How to paint a Cardinal in Watercolor

1. Introduction: So welcome everybody to paint with watercolour paint or red cardinal. This is my third class on skill share. And I'm really glad that you're here to join me. Just to tell you a little bit about me. I'm a graduate of Syracuse University and I'm a watercolor artist. I love to paint from nature. A lot of my work comes from my walks taken in my neighborhood here. I live on the North fork of Long Island. And there's so much inspiration around me. So the idea for this class came about because I love red cardinals and I love to paint them. I see them feeding out in the greenery near my studio window. And I love to paint them. So I wanted to share my process with you. So we're gonna paint watercolor. I'm going to show you some of my tips and tricks for doing that. And then we're also going to use a little bit of pen and ink to give him a little bit of contrast in the details. So I hope you'll join me for this class and thank you so much for tuning in. 2. Class Project: You're going to be creating a watercolor painting of a red card null for the class project. I suggest gathering some Bird reference that you love a personal photo or search online to get you inspired. Throughout this class, I will take you through my step-by-step process for sketching the bird, mixing colors, painting wet on wet, and adding darks to finish up your piece. And when you're done with your piece, and we'd love to see your work in the class project area. If you go to your computer on the skill share page and find the your project tab. They'll be some sidebar resources, the cardinal photo and the pdf up supplies. And when you're ready, upload your project to the project area. Make sure you upload a cover, and then some more photos and text to the body. So we can see your beautiful work and learn about your process. See you in the next video to start our sketch. 3. Supplies: So now I wanna talk to you about the supplies you'll need to complete the class project for our class. So I recommend using a really good quality watercolor paper. The piece I have here is a Strathmore, a 140 pound cold press watercolor paper. And when I work with sheets of this, I like to tape it down onto a board. This is a gator board which is water resistant. So I take the paper down on all sides to keep it flat. So when I'm painting, the paper doesn't buckle. And I use this white artists tape to do that and it won't rip the paper. So that's the first thing you need is good-quality watercolor paper. Then Napster. You need a pencil. And I like to use these struck Sattler actually, Scotland Mars pencils, I use about an HB and a kneaded eraser is great and it's really gentle on the watercolor paper. If you need to erase. So get some of those two things ready to. My paints. I work with tubes of watercolor. These are some examples of some of my colors that I actually used in this cardinal class. Scarlett lake, permanent rose. This is a really beautiful bright yellow called gam Bosh Nova. And I have some burnt sienna here. Those are just a few of the colors that I used. So whatever colors you have are absolutely fine. You also need a pallet to mix the colors in HIV. All of my paints laid out already in my palette. And I use this water sprayer to what the paints before I start painting. So that's really helpful too. And then you're going to need some brushes. I like to use round watercolor brushes, which means the bristles come to a nice taper at the end. You can paint large areas with it and then you can also get nice detail because of the points. And here I have a number eight and number ten. You could probably also use smaller point, maybe a four or a six in the rounds. So those are the brushes that I used for this project. And you need water jars. You can see here I have multiple water jars. I would have at least two in front of you. It's good to keep one full of clear water when you're working because you'll see I paint a lot with clear water. And then you always have clean water, another jar of water to rinse your brush often, you need your photo reference of what you're going to paint from. This is the photo reference I used for this piece that I did to demonstrate for you. And I will have this in the class resources for you if you want to use the same reference to paint from, It'll be there for you. I'd like to print it out so that I have it in front of me to reference at any point in time. You also need some paper towels. I have one folded and torn right here. Sometimes I lift up color with the paper towels or I just dry my brush off with it. So get some paper towels ready to go. And last but not least, we are going to experiment a little with a little pen and ink. So I've got a jar. You need water resistant ink lack, and you need any kind of pen with the nib. And if you don't have kinda in ink and you'd maybe like to use a just a black fine point pen. You could use a micron black pen or these Pitt pens by favourite costs dollar, really good too. So totally up to you. So another option to painting on the sheets of watercolor paper. I also like to use a sketchbook to paint in. This is a mole skyline watercolor paper sketchbook. I just started this recently in this little cardinal I painted here, sort of inspired this class. So just to give you an idea, pain on both sides of the page. And these are just some samples of things I've painted in here. And it's nice because it keeps all your paintings together in one place, but make sure it's watercolour paper, but that's another option for paper to paint on. 4. Time to Sketch: For the first step in beginning our project, we are going to sketch. When I work on my watercolor pieces, I always like to start with a simple pencil sketch. I've added into the project resources, a line drawing for you to use to follow. So you can get the basic structure of the cardinal down a little bit easier because I don't want you to struggle with the drawing part of it, which can be slightly daunting depending on what your level is. So this reference will be available in the resources. But typically my process for starting any piece of watercolor painting that I'm doing, any project I began, I start with a really good photo reference. And there are a lot of sources that you can use online to find photos. This pieces from Splash.com. And this is a photo by Bonnie cattle. And you can use those photos for whatever your purposes are. And you just have to maybe thank the photographer or the artist for letting you use it. But this was the this was the reference that I pulled off that website last night and printed down for you so you could actually see it as we're working. It's a good idea to do that when you're sketching because sometimes if you're, if you're looking at an iPad, you know how the timing can go out in the screen, can go black and then you lose your piece. So it's good to have it in front of you if need be. So what I like to do first, especially on the cardinal, is I'd like to start with the top of his head. There's a very distinct triangular shape to the top of the feather formation on honest head. In when I'm sketching any object no matter what it is, I always break it down into simple shapes, so it's not so overwhelming. So let's start with that. Okay. So I'm going to place them on the page. Not completely in the center. One at the top of the head to maybe start over here to the left a little bit. And I'm just very lightly going to draw that edge of his father's coming up. And I don't need to worry about every single line that comes down. I just want to get that basic shape in there. So I've got a little bit of a triangular shape happening. And I remember, you know, it doesn't have to be very hard edge because it's, it's a bird and these are soft feathers making these shapes. So we've got the top of the head there. Let's go down and then let's add the beak. And again, the beak is really just two triangles next to each other coming in to the mouth area. So one of the things we'll talk about later in the class is when we're painting in the eye, how important it is to keep a highlight in the eye. So I'm very lightly going to draw the circle for the eye right now. And in the cardinal, the male cardinal which we're painting, the eye is usually embedded in an area that's got black feathers. So can be a little hard to see. So I just want you to have like a just a little bit of a line just marking where the black area comes down. And then make sure you draw the highlight in the eye. Because it's the highlight in the eye. And we're going to leave that white paper. Or like a light gray is what's gonna make him look more friendly if we fill that hole I and black, they start to look a little bit scary. So then at any point, I want to just light in this area by the beak of it. I like to use the soft grey needed erasers and won't mark up the paper. So I just want to go back and, and just light in that line a little bit. So now I'm just going to come down a little bit underneath his chin. And now the big shape that I need to get now is going to be his belly. You see this big, really big curve coming down this way and it's kind of, it's not a perfect circle. It's kind of a little bit of, I'd say maybe in more of an oval shape and just finding out good spot to put this down so you can see just ok. So now just very lightly with my pencil, I wanna get that big shape. And then I can go back and I can add some of these feathers coming down. So the big swoop at that belly coming down. And I may have a couple get that curve right. Or sometimes they'll draw like more than one line in that area. But if you keep your lines light, it's very easy to just go back in and lift them out. Now I'm just going to add a couple of those feathers coming out. So we've got the belly. Right now. I would probably jump over to doing his tail. So you can see there's a very pretty straight line coming off the back of him. And his tail is really almost as long as his body. So that's just a good way. I do use my fingers like that a lot. Just sort of measure how large different parts are of whatever I'm drawing. So now I know the, the tail should probably the about this long. And if I measured here, came to about his eye. So I'm just going to keep that in mind and sort of market with my I'm going to hold my finger there just to give you guys an idea of where I'm going with this. And I'm just going to come down. And again, I just want you to think about simple shapes. So this, this tail is really, it's almost, it's like a rectangle with some points of the feathers like coming out the back of it, almost like a little triangles. And just keep it really simple. We can add the details with paint later. So that's gonna come up. It's going to check under this wing. And that's what we're, what we're gonna do next. So I can see this his wing starts. Maybe you're in the middle of that body. And keep in mind that we are drawing feathers so you can make some of those shapes with your pencil as you're doing it. And then I'm going to bring, and there's a big feather that comes back here over the back of his tail. And really just keep looking back at the reference. And it will help guide you in where things are in relationship to each other. Like I know this wing comes out past his tail. So you just have to make sure that you do that. And that's the beauty of an eraser. You can always go back and adjust as needed. So something to keep in mind too. I keep talking about keeping your sketch Light. And the reason I'm saying that is your painting and watercolor, watercolors very transparent. So you will be able to see, you'll see through a lot of it. I mean, unless you're painting black or a really dark color. So if you keep your lines light, it'll be, it'll just become part of your painting. I don't mind seeing pencil lines in paintings and you'll notice in some of my art I do leave some pencil lines, but it just becomes part of the piece. But you don't wanna be inhibited by having a lot of dark lines in there. So the other cool thing with the kneaded eraser is you can see how lightly I'm just touching the paper and I'm, I'm lightening my sketch up just like that. So now we've got his body, which is almost sort of teardrops shaped with a little triangle on the top. Again, think about simple shapes when you're drawing and take your time on it if you need to pause the video at any time and finish your sketch and then come back. Definitely do that. Everybody draws at a different speed. So you take it at whatever speed is works for you. And if you need a little more time on it, then take that time. It's important to have a good sketch to work from. It'll make your painting even more successful. So now I'm just adding his feet at the bottom. They're wrapping around the bottom of this branch or the top of this branch. And I just want to have a little indication of this branch. I'm not I don't really want the focus to be on the branch, but I will wanna give him a place to sit. So I'm going to continue the branch a little bit into the back side of him and then I'm just going to let it fade out. So that's just going to be really soft and Washington, but it's just good to give him a place to be something to hold onto and just to ground him. Just keep it simple. Keep accessing your reference. If you're stuck on your sketch, maybe your proportions are off. Look back at your sketch and use some tools to help you. And don't forget if you need to, you can download this JPEG of my simple line drawing in the resource area. Alright, happy sketching and I'll see you in the next step. 5. Mix up colors: So now we're going to start to mix up the colors we're going to use to paint this red cardinal. I like to work with small little strips of paper so I could test my color on them. I know what is happening with the paint on the paper before I put it into my painting. So the first thing I wanna do, if you haven't what the paints on your palate yet. I usually like to spray all the colors, get them ready to go. And I like to start working with the lightest color that I'm going to need in my painting first. So you'll see in this demonstration piece, I made little marks on my paper of each color that I was using. So in color theory, we usually work from the lightest color to the darkest color. So yellow being the lightest color in the color wheel, I'm showing my handy-dandy color. Well, you guys have probably seen this before along the way. But here's our yellow, here's our red, here's the blue, those are our primary colors. So in color theory, we should be able to mix every color that we need just by using yellow, red, and blue. So you're gonna see me demonstrating some of those combinations of color. And I'll talk you through how I mix up the colors. And let's go. So yellow is going to be the first color that I'm going to mix. So I take some yellow pigment from my palette. I'm wearing my brush in the water jar. And what I like to do is make little puddles of color in my palate. So I don't usually work straight with the pigments right out of my palette. I'm always mixing them out in to an area on my palette because I want to get the water igniting the pain. And that's when you really start to see some beautiful effects happening. And watercolor, when you get the water and the paint moving together to create those areas of mixing and lights and darks. Okay, so here's my yellow. I'm using a gamba edge, Nova yellow, and I'm just adding some water to it. So I'm getting a nice little patch here of yellow because there are highlights of yellow. Looking at my reference, there are highlights of yellow in the, in the beak area and then down in these feather areas. So I wanna make sure I put some yellow in there so I can get that sunlight in there. So the next color I want to mix up, and I'm always looking back at my reference and I'm probably going to hear me repeat myself and say that quite a few times, but it's an important part of my process. So next I'm going to mix myself up some of this sort of grayish brown that you see the second sort of row of colors here on the palette. So in order to mix this brown, I like to use colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel. So for example, orange and blue. Let's pull that color wheel over again. Orange and blue are two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. If I combine those two colors together, I'm gonna get a nice gray or a brownish sort of color depending on how much I added each color. So right now I've got a little bit of a blue and some branch CNN darling, I'm gonna add a little bit more blue because I want it to be a little bit of a gray or brown. So looking at my reference and thinking that looks pretty good, again, I'm going to test it on the test strip. And we go. So I've got my neutral. And now I'm going to mix up a little bit orange. I think there's some of that yellow again. And this time I'm going to use a little scarlet Lake. And if you need more time to mix your colors, again, take your time. I do this all the time every day. So I may be able to mix up a color a little faster. So just take the time that you need to get your colors ready to go. I like to prepare my colors like this because I use a lot of wet on wet painting techniques. And I'm going to show you those in upcoming videos. But it is important to have the paint ready to go, especially when it's a wet on wet process. So now I've moved on from orange. I've moved on to read. One of my favorite reds to use is called Scarlet Lake. This one is a Winsor Newton color. So I've got some Scarlet lake, Lake happening there. And then the final color I'm gonna mix now is going to be like a deep charcoal, not quite black because I'm going to use the pen and ink to do the really dark parts of my, of my bird. But I do want to have a dark grey ready to go. So one way that you could mix black in, you know, applying our color theory again, if we take all of the primaries. So if we take yellow and red and blue, we mix all of those together that will get us to black. So I'm going to use that process. I'm gonna get some blue. I have a really deep blue I like to use when I'm mixing a dark color, it's called indigo and their little indigo there. And then I'm going to get some burnt sienna, which is like an orange, so that's yellow and red combined. So I'm using all my primaries together. Mix those two together. And you can see this little puddle of pain is not as big as the others. That's because I don't have as much water in here. When I'm trying to mix a dark color, I don't want too much water and my mixture because it's a lot of water means it's a lighter color. So I'm trying to keep this color a little bit darker. And we're gonna use that air area. If you don't want to use pen and ink, then you could just use this color to do the feathers around the eye and the eye, but that's totally up to you. So basically that is the color palette that I'm going to use to create my bird. And we're gonna move on and join me in the next video, we're gonna talk about starting with some light washes for the body of the bird. 6. Start with light washes: So when I start my painting, I like to begin with my light colors. First. Yellow being the lightest color that I'm going to use in the cardinal. I'm going to hold up that reference a little closer so I can just show you the spots I'm seeing. There's some yellow highlights happening under his beak, definitely in his beak. And these feathers on the wing. And then even under here, under the tail, there's a little glimmer of yellow coming through the reds and the oranges. So I'm going to focus on those areas right now and lay in some light yellow washes. Then after that, I'm going to add up a little of the orange into that wet area. So we're gonna do a little wet on what afterwards. So I've got a wet brush. I picked up a little bit of the yellow paint on my brush. And again, I'm just looking at my reference. And you'll hear me tell you this. We talked about it in the color mixing part. I'm always referring back to my reference for clues when I'm not really sure what to do next. A lot of it is really just direct observation. And looking back and forth at what you're painting, your paper that you're painting on, whatever surface you're painting on. And then the reference you're using. Sometimes I paint plain error, which is outdoors, and I'll paint directly from nature. So I really am not using a photograph or a reference. And so that's a really great exercise in learning about direct observation because you just have to keep looking up and looking at the object that you're painting. Try to capture the feeling of it. So this is a great way to practice by looking at the photograph. I'm just dropping in some light washes of yellow. I just got a little water on my brush and I'm gonna kinda move some of those surround. And the thing you want to remember too, when you're working with watercolor, you're going to be building up layers. So this is just a very light underlying. This isn't going to be the final, the way the final piece is going to block. If you remember, the final piece I did earlier for demonstration, gets much, much, much darker as I add more layers on top of it. So this is just our first initial layer. So we've got a little yellow in the beak. And then I've got yellow where I see it just looking at the crown of his head, the feather area, and then back and even a little bit on the tail. So I made sure as well that I'd lighten some of my pencil areas. Because once you put water and paint onto the pencil, you're not gonna be able to erase it as easily as you could before you start painting. So if there's any areas that you haven't put the paint down on yet, but you want to light and make sure you do that first. Now I'm going to start to work with a lighter wash of my Scarlett Lake, which is the red. If you remember our color tabs, I'm gonna use a little bit of orange and the feathers, but I'm gonna save that orange for the beak. So right now I'm gonna get a little bit of the scarlet Lake, which is the red. And when you do it, what on what technique you need wet paint on the paper. And for you to be able to tell if the paint is still wet. If you tip your paper a little bit, you will see a shine because the lightest reflecting on the wet areas. If there was no shine, you'd know it was dry. Touching it isn't always the best technique because you can smudge it. So here I know, I can see that it's still shiny up in the crown of his head. And that's where there's a lot of red going on. So I'm just going to drop in a little bit of red up here and just let the paint sort of mixed together. Usually it gets some nice, happy accidents and mixes. And you can see I'm barely even touching the surface of the paper with my brush. So I'm gonna go back and just create some brushstrokes. I only have I just have a dry brush right now. I don't have any paint on the brush. And I just wanted to create just some feelings of feathers in these areas that I've just dropped n. So I'm just doing a little bit of line work. And just kinda getting the feel for the fact that these are feathers. I'm going to even add a little bit, pick up a little bit more red and a little bit of orange at the same time. And I want to add a little bit of orange down in this lower part of his. When I see a lot of orange there, I'm going to add some orange in there. And again, I'm always watching the direction of the brushstrokes. As I'm putting them down. You can just follow the, the direction of his feathers the way it just all occurs in nature. And here the yellow is still really wet. So you can see when I'm, when I'm dropping in this orange, in this wet on wet technique, you can see how it's just all, it's just automatically blending for me. And if it's blending a little too much, then I recommend you wait a little bit on that area, let it dry a little bit. Before you go back and put in more pay, you'll be able to get a little bit more control if the paints a little drier. So I'm gonna add a little bit of this orangey red into his tail. And I'm just looking, I'm constantly looking at my reference. And then just putting the a color where I see it. So this phase right now is really, it's really like doing an under painting. These are my first, my first washes and my first layers. So it is going to be a little bit light. And you need to have a lot of patients. First of all, if you're gonna paint watercolor, I recommend it. And secondly, because you're going to need to let some of these areas dry if I keep putting paint into it right now, all these colors are just gonna blend together. And when I go back in, this cardinals got some beautiful neutral colors in here, that neutral Brown that we mixed up. If I went and put that Brown in here right now, the Brown is just going to mush together with the yellow and the orange, and it's all just going to become one color. So I don't want to lose the wet on wet washy effect I'm getting now by putting too much color and they're right now while it's wet. One more thing that I'm gonna do before I'm going to actually stop and let this dry. One little tip. If you want to drive something and you don't want to wait for it to just happen naturally because if you use a lot of water and I paint with a lot of water, you may need to wait a while for it to dry, but you could get a hairdryer and don't hold the hairdryer too close to the paper to push the paint around, but you can try it if you're getting a little impatient and you want to draw it a little faster. And I'm actually going to do that once I get just wanted a little highlighted orange on this wing here. So I'm just going to pop that in there. And then I'm going to try this. And then when I come back, we are going to work on the neutrals and the greys in the wing and a little bit in the tail feathers. So now let's continue with the light washes in the body of the bird. I did take a couple minutes to dry the light yellow and the light orange washes that were here. And now, as I look at the cardinal, I see all these beautiful neutrals up in the upper wing and then underneath the wing here on a little bit in the tail. So want to get some light values in there, so I don't have a lot of white paper coming through. And then we'll, we're going to add the next layer up darks on top of that. So again, just watching where I see a c up here, there's actually a little bit of this grayish brown. And a lot of times when I'm painting birds and I paint a lot of Arts. I really, I'm not worrying about getting every single feather captured in this piece, but I want to get the feeling of the colors that are in here. Got a feeling of the feathers and just really make them an individual. So I don't really got so worried about making sure I capture every nuance of every little feather. I'm not doing a botanical study. That would be a different class that I really want to get the feeling of this cardinal in, capture him and all of his colorful beauty. So I'm now just adding some light greys to areas where I see that there's going to be sort of a neutral gray feeling, kind of brownish grey. And again, we talked before about the brushstrokes being like feathers. And I'm I'm just whetting my brush. When you see my hand go out of the the screen, I'm either drying off my brush getting more pain or I'm just coming back in with water like now I just have water on my brush. So I just want to soften this area and got a lot of brushstrokes going on. And there were some gaps where it was white and there's some lights in his body but there's not really white. So I wanted to make sure that I had covered up some of that white. And then over here, I'm just going down some of the feathers and his tail. It also has this sort of neutral color. So again, just take how much over time you need to get those layers in, but I don't want you to overwork it at this point. We've got some really nice blends from the wet on what technique we did. The way the yellow is blending with the red. It's creating some really beautiful color. So I'm not, I don't want to cover all of that up, but want to just be able to get some more layers in there somewhere, washes in there so we can build up our layers. And I think those are the main areas that have the grey in there. I can take a little bit of a darker version of it. I'll show you now. I'm just adding a little bit of the darker brown to it and I'm just going to look at those spots is a little darker. And I'm going to come up with the watercolor, do a little work for me. I'm just going to drop a little bit of it into the wetness of the wash below it. And you can start to define some areas that are a little drunk or especially under this wing right here. There's a shadow above and beyond, above and below. And that's probably, I don't want to overdo it. And I'm gonna put a little bit of this gray color and his feet are gonna kinda help ground him on the branch. And we'll add some detail for that later. Alright, I'll see you in the next video where we will work on the darks in the body. 7. Paint the Darks: Now we're going to work on adding depth to the body of the bird by using some dark washes, particularly that beautiful read, The Scarlet lake red that we hadn't mixed up originally. So I'm starting with, let's see, I've got a number eight round brush and I'm picking up a little bit of red. We're going to use some wet on wet. But I'm going to start out first with the head of the bird and I'm going to work my way down. And the reason I do that is if I started down at the tail and I accidentally put my hand down or touched into it, I'm gonna smudge it. So I usually kinda think of my painting strategy before I start and think about where is a good spot to start that's not going to cause an accident to happen are smudge effect. So I'm going to start up at the top of the head. And I, this wash of retina, I don't want to cover up everything I've put down. So I'm just going to work, put some brush strokes in here. That's scarlet, red. And now I'll actually want to go back. I'm gonna come up close to his eye, but I am going to leave a little glimmer of white because I don't want him to become too scary and it usually helps, but there's a little white, they're kinda opens it up. And you can see I'm just tapping down the tip of my brush, which is making little feather shapes. So you want to think about that as you're painting him and you wouldn't want to use horizontal or vertical lines because the feathers aren't going in that direction. Just want to be mindful of that. Now I'm going to go back in. I'm using a wet on wet technique. I have just water on my brush now. And I'm going back near those areas where I put the red. And I'm basically giving the patient a place to go and blend into. So I'm just putting some water next to the brushstrokes. And you could see it's kinda just softening those areas. And I'm trying to just get the effect of my reference, always looking back at my reference. Now I'm gonna get a little more red paint. And this area's dried a little faster than the other part did. So I'm just gonna get a little more paint in there. And just if it's a wet area is just going to bleed and two and you could see I'm not going back into NER is I'm really putting the patient down and then I'm moving on to somewhere else. So sometimes we just want to control every stroke that we're making and everything that we're doing. But this is a great time to just let the paint and the water do its thing. So I added a little red and the tail. And then I softened it with just a little bit of water. Coming back in the body of the bird with just a little bit of water on my brush. And I kind of blend that out a little bit. And I say little highlights, a pink over underneath his wings. So I'm just wanna do those nice and light. So it's just a little bit of red and then a little bit of water. So when I put the greys in there, I'll still have a glimmer of the red and the pink coming through as well in this wing area. Or it's predominantly neutral, there still are hits of red coming through. So a lot of the fine work or the more detailed work that's going to be some of the last steps that we're gonna do. Once we have all these, the larger areas, the body, these feathers, the tail, and then we will move on to adding some of the detail. See you in the next video where we're gonna work on adding some of the Browns, the darker browns to the feathers. We're going to add a little bit of color into the branch because I don't want to leave the branch out completely. I just wanna get a washer brown in there. And then we'll work on painting the i. So continuing on with adding some more depth into our painting, you can see the bird starting to emerge, a little more color happening. I wanna get some color into the stem area. I don't want to just leave that completely blank. So I've mixed up a more bluish gray, a little bit bluer than the brown color we had going and see that they're on on the chips. And I'm just want the color to be a little different than what's in the bird. So in order to do that, I just, I just added a little bit of glue to the greyish color. And I'm just gonna put a light wash on a dark right now I'm going to add a little water. And the branch is not really all that important. It just gives them a place and it kind of holds him. So he's not floating around the page, but I don't really want to draw too much attention to it. So I just want it to be kinda washy and loose. So I'm just going to dabble a little, a little darker tone in there and then just kinda faded out. Now just remember that that part is wet so you don't want to touch the other colours to it because then it's all gonna bleed together. So what I wanna do now is work on the darker browns on the body of the bird. So those areas that I'm seeing that and just going to hold this up to you. These areas on the wing, in these feathers and underneath the wing and then the back part of the tail. So we're going to add in some of those darks. And I'm gonna start over here and the just pass the, the red, the deepest red from the triangulation of his head and just get a little neutral in there. So this brown is looking slightly dark to me. But I'm gonna go back in and make some of these brushstroke shapes with some water. And then that will, that will soften it up a little bit. But I want to make sure I let the colors that are underneath come through. Because I've all these glimmers of orange and read them there and I want to keep that feeling. In this back area here. It's actually his wing coming over from the back side. So we wanna make sure I get those feather shapes in there too. And some line work. This color I'm not using as wet on wet. But you can see I'm still making those shapes, the feather shapes with my brush. And it has a lot of layering and you might need to take a little, a couple runs up this area. You might. Thank you dark enough. That happens to me a lot. I think I've got enough at the darks in there and then I realized I really need to go put more darks and they're watercolor does tend to dry lighter than what you see when it's wet. So it's going to look darker now, but you'll notice two as minus drying. It's going to be a little bit lighter in the end. So we can always add little bits of dark towards the end. Not a problem. Also adding a little bit of orange back into this area because I really see that orange highlights on that wing. And that is as a very wet on wet area which is good. So I'll blending together which is nice. And then while we're working on darks, I'm still gonna make the top of his head above his eye even deeper red. So I'm gonna go in there right now. And now back end with just a little water on my brush. We want them to feel kind of soft and fuzzy the way those feathers are. And then we don't want to forget about his beak. I put the yellow and are ready, but there's a definite orange, a little bit of an orange, almost a triangle on the top. Indefinitely on that ridge in the middle. I just put some paint and then a little bit on the lower. Right. Yeah. So I want a little of the yellow still shine through so I don't want to cover it all up. And this is a good example because I put a little too much orange, but I have my paper towel. And remember we can use while it's still wet, you can use your paper towel to lift up the paint. So I'm just going to look down a little bit of that. Looked a little bit of red two out of the crowd. And then I'll wait to go back and to put more orange and they need that orange to dry. So I think that's good for our darks. We are going to paint the eye in the next video. So get your pen and ink ready or your black paint, whatever you want to use. And I'll see you there. 8. Paint the eye and detail: So now we're gonna paint the I and the detail and our piece. So as I mentioned before, when you did your sketch, to draw out very distinctly the circle for the eye as well, I want to do to make sure you'd left a little glimmer of white paper to represent the highlight in the eye. So just keep looking back at your reference. And then even so the reference that the AI in this reference is very dark, but there's still a highlight that's like a pale gray. So I want you to make sure that you leave that highlight. And also I want you to leave a little bit of white around the eye just so it lightens it up a little bit and just keeps him looking very friendly. I want you to work pretty slowly here and take your time. There's no rush. If you're using pen and ink, you can start. I'm going to draw the circle first and I'm going to fill it in with the ink. Or if you're gonna use a brush and you're gonna do it in watercolor. Same technique. I'm going to outline the i first. So I'm just making a circle with my nav and my pan. And then I'm going around the area where the highlights is going to be. And then i'm just come gently filling in that area. Again, you could use a little micron pen if you want, or one of those Club or Costco pans. That's all good. So just keep it really simple. So there is the eye and I've got the highlight in there as well. Now if you look closely at our reference, I'm going to bring it back in to the camera. We've got little dark black feathers that come under his beak and around the beak and then up and around the eye. So now I'm going to just work slowly looking at my reference and just be careful not to smudge the eye that you just put in there especially. Well, the water polo takes a while to dry, but I find even more so the ink, when you use pen and ink, it does take a while to dry. So I'm just using strokes with the nib of the pen that mimic the feathers that are surrounding this area. So I don't want to draw like a sharp, hard line and want to keep it more linear, like follow the shape of the feathers as you see them. So just keep looking back at that reference and now I'm going to come around the beak. There's really two, almost two triangles to the beak. So I'm just going to sort of work my way around that area and have some more ink on there. And you could even do a combination. In the last cardinal that I painted, I used a little bit of watercolor. I put a wash down in this area first and then I used the income top. So it's really up to you. You're the artist, so make it yours. And you put that color in there however you feel comfortable. But I've been experimenting a lot using pennant Inca watercolor lately. And I like the effects that I got using the two different mediums. So I am going to continue to play with that. And I hope you'll play with it two. Alright, so that's the I, and that's really the part that's got the most black on it. Uh, do like to add a little bit of accent. But the black, I'm going to go down on the legs. And I'm just gonna put a little bit of shading underneath the foot, a little bit on the back side of the leg. Like I said, just a little bit. I don't want this to become all that important, but it just needs to have a little shadowing going on. Working in little brush strokes. And I'm going to add some darker feathers back under the tail. Just a couple coming out under the wing. And I am going to go back over this with a little bit of watercolor. So it is important when I mentioned to you before about using a waterproof or water resistant, a waterproof ink or pen. That's important because if you don't and then you go back over this, I like the option of going back and with watercolor if I want to. So that'll allow me to go back over those with some paint if I choose two, which I definitely am going to, because I want to add some more detail on some feathers on a couple shadows. So I'm going to show you that in x, but here, just a little bit of black line work. And just so you could see him now starting to like lift off the page I find on water color, it's the contrast between the lights and the darks that really give a piece dimension. So that's what we're looking to do at this point. So that's about all the black I'm going to add in for now. What I'd like to do is take you to the next video where we're gonna do our finishing touches. So we're gonna go into the beak and add some darks. You might want to switch to a smaller brush if you're more comfortable. And I will see you in the next video. 9. Finishing Touches: So now we're going to add the finishing touches. The first thing I'd like to do is put a little bit more orange into his beak. So if you look at that reference, you'll see in the center of those two triangles, there's a pretty dark orange and red. So I'm just gonna put a little bit of that. And then down on the lower beak too, because probably that's a little bit and shadow. I'm going to add a little bit of this orange into the body while I'm hero. Could another layer of color going in there? If at any point the line that you make feels just like a little horse, just remember, you can just go back in with a wet brush softened, which I'm gonna do a little bit on this peak. Okay, so I've got the orange Into the beak and added a few more feathers here on their lot of feathers going on. And now I am going to add slightly, a little bit more brown in his foot. Because it's interesting when I added the black, it made the others, other colors look so light and that's not unusual to happen. So I'm just adding a little more brown down there. And then in the tail, I want to add some more, a little bit of a deeper read, especially down this first feather. A couple lines of hat will kinda wanna make it pop away from the other ones. So we'll read in the tail. I'm gonna do a little more red on the body down in here. I put a little more brown, especially under the wing here, going down towards the tail, there's a pretty dark shadow there. This is the point where I'm looking for those shadows. And i want to accentuate them a little bit, give them a little more dimension over and here there's a little bit of a darker area. And again, I'm just looking at my reference and then looking back at my painting and look, where do I see dark to have enough dark no, at it. So I'm constantly looking back and forth between the two, adding some other hits of brown up higher. And then there's a little barrier here under whose union says neck, chin. And then right behind that, I'm gonna put a little bit of a shadow. Seems to be a crease happening there. And before you do this, of course makes sure I knew that my my black was already dry because I am going kinda close to it with some of these colors. And so if that was not dry, I would have the black just bleeding into everything. So you want to just be careful with that? I'm just going to darken a little bit on the beat and I think I'm gonna stop. So as I mentioned before, when you put the dark sin and the finishing touches, that's when you really see all the contrast happening. And whatever it is that you're painting really starts to come to life as those colors play against each other. I'm just gonna put a little bit of a dark under this wing is really pretty dark there. That's gonna make the lighter colors pop out. So these are what I like to call the finishing touches. Typically, it's the darks that you're adding in at this point because it's hard to add lights on top of darks. But if you have a light area that needs to get a little darker, you could just put a light wash on it. I like to check back, look, look up from my reference to my piece and see if there's anything, anything that I'm missing. It's always good. When you're working on a piece to step away from it and give yourself a little distance. Sometimes I put a painting across the room and then look at it and see if I feel like there's anything that I'm missing. But really at this point, it's just little bits of detail. You could go back in if you want with the micron pan or the Pantene that kinda like the way his feathers are around the mouth area. And I'm going to let this dry on. And in the next video we're just going to talk about finishing it up and signing it and getting it ready to go. 10. Thank you!: So here we go. Here's my finished bird painting. And I signed my works and make sure you sign your work. And then you need to frame it. But before you do that, I want you to upload it into the class project area. So you can find that section down on the bottom part of the class page and upload a, you could scan it, take a picture with your phone, you need a cover page. And then you want to talk about your process a little bit. I love to read about it. I can't wait to see your art. And I hope you enjoyed my class. And I look forward to painting with you again. So happy painting and thanks again, hope you had fun.