. And then you can do to, to birds on if you want or you can do for birds are solid to you. I'm going to start off with a nice circle like this. And then I'm going to take that circle and cut it into four pieces. Then I'm going to cut this top measurement here in half. This measurement here. I'm going to put it up here. And then I'm going to stick circle right in-between those two lines. By doing that, I know that the circle is half the size of the bottom circle. Now what we're going to do is we're going to stick line down this way. Cutting this in roughly thirds. And then we're gonna come down here. Take off that little corner there. Come down here already here. This is just tale dishes wing. Then we can cut his head in half, which will be roughly there. This is where his eyes going. If I turn my page this way and I follow this line here, stick out a little bit more. I can make his beak with a little arrow. And then it come back down here again and make an arrow pointing the other way. This one's just a little shorter. Now we've got a beak. We'll turn it up this way. And I'm going to put a little line right there above his beak. And then I'm going to flatten that out his little noggin like this because we don't want a huge head on him. There we go. There's the head of our chickadee. If we follow this line through his eye and then down the back of his neck here. Just like that, that gives us his black cap. Then if we come under his beak here and we take off that little corner, that'll give us whereas chin goes right here, right? Whereas beak meets, we can make his little bib and it comes down like this. Then we'll just follow the circle down. If you've got a great big tummy on them and you don't want to that fat, just slimmer down. Then we're critical for me this year. Echo this line here, over to here. Got to chop this. Tell me off a little bit. It's really fat. There though. We have our little chickadee. Just as simple as that. There is chickadee number one. If you want to make this chickadee backwards facing the other direction and you don't want to redraw him. You can take your carbon paper and put it black side up. You're going to be carpeting on the back of your back of your paper. Just trace him like that. Just quickly follow this around to show you. If we turn it over. We've got our bird facing in the direction. That's really nice. Oops, I missed apart. I moved him, but it doesn't matter because on the back of the paper, now I've got my little bird facing the other direction. Now this guy is huge. We won't need to bird this two huge. Let's, let's draw one more. I'll put them in this corner here. Same thing. I'm going to start with the same, same circle. If you start with the same size circle, you'll end up with the same size bird. Cut it in half and then half again. Same thing we did before. Stick his head on top. But this time we're going to go here. We're going to go here. Take those two little angles out. Come down here like that. I'm gonna come down here like that. This little bird is going to be looking off this direction. Same idea. Just come over here, draw his little beacon with their little diamond shape. You've got your beak. Come up here a little bit, flattened his head out. Just a tad. Stickers IN. Follow this down here on this side. I'm, I'll color that in so you can see it. There's just bib under there. Then along here you can make just a little little scoop up in the center like that annual half-year little bird. And there's just little toes. They're the same idea. If you want to facing the other direction, say my digits, just put the carbon carbon paper underneath it again, black slide up, trace over him at and the heel facing the other direction. One other thing I wanted to show you the bird's faces, and this is a great way to make adjustments just on the head. So he's looking at her looking at different direction. We can cut it in half this way and a half this way. Still cutting quarters. If we put a sign center whose I will always be in the center, stick this line up this way. He'll be looking up. If we do it like this, cut in half that stick design there, you'd be looking straight out. And if we do like that and turn it like x, Almost speaking here, he'll be looking down. This is a great way to get more mileage out of just one bird. Because he could very well be looking this way. I'm going to put it in properly. And he'd be looking up. If you want to make lots birds like this, That's a great way to do it. Without having to, without having to draw them all separately. 6. Branching out: This masking tape is great. It's absolutely wonderful because it's so wide. We're just going to decide where we're going to put our branch. And I think I'm going to put mine right across here, can move it afterwards. I'm just going to stick it there. Then I'm going to turn it this way. And starting at the center, I'm going to rip it in half. This is the real trick here. I'm trying to keep it so it's going not perfect. There we go. We've got some ups and downs. We're gonna put it right about there. Satellite that I'll look this one up again and adjust this. My branches going to be right there. There we go. That'll do just fine. This part here in-between that showing this is our branch. By tearing the tape, we've masked off all the stuff on the outside and given ourselves a real organic shape. I've got this stuck down. Remember, always the trunk will be here, it'll always be wider here than it is here. I'm just going to give this a bit of a zap with a blow dryer. And that's going to heat it up and make the tape a little bit more sticky so it's really stuck down. It just kind of reactivates the glue mixture, blow dries on good and hot, should stick down quite a lot better. There we go. Just squish it down with my fingernail little bit more. Now this next step, we're going to use air miles card or well, it doesn't have to be near males card. Just a plastic card. What we're gonna do is put a little bit of brown right here in our palette just a bit. You don't need a lot. I've got this sort of green color mixed up already. It's sort of a mossy color. It's black and yellow mixed together. You can put any colors you want. It doesn't matter really. It's always going to look like a tree or a tree branch. I'm going to do is I'm just going to pick up some of these colors, a little bit of here, a little bit of there, a little bit of, little bit of everything. There we go. I'm going to go in a C-shape like that. I'm using quite a bit of paint on it to pick up some more. Just going to go up our branch will leave lots of paint behind and keep it in a C-shaped because it's going to make it look rounder. The heavier the paint is. More texture, you're going to get. Nothing fancy. There we go. Nice and thick. That C-shape. See how the card is making all these sort of stripes in it. Make this nice and textured. Here we go. We'll pick some of that up and keeping my round shaped going, there's some black worried. I'm not worried. I'll just pick up some more paint laid on top. There we go. Go right over the edges of your masking tape. Now, I think I'm going to flip it this way as well. Sort of work my way back again. Like I'm flattering toast and I really, really like butter. There we go. More of the brown down here and sort of distributed the colors up and down that branch. Up here a bit. The end up kind of just leaving a lot of paint behind. You're also leaving paint on top of paint. As this dries. We'll give it a SAP with a blow dryer. It will start to crack a bit. Just give that quick so you can just see that little bit of crap going on already. It's time to put that sort of iconic birch bark on it. Do the same thing. Just pick up some white, tap it off a bit over here. And I'm going to keep doing that same sort of see motion really gently, like really lightly just sort of it's going to stick onto patches like a high patches in that branch. Very gently. I'm not scraping it. Just letting it sort of touching just touching the top heavy pieces of that underneath paint. You can always keep layering if you accidentally make the whole thing white, just layer it up. But more on. Look at all that paint. There's a lot on there now. But more there. Be careful you don't run over the outside edges and get a new sky. Don't scrape it. There we go. Now think what I'll do. So I'm going to take a bit of that black, give myself some little little touches. Black here as well. That's looking good. Yeah. Break that little blob up a bit. There we go. Maybe a little bit more white on there. Now when the paint is super thick like this, looks like an a just a touch more touch more white in there. When the paint is super thick like this, when you hit it with a blow dryer, it's going to dry at different speeds. So the thicker the paint, the more it will crackle when you blow dried. It's really cool if you can get that crackle. I can see right here it's really thick here. And one here too. Those are going to probably all crack quite well. So I'm gonna hit this with blow dryer. On high heat. You can really see the crackles starting to form there. Look at that. It's quite a good crack right here. Some adhere and some over here and here. This won't be completely dry yet. But I will take the tape off and then I'll give it another blow dry because it will definitely be wet along the very edges. Just going to peel it carefully. I'm going to peel it towards me. Towards the branch. You can see that lovely, lovely organic line we're getting from the tape. Peel it towards the branch so you don't making marks in your sky. Look at that. We have a beautiful, beautiful textured branch. Let's give it another blast of the blow dryer so we don't smear anything and drag it all over our canvas. 7. Seating our chicks: Now we're going to take our little birds. Gonna take my note from here, if you've got scissors, go ahead and cut them out, but I just tear mine out. Got my little bird sitting this way and he is facing that direction. So he's going to sit. I can still feel that wet in there a little bit. Be careful with that. He's gonna be sitting right on that branch. They're sold term right along his bottom here. Make them so he sitting right about there. Then I'll anchor him down with a piece of tape. Just like that. This little guy here, we're going to rip him out. He's gonna be sitting somewhere. Let's say maybe he's standing a bit. He's going to stand like he's talking to that guy. That'll do us. Good enough. Now I've got my birds planted. I'm going to take my carbon paper, and this time we're going to put the carbon paper down on our painting. Darks, I doubt so. The shiny side down custody wanted to transfer onto our Canvas. Looking for my pencil again. There it is. There. Okay, so let's get that transferred over quantity. Just draw over all of those lines. Tie down the back of his head and this little wing and his body. This carbon paper will erase. Don't draw too, too hard, but it will erase off your Canvas. Oops, missed a little bit on his head. That spot right there. Now we've got one little guy sitting there and I can take him off. I think I might actually move him over a little bit to be a bit more social and all, tilt them slightly so you can read the chat lip, this carbon paper underneath like that. And we're going to do the same thing and transferred this one on here. Do that part. I don't reply to that part. Will check. Hope you did missed all this though. Just by taping just the top down instead of taping the carbon, I can lift it up and check and make sure it's okay underneath there. So don't take everything down. I think that's got it. Yes, it does. Their two lovely little social chickadees sitting on a branch. Now what we're going to do is paint them in. 8. Painting our chicks: Always, always turn your Canvas. It's the easiest for you to reach. You don't have to be painting on an easel. Painting up and down. And it can be painting this way. It doesn't matter just as long as you are comfortable and it makes it easy for you to reach. Now, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna paint his Little Tummy in. And I'm just going to use like a light skim coat of white. This doesn't have to be thick. In fact, don't make it thick. You don't need a thick for just kind of neutralizing that gray in the background. I'm just going to scrub it in here. Be a little bit aware of your outside edges. They don't have to be sharp. Little cheek like that there. And then I'm going to do the same thing over here on this other little guy in here. These are super quick to do. In all honesty, it probably takes longer to dry it than it does to paint it. This takes a fair bit of time to dry. It's quite cold steel. That means it's wet. Just going to have to be really careful. Don't want to miss that part up by dragging my hand through it. Super fast little birds to paint. There we go. Okay, Now they've both got this base coat on. We'll give them a little dry so we don't lose the base coat. I painted about 50 of these this year on ornaments. Now I'm going to jump right back into my white, but I'm also going to give myself a little bit of a gray color, maybe a little bit darker than that. I'm gonna be mixing my white and my gray. I'm going to put the gray on the bottom of his tummy here. This is where we got to be careful. Put some of that dark color. We're going to be mixing on our Canvas. So make sure you've got lots of paint on there. Maybe make it a bit darker than that. There we go. There goes my dark color on the bottom. This is when we start to give them a little bit of dimension. So he has nice little round tummy. There we go. That's good. I'm just going to take my cloth and put it up here and wipe my brush off, not washing it, just wiping it. Dip into my white right on his tummy here. Like that. And then write one here. I'm just gonna do this. I'm going to tap it. And then I'll wipe my brush off and just tap them. And what we're trying to do is lose that harsh edge, the harsh transition line. We still want them dark at the bottom. We still want them gradually getting lighter as it goes up. Add a little bit more white to dark, just add a bit more. Sure, that's a nice soft edge. Keep that dark at the bottom. There. We've got light going into dark. And I'm going to dip back into that sad color right across here like that. And the same thing, tap into that white transition it there's no harsh line, just like that. The edges. Maybe a tad more. Little bit of time wipe your brush off there. And then right back into the white again. Right across in his cheek. Like that. Same thing. Tap it into that TAM. Don't worry if you go over his eye because we can always find that again. Just want to make sure you don't have any harsh lines. A little bit more Tam right there. There we go. That looks quite good. Little touch brighter, brighter here. Blend. Trick is in the blending. I'm going to move over and this little guy, I'll turn them on this way so that it's easier for me to reach. Then mixed myself up. That little puddle of gray. Might be a bit too dark. There we go. I'm gonna need a bit more white. There we go, a little bit more white in there. Same thing just down on his bottom edge, right along his tummy. Make that gray. Then write a little bit under his wing there too can be gray. Just like that. Wipe that off, dip into the white. And we're going to go right along here. Blend that out. You paint at your own speed. You can always pause, rewind it to get lost. Paint at your own speed. Because that is perfect for you. Want to dip into that sandy color and I'm going to put a writing about here. I don't know how many of these I've painted now. But it's got to be at least into the hundreds. Just remember, keep it blended. Then back into the white. Bring that white in its little cheek into that into that tan color. That adjunct. Little taps. Wipe my brush off when you need to. That is what we need for a little chickadees. Now what I'm going to do is blow dry that. 9. Fancy feathers: This has a little bit of a technique for loading your brush. What we're going to do is dip into the Black Sea, how I'm loading it front and back. I'm gonna go over to my puddle of white, a nice clean Pavlov white. And I'm going to dip just that corner, just a corner into the paint. And I'm going to flip it like this. The whites on the top. I'm going to put this down on the paper so that all of these bristles are flat on the paper. Then I'm going to pull it towards me. And as I pull it towards me, I'm going to put pressure on my brush. And then I'm going to lift up. And you'll get these little stripes through your paint. Which is how we're gonna make our feathers. Now we're gonna do that again. Every time you reload the brush, makes sure you wipe the brush off. There's another all the bristles down. Pull it towards you and give it a little bit of pressure, and lift it back up again. Practice that on your paper a few times. We're gonna go over here now. And I'm going to show you how to do this on your birds. These are fun. I'm gonna, just like we've been practicing. Scoop a little bit up on the end here, just that little tip, that little triad triangle chip, that corner of your brush. I'm gonna put that white at the top, put it down at the end of my tail, and I'm going to drag it in. Just like that. That's all I'm looking for. Wipe it off. We're gonna reload. Same thing. Just dip the corner in. I'm going to start my wings somewhere in here, right about, let's say right about there. And then I'm going to drag it to about there. Wipe it off, load up. Gonna do this again, right beside it. Like that. Wipe it off again, load it up again. Might have quite a bit of white on there, but that's okay. You're going to end up depositing a lot of paint on this on the ends of these wings. Don't worry about it. It's just fine. Now, we're going to do is, well, we've got a tail in three feathers. You might end up with a tail on for feathers, but I've got three here. That's fine. I'm going to take a bit of black and a bit of white. And I'm going to mix myself up. Nice gray. Just like that. I'm going to wipe that off again because there's a lot of paint in it. I'm going to paint in the same way without the ticked it. So all I'm going to start about halfway down his wing. And I'm gonna put a mark like that. And I'm just pressing my brush down and pulling it back. Strokes are shorter. We're just building some other feathers on here. This is probably not anatomically correct for this bird, but we're not looking for realism. We're just looking for a nice bird. Will add a bit more white to that now, because I want some definition between those feathers. There we go. Now it's a little bit lighter gray. We're just going to lay some more feathers on them in here like this. Like that. Then I'm going to go right into the white loading it the same way. Just wipe my brush off, I didn't watch it. Then I'm just going to come up here like this. Pick up some of that black that was fine. There we go. And that's really all we want to do there. Got some nice feathers on the little bird. I'm going to flip it around this way. Load up with some of that white with that little fine brush. And starting in the body part of the bird, I'm just going to pull some lines down into here, just like little feathers. And you'll pick up different colors of your feathers in there. And I'm just going to keep pulling them down in here. So there's a nice transition between the feathers and the body. There we go. I'm just going to go back in here until I end up with a nice transition. There we go. That's looking good. Still got a bit of that gray showing their source springs from down in here. There we are. Little bit right here. Like that, and that should give us a super nice little chickadee cheek and feathers. Let's do our other little guy who isn't nearly as complicated as that. Shown them up. This way. We're still going to load our feathers out the same way. Same brush. Dry that brush off really well. Water gets built up in that metal piece and you won't know when you are holding your brush like this, but when you turn your brush like this, it'll all rundown in the bristles and you get a big blob and it's not fun. Just going to load up here, same way we did before. Dip into the white. And just at the point here on his wing, I'm just going to put it there like that. Began on the other side. Down. Drag it up. There we go. Now we've got two. Oops, it's a little lopsided. Put a bit more on little bit further down there we go. There now he's got his wings. Maybe I'll put a little bit on the other side because it looks a little different. Now it looks lopsided more there. That'll that'll do I always say there and stop and then I just do it again. Stop when you want to stop. There you go. Let's try this so we don't run our hands through it and smear wings and cry. Alright, there we go. These little guys are really close to being done. We just need to paint in there little black heads. Find a paint brush that's going to fit the areas that you'll be painting. Adjust accordingly. We'll start with this little guy will take some of this black carefully fill in. Yet don't worry about panic over xy. We can find that again carefully fill in his head here. This is when they really started to look like chickadees because you get that little little cap. There's our little guys cap. There we go. Right into the wing. Miss that little spot. Then we can go right here under his chin. Like that little spot. Going to bring that up just a little bit more. Looks good. Let's paint this one in as well. This is just a little round brush. I'm using a little cap. Him his little bib here. There's this bit. Just like that. We have to really sweet little chickadees. 10. Beaks and eyes: Now what we're going to do here is we know that that i is the center of his head. So that's where the eye is going. Taking a Q-tip dividend, that sand color, gonna put the eye right there, right about there. Press it down until it gets as big as I want that to be. Actually a little bit bigger than what I want that to be because the sand color is actually the outside of his eye, like the little eyelid. And it's very important because when we fill that up with black will have that little tiny rim of sand color for the skin of his eye. So much easier than painting a thin line around his eyelid. There we go. Now, let's come over here and I'm going to take some black paint and a little bit of white, so it's not super dark. Always start at the tip of the peak. And then I always draw the line first and then drag it in towards the head. This is the bottom half of that triangle, and here comes the top half of the triangle. There we go. So don't just end it right at the edge of his head. Take it all the way in like that. Then I'm going to dip into a little bit of white, just a tiny bit of white here. And I'm going to put it on the top half of his beak. Like that. They're just kind of blend it in a little bit into the gray color we've got underneath. So we've got one beak and we'll flip it over. And we're going to do the same thing on the other side. Starting on the outside, going in that dark gray like that. Got a bit of a paint brush here. Well, a little bit of white on the top part of his beak like that. Give it a little blend. That's gonna give us that sort of definition between the top half of his beak and the bottom. And then we can dip in the tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of black and put a mark there and a nose hole right there. Notice the little birds with those holes. Let's give that a blow dry. Now we're gonna fill in his eye. And the easiest way to do this is to use pencil. I'm just going to dip my pencil into the black. Put a little bit of black in the center and then I'm going to draw with my pencil to the outside edge, but not all the way out. You want to leave that little fin thin little line of that ten colors still all the way round his eye. Super, super thin. Now if you miss that off, it's not a big deal because you can always just paint that sand color in again. Take your time. Make sure especially make sure that the tan color is still showing up against the black because that's what's going to define your eye from his head. There we go. Let's give them a bit of life. This is my very favorite part. We're going to use just a tiny, tiny dot right there, almost on the edge of his eye and another over here. And it totally brings them to life. I just loved that part. 11. Knees and toes: Now I'm going to go down here and I'm just going to put some little toes and they'll curl over that branch. And over here, they're not little tiny toes, they're white, substantial toes to hold that burden. There's his toes. Then going to come from here just inside his body like this. And then make this one add a bit of an angle. I'm just going to bring some toes out from that side. And then the front, and then it kind of wraps around a little bit. They're standing on top of that branch. That'll be good enough. Let's make a little top leg on him. I just mixed up a little bit of a gray. Try not to drag my hand through anything. I'll pop ahead in here and just bring this down slightly. The top of his leg. There we go. I'll spin them around. Then blend it into his body. A little bit more white. Get it blended nicely. That was dangerously close. I just put my hand in that wet branch, be careful. Or white. Just keep blending until he's got a little bit of a talk to his leg on that side. Here we go. Now he's standing there. It looks alright. That is almost done. 12. Twigs: Alright, let's make ourselves some twigs and branches. I'm going to put my branches in here with a little puddle of water. I'm going to take some of that black and mix it into that puddle like that because I'm going to want to be painting some nice fine lines. Let's mix some brown in there too. Why not? The way we're going to get a nice fine line is Bye, putting a bit of water in our paint. Now, all we have to remember is that just like this branch is thicker here because this is where the tree is. The little branches that come off this branch will be thicker where they join onto the big branch. That blob there. Sometimes table leave a little bit of a, of a sticky glue spot and you can just pick it up with your eraser. Just get rid of any of that. If it got left behind. Be careful if your paint is still wet. You don't want to erase it if your paint is still wet, but mine is nice and dry now. Okay. Little bit right there. There we go already. So I'm going to turn my canvas this way because I want to be drinking by branches down out here. I always find it easier to paint fine lines by pulling them towards me. So I'll start right here in the branch itself. And then I'm just going to start painting this branch. Thicker at one end. Gets thinner and thinner as we get to the tip of the branch. Here, I can bring another branch off here. I can bring another little one up here, gets a little thick up with that other end. So I'll have to thicken it down here. Make it make sense. And of course I'll have to think on it down here as well. There we go. If you do end up accidentally giving yourself a bit of a thicker branch, just make sure that the farther down closer to the big branch, thicken it up as it goes closer to that main branch. Always, always anchor my hand on my canvas. I'm resting my hand right on the canvas. Because you have no hope of actually getting a nice thin, fine line. If your hand is bouncing and film and fighting gravity. Go up here. Just make your branches wandering where they want to. This one's actually going to cross this little guy right here. Why not? There we go. That's nice. Thick enough a little bit down at the beginning of the branch. There we go. Just going to keep adding to your branches and you make as many as you like. And just make sure they're getting thinner and thinner as you get down to the very end. Here we go. That looks good. Careful you don't drag your hand through the smear. Your branches. Will cry. If you do get a mess on your Canvas. If you've got a blog, very often, you can pick it up with a Q-tip that's just a little bit wet. But only if it's still only the paint is still a bit wet. I'm gonna show you something here. Sometimes you'll end up with what I call the dreaded chicken foot. This is what the dreaded chicken foot is. We've got a branch with one coming off. But if we put a branch coming off here, you're going to end up with this, which I call the dreaded chicken foot, which I tried to avoid at all costs. It just, it's just not as visually pleasing. I like it better when they're sort of all spread out like that. I think I'll put a branch up here. And I could go up here. This one's gonna go off the page a little bit. Why not? There we go. Let's go and put one more right about here. There'll be quite a bit fatter because it is closer to the tree. Launder it up in this way. Oops, I just dropped something in the sky. Big blob of black. What am I going to do about it? There we go, govern it up. The only people will ever know these, you and I. There we go. Branch off that. You'll be able to do this very easily, but you must, must put water in your paint. There we go a little bit up here. Maybe a little bit off there. Super-easy. There we go. Drop one right there. See that black dot? I don't want that. Okay, Here's some good good demonstration of it. There we do. I just lifted it off with a little Q-tip. Truth be told to just put it in my mouth. Used a bit of split to get it off. But if you think that's gross, you can just do with water. But it probably doesn't work as well as spirit though. 13. Snowfall: Before the snow flies, let's take a little piece of masking tape. Just a little piece, tear it off, and stick it on your chickadees face. So it doesn't get any snow splattered on its head because you know that it's going to go right in its I don't want to mess that up. There we go. Just a couple of pieces of tape. Give it a good stick down. Now we're going to take some white paint that has water mixed into it. Mix it up really well. I can tap this against my pencil. Like that knocked lots of paint out, get a good feel of what that feels like. And then starting at the bottom of your painting where it's not as important, get some snow going into the equation to hold your paint brush at the end and bounce it quite firmly off that pencil. Always tap off over your plate first just to make sure because it does hold a lot of paint in there and there could be some big blobs flying. You put on as much snow as you like. This is a great unifying technique for the whole painting. The snow somehow seems to tie everything together. Look at that. That would have gone right in his eye. So it's a good thing. We covered it up. Here we go. That's looking pretty good. Little bit more there, a little bit more there. There we go. Our snowstorm. Let's give it a try. 14. Finishing up: All right, There we go. Now we can take these things off. What we can do with that now is we're going to take our pencil and see how we've got a definite area that doesn't have any snow in it. Now we're just gonna go in with our pencil dipped in a bit of white and put a few well-placed splatters. Just so it doesn't look so obviously masked off. Maybe a couple in here. In here. We can avoid his eye by doing it this way. There we go. That's done. And now I'm going to blast it with a blow dryer one more time so I don't drag my hand through those dots. 15. The grand reveal: You want to make sure you do is when this really dry, leave it a couple of hours just to make sure you'll have little bit of pencil left, pop in there and erase that afterwards. But when it's dry, then give it a really good coat of varnish. I'm just going to start peeling this tape off and see how well we did with our masking rule. Not too bad. This is what I really like about taping off the edges. It gives us this beautiful frame. It looks so professional. Even if you don't have much experience. There we go. Little chickadees on a branch or the adorable. Just one thing left to do that. Sign our names to them there. Thanks for painting with me.