Master Watercolor Techniques: Learn to Paint a Watercolor Robin

1. 1. Trailer: Hi everyone. I'm Loise. I'm a professional artist and I live in Sydney, Australia. I've been painting and teaching for 20 years now. So I have a wealth of knowledge to share with you. Six years ago, I began painting in watercolor, and I've been captivated by the qualities of these beautiful medium ever since. I love the delicate translucency that only watercolor can produce. I love the gorgeous rich darks, and I love the magic of surprises that come with painting in watercolor. One of my favorite subjects is to paint are bird. I paint birds from all around the world. Because my customers come from all around the world. Although I paint lots of different subjects, I sell more of bird paintings than anything else. A try to capture their individual characteristics and the different personalities. Watercolor is the perfect medium to capture them in. I have developed a style where I begin with loose washes that provide that beautiful translucency, and then in the final stages, I add all the details that bring my subjects to life. In this class, I will take you step by step through the different stages of how I painted this little raven. I will show you where I get some great reference photos. I demonstrate how I stretch my watercolor paper. I'll show you how I lay in early washes, and how I add all the glorious detail. My aim by the end of the class is to have you painting in watercolor with more confidence. Whether you're a beginner, or a more experienced painter, this class will have something for you. Grab your brushes and let's start painting. 2. 2. Supplies: In this video, I'll show you all the supplies I use to complete the painting. The brands of paints are on the supplies list that you can download in the your project section, so I used Hansa yellow light, light red, cadmium red. I used brown ocher, quinacridone gold. That's a beautiful bright yellow color. I used van dyke brown, sepia. This is a color I used quite a lot. I use burnt sienna. I use ultramarine blue and I'll mix burnt sienna with the ultramarine blue to make a gray. The last color I use a lamp black. I also used a small amount of white goucache. This is an opaque watercolor paint. Here are my brushes. The first brush I use a Da Vinci squirrel mop. This is a number three. It's my favorite brush. I used a Da Vinci nova synthetic. This is a zero. I use this for all the fine work that I do. I use this one inch flat brush. This is my ceramic palette. I like this one because it has sloping wells. I used an HB pencil and an eraser. I used kitchen towel or paper towel. I used a water spray bottle to wet my paints. This is my water container, and I used a towel to draw my paper. This is called gator board. This is what I attached my paper to. It's a light white, rigid, laminated foam board and it's perfect for stretching watercolor paper. I tape my wet paper onto this and I let it dry. When my painting is completed, I use a sharp knife to cut the tape and removes the painting. This is the water activated tape that I used to attach the wet paper to the gator board. It has a sticky side and a non-sticky. I used some scissors to cut the water activated type. I used a ruler to place some marks on the paper to make sure that the tape was straight. My paper of choice is Arches hot press watercolor paper. It has a velvety smooth surface that's perfect for painting detail. This is 300 GSM in weight, so it needs to be stretched. I also use some tracing paper to help me get the drawing onto the paper and a black Sharpie. Let's get started. 3. 3. Reference Photos & Class Project: Your project for this class is to paint a bird in watercolor. Now you can paint a robin or any bird you like. Please, upload a photo of your finished bird into the your project section. You can use your own reference photos or you can go online to a site that I'm about to show you in this video. That site is called Wildlife Reference Photos. Now it's a website that's run by the Stribling family in the UK. The Striblings are a talented family of wildlife artists. Photographers from all around the world upload their photos there and for a small fee you can download them and use them without fear of copyright infringement. That's where I got the reference photo of the robin that I used for my painting in this class. I contacted them to make sure that it was okay for me to use the photo to teach from and they said, sure, no problem. However, understandably, I can't provide the photo for you today online. You have to go to the site and buy it yourself. You can buy a subscription for $10 and that allows you to download five photos within 30 days. That's not a problem because this site is jam packed full of gorgeous wildlife photos. Let me show you. Here I am at wildlifereferencephotos.com. You'll need to create an account before you can download anything. You can click the Gallery section which takes you to all of the albums. The animals have been separated into albums, which is helpful when you're looking for a particular animal. I love the bird album. There's birds of prey, miscellaneous birds and seabirds and waterfowl. I got my little Robin photo from inside the miscellaneous birds album. There are so many different birds, it's sometimes difficult to choose, just one. If you type in robin into the search box, that takes you to a page with all the robins. The one I chose is right down the bottom. If you click on it, that takes you to another page where you can hover over the image with your mails and you get a magnifying glass that allows you to see the photo in greater detail. I always have a look and make sure it's well focused. When you have found what you want, you click on Subscriptions and then click on the five photos for $10, which allows you to add the subscription to your account. Go and have a look at all the bird photos on this site if you don't have any bird photos yourself. Choose yourself a robin or another bird, download it and get ready to paint with me. 4. 4. Stretching the Paper: I often get asked if I stretch my watercolor paper. The answer to that is a definite yes. When I got to [inaudible]. I'm often disappointed to see beautiful watercolor work that has been framed, but the paper is all buckled. So yes, I do stretch all of my paper under 640 GSM. That's the weight of the paper in grams per square meter, which is the same as 300 pounds. So anything under 300 pounds, I stretch. Over 300 pound I tend not to stretch unless I know I'm going to be working very wet on it. The paper I used for these robin painting was 300 GSM. So it needed to be stretched. In this video, I'll take you step-by-step through my stretching process. If you've been following my classes on Skillshare, you'll know that my favorite watercolor paper is Arches hot press. Now this is 300 GSM in white. So I'm going to need to stretch it. If I don't stretch it, it will buckle and buckle when I start to paint on it. Now I've printed my reference photo at the size that I want. Before we stretch the paper, I need to get my drawing onto it. So I've cut the paper to size and I've got my light box ready. Now I can't see the bird well enough to trace it. So I have to make it easier for myself to say. I have some tracing paper here and I use a black texter to trace the bird onto the tracing paper. So now when I put the watercolor paper over the top, I can see it much better. Now before I trace it onto the paper, I'm going to put two marks on the edges all the way around. I put them in about two centimeters from the edge, which is about just under an inch. These will guide me when I'm placing the water-activated type on lighter. I thought I'll place this little guy a little to the right of center because he's looking over his shoulder. Then I'll go ahead and trace him onto the paper. Now this type is activated by water. So before I go any where near water, I'm going to cut four pieces to go around the edges. Now they need to be longer and wider than the paper so that I have some overhang. Here is my paper cycling in the bath. It's been in there for about three minutes, so it's time to get it out. I take the wet paper and I place it on the guide-board. Then I get a clean towel and I absorb some of the moisture from the paper. Now I'm wetting the edges with some clean water with the tape on [inaudible]. The board needs to be wet as well. I place the tape on top of the width edge and I use those pencil marks I made earlier to help me keep the tape straight. Now make sure the tape is sticking well to the paper and the board. I can re-wet any areas that need a little bit more water. I'm making sure I press it down firmly against the edge of the paper and also on the board. I don't want it to lift off. Now when I finish putting the tape on, it's going to take time to dry. It's very important to lay it flat when it's drying. Don't rest it vertically against the wall because it won't dry evenly and it might buckle. Sometimes for no reason that I know off as it dries, I've found that the tape may start to lift off the paper. Keep an eye on it. If you see that happening, make a few staples into the paper, where the tape is lifting and that will keep it nice and flat for you. So that's how I stretch my paper. 5. 5. Tummy : In this video, I will lay in the washes for the robin's tummy area. I mix my gray that I use in a lot of my paintings, and I drop in another color. Then I let the water on the piper do its thing. Now, I'm looking at the reference photo of the robin on my iPad. What I'm going to paint first are all the gray areas that I see on his tummy. There's a little bit there under the wings as well. I've put some French ultramarine blue and some burnt sienna on my palette, and I've put them into the same well, so that I can mix them together to create a gray. This creates a beautiful blue-gray that I use in a lot of my paintings. I forgot to draw on the line where the orange feathers stop on the paper. I'll put that in now with my pencil. That's all I need. I use my squirrel mop to wet the robin's tummy with some water, I put it all over the tummy and I make sure that I take it right to the edges. I've also put some brown ocher onto my palette in a separate well. I pick up some of the gray that I mixed, I give it a dab to remove the x's, and I start applying it to his little, tummy. Whatever I'm painting, it doesn't really matter what it is, I always make sure that I get a nice, clean outer edge. I'm not too concerned with what's happening past the edge of its tummy. I know the water is moving the paint around, but that's not what has my attention at the moment. I've added that gray area feathers that sits on the orange feathers there, and I'm not interested in painting any detail at this stage. I'm just washing in broad areas of color. Now I'm picking up some brown ocher. I paint in the brown areas that I see on his tummy. Now, I'm not going to fiddle with it too much, because I want the two colors to be separate. I don't want to muddy the colors. The water on the piper creates those lovely soft edges that I need where the two colors merge. Now, I'm going to leave that to dry and I'll come back to it in the next video when I paint the orange feathers. 6. 6. Orange Feathers 1st Wash: The tummy feathers have dried and they look gorgeous. In this video, I'll wash in the orange feathers on the breast area. I use three colors but instead of mixing them on the palette, I drop them onto the paper and I let them blend themselves. I've put some cadmium red on my palette and now I'm adding some yellow light. A quick squirt of water on both of them. I gave my painting some time to dry and I'm fairly happy with the way that's dried. I think the colors have merged nicely together. I need to remove some of these pencil lines before I go any further. Now I've wet the paper where the orange feathers will go. As before, I do this carefully, particularly on the head around the eye area. I make sure it's all covered. It's time to pick up some cadmium red. And I give my brush a little twirl to get that beautiful point back and a dub on the paper towel. I start carefully dropping the paint around the eye and onto the head. The water on the paper moves the paint around for me and I keep my attention on the edges, the edges around the eye and the edge where the paint is supposed to stop. Now I'm going to drop some of the yellow onto the red to change the color slightly and make it more orange. I continue to do that all over the neck and breast area. When I paint, I try to use some artistic license. I use the reference photo to guide me but I'm not trying to create an exact copy of the photo. I'm not terribly worried if the colors are the exact shade or if the feathers aren't in the exact same position. Now I am dropping in the yellow to merge softly with the red. I could have mixed these two colors on my palette. But I wanted to see what would happen if I let the two colors interact on the wet paper. Give it a go yourself and see what you can come up with. This is a color called light red. It's a bit more orange than red. I'm going to drop it in places here and there. I'm going to leave that to dry and we'll see what it looks like in the next video. 7. 7. Wing, Tail & Head 1st Wash : Am happy with the orange feathers for now and my piper is dried. In this video, I lay in the first wash of the wings, the tail, and the head. It's nice and dry and it doesn't look too bad. I like the expressive look of the way the paint is drawn on the body area. I'm ready to wash in the wings and the tail now. I'm adding some Van Dyke brown to my palette. I'll show you what it looks like. It's fairly close to the color of the robins wings. So I'm going to use that. You know the drill, I wet the piper first and I don't forget the edges. Sometimes you might put too much water on the piper. If you think you've done that, just wipe your brush and soap some of it backup with the brush. Now I'm going to use the Van Dyke brown. I'm picking it up with a hard paintings rather than a watery paint and I deep off the [inaudible] axis. Then I start to paint those wing feathers. Again, I'm not worried about individual feathers, I just want to wash in a broad area of color. I don't want it to be too dark because I'll be putting more paint over the top lighter when it's dry. I paint the tail feathers too, it's a little bit difficult to see them in the photo but I'll just have to do my best. I'm painting the head feathers on wet piper too. Pick up some of that gray not too much my [inaudible] dye axis paint off. I put a few little dabs of it there. I'm washing in this middle tile feather separately because I want to put a little bit of gray on it and I didn't want the gray to flow into the other figures. Now I have to paint this little area here, but I have to wait for that tile for the to dry. I'm going to use Van Dyke brown and dropping the gray mix as well here. I've washed in all of the robin and I'm ready to start painting some detail now. You can download this image in the your project section. It's called robin stage 3. 8. 8. Eye & Beak : I break out my fine brushing is video. I'm ready to start adding some data. You'll see me painting in the eye and the beak. Whenever I'm painting in animal or bird, I like to paint the eye in familiarly. I don't know why I do this. I guess it's because the painting comes to lie for me when I do it. I think the eye and the beak are probably two of the most important things to get right when you're painting a bird. It's important to take your time and get it right. I've got my pencil lab and I'm drawing some lines to help me. There's a little highlight at the back of the eye that I want to include. It'll help me depict the roundness of the eye. The robin on painting has its beak slightly open but I think I'd like to paint it closed. Its also going to be the food or something on its beak. I'm going to leave that off my painting as well. This is lamp black that I'm putting on my palette, I'll use it to paint the iris and I'll darken the beak with it too. I'm using my fine brush, a Da Vinci Nova to paint the eye and the beak. I'm picking up some of the van dyke brown and I'll start to wash the eye with this. I'm painting on dry paper here. I'm going to deepen that color. When I load my brush or pick up a little more pigment this time and I'm painting straight over the wet paint. To paint that little highlight, I'm going to wash my brush, damp off the excess moisture and use the damp brush to wipe over the highlight. This will draw some of the paint that I've just painted onto the damp highlight. Now I'll give that some time to dry and I'll paint the beak and wallet eyes. I'm washing some van dyke brown straight onto the dry paper. Back to the eye now, make sure it's completely dry first before you start to paint it. I pick up some lamb black and I paint the eye straight onto the dry paper. It's lighting color to begin with. I'm going to paint around the edge of the eye with small van dyke brown and rub off the excess paint when I need to. I'll get in closer here so you can see the eye better. You can see that little highlight that I've left at the back. I get some black on my brush a little more pigment this time and I leave that highlight in the corner of the eye there. Now I'm learning the inner edge of the eye with small black and you need to have a steady hand when you do this. You would just enough paint on the brush, so that leaves a mark, but not too much that it gets away from you. Now I'm running some van dyke brown around the eyes edge. If you find that your hand isn't steady enough or you can't get your line fine enough, there's nothing wrong with using a fine tip pin such as these pigment molecules on, the ink is both archival and waterproof. It has pigment ink, which means it will fight and one smudge and it's ideal for final work. I've washed in the bottom beak with some van dyke brown. Amazing, black does to darken the front of the beak, painting straight onto the damp paper. I deepen the color with a little more pigment, I darken the top beak with the black too, ignoring all the food on the beak. I think I'll leave it there. I can come back later and I can fiddle with the beak and the eye if I need it too. 9. 9. Orange Feathers layer 2 : I'm deepening the color on the breast area of the robin in this video. The paint always dries lighter than you expected to. It needs another wash over the top. I want to try to put in these dark line of feathers here in front of the eye. I'm going to dampen the paper in that area. I'm picking up some light red from the top of the palette. I drop it where I've dampened the paper. I'm letting the water on the paper moves the pigment around. Now I'm dropping in some cadmium red onto the wet area just to deepen the color a little. This is some more light red, but the paper is dry here. Now for some of the yellow, I've painted on with the fine brush straight onto the wet paint. I'm doing this to broaden that area feathers behind the eye, because it looks broader in my reference photo. I've changed positions because I want to paint a few little fine feathers coming off the side of his head. I find it easier to pull strokes towards myself rather than flick them away from myself. I'm using light red again. I've put some quinacridone gold on my palette. Now I'm going to give it a quick squirt of water. I'm going to use this color to wash over the red feathers to brighten them up in places and give them a golden glow. Quinacridone gold is a beautiful golden color. I drop it onto the wet paper and I move it around where I want it. I'm also adding some more light red. I'm basically trying to boost the color of the orange feathers because the pigment from the first layer of paint has been drawn into the paper and it dried lighter than I wanted it to. Some more of the cadmium red here. I'm trying not to fuss too much, but it's hard not to. I'd like to add a few little stray feathers overlapping onto the other colors as well. I think I'll leave it there and I'll see what it looks like when it's dried. 10. 10. Head Feathers: This is a quick little video where I deepen the colors on the top of his head. I'm using my fine brush to paint some Van Dyke brown onto the area of dark feathers in front of the eye. Because I feel I need to define this area further. I'm painting straight onto the dry paper. I'm putting a little bit of water on the head because I need to deepen the color here. I'm picking up some Van Dyke brown from the top of the pallet. I'll paint it straight onto the wet paper. My attention is on the edge of the head and I'll paint a few little flicks coming off the edge. I can soften the front edge here with a damp brush. Now some of the gray mix and I'm just dropping it onto the wet paper. Behind the eye here the paper is dry. I can soften the edge with a damp brush. A little bit more Van Dyke brown here and I soften the edge again with my damp brush. I'm going to go back onto the top of the head and deepen the color a little more. Okay, that's close enough. Now, I'll leave it alone. I can always come back to it if I need to. That's where I'm up to now. You can download this image in the your project section. It's called End of Head Feathers. 11. 11. Wing Feathers: I use my fine brush again in this video and I paint the details on the wing feathers. I define those flight feathers on the side and I deepen the color up on the robin's shoulder. Now for the wing feathers. I'm using my fine brush and I'm dampening the feather that I want the paint to go on. I have to do this one feather at a time. Now I pick up some of the brown from the top of the palate, and I put the paint right against the edge of the feather that's next to it. That way the darkest color sits up hard against the adjacent feather. The moisture on the paper carries the paint across the feather I'm working on. It gets lighter as it goes across. Same again here, I dampen the feather first, I pick up the pipe and put it right against the other feather. Whoops, I had a bit too much paint there. We'll wash it off my brush and then I use the damp brush to spread it out. This is just water on my brush at the moment. Always use a damp brush to soften any hard edges that you don't want. I fix that little feather. Now I've got enough paint on my brush from the other feather to paint this little feather in. I'll just put a little bit of extra paint there. I dampen the first one with a little bit of watery paint, and then I pick up some more pigment. I've put it on a bit heavy again. I'll wipe off the excess paint and I spread it out along the feather. I move away from the feather I've just painted to give it a chance to dry, I keep using the water on my brush to help spread the paint out along the line of the feather. I make sure I hold my brush upright on its tip to get that nice fine line. I keep painting like this until all the feathers are defined. There's often in-color here so I use less paint and more water on my brush. Now I'm adding some water to my paper there because I'm going to deepen the color on the feathers up here. I just dropped the brown paint onto the damp paper again. Well, dropping some of the gray mixes well. So now I'm wetting its tummy because I want to add some of those brown feathers on there. I just dropped the painting and I let the water move the pigment around, and I try not to fuss too much. That will do it. I'll let that dry, and I'll move on to the next stage. 12. 12. Tail Feathers & More Wing: I add some details to the tail feathers in his video, and I also do a bit more on the wing feathers. I'm putting some sepia on my palette. The sepia is the darkest brown that I have. There's a small area here that I forgot to paint. So I'm going to put some more dark brown there. Now I'm washing over the flight feathers with some water even dark brown. It's time to see what I can do with this tail. I pick up some dark brown with my brush, and I start to darken the tail feathers and I'm painting straight onto the dry paper. Now I'm picking up some sepia with my fine brush. I'll run it along the left edge of the feather to darken it. I'm painting straight on top of the wet paint. I did the same thing with the other feather. Now I'm using sepia to darken some of these lines between the flight feathers and the paper is dry. This is sepia again, I'm deepening the brown feathers where everywhere I think they need to be a little bit darker. I use my bigger brush to paint these dark feather in here with sepia. I'm deepening the color at the top of the wing with sepia. Now we know that area isn't darker on my reference photo. I'm just using some artistic license to make this area more interesting. Now I'm softening the color with some water on my brush. I'm using my dark brush to soften any hard edges that I see. I'm wetting this feather here because I want to use some sepia to darken it, and I want the paint to recede in darkness. I'm pulling some of that wet paint across onto this little area here to add that dark section that I see on the reference photo. Now some more sepia on the tail feather. You can see that dark area on the tail in the reference photo, that's what I'm trying to replicate. Now I'm pulling some of that wet paint down onto the tail. So this is the stage I am up to now. I'm nearly finished, I've just got the feet to go. You can download this image in the your project section. This is called end of tail feathers. 13. 13. Feet & Finishing Off: Now it's time to paint the feet. Although they look difficult in fiddly, they're really not. I also paint the shadow under his feet so that it doesn't look like it's floating in the air. I'm wetting the front leg to get ready to take the paint. I pick up some of my gray mix and I paint it straight onto the wet paper. Now I think it might be a little too dark. I wash off the paint from my brush and I use my wet brush to spread the paint out. It's still too dark, so I take a tissue and I dab the paint off. Now I can use my damp brush to move it where I want to. I'm putting some red-violet on my palette. I neglected to mention this color in my supplies video because it was a bit of an afterthought. I thought I'd try this color to see what it looks like on the legs. I've placed the name of this color on the supplies list that you can download though. I'm re-wetting the front leg with some water. Now I'm picking up some of the red-violet with my brush. I don't want it to be too dark. Then I just painted onto the damp leg. Now I'm using some of gray mix to paint onto the front toe. I'm wetting this other leg with some water and I use the red violet to paint over the top. I'll drop in some of my gray mix to blend with it. I've got enough water and paint on my paper to just, pull it across onto those toes. Now I'm drying the legs off with a hair dryer. When it's dry, I use my eraser to remove my messy pencil lines. I'm dampening the legs with some more water and I pick up some sepia with my fine brush. Now I just run that down the front edge of the leg and I hope that the water will softly carry the paint across the front of the leg. Now I need some more water on the leg. It's a little bit dry, so my squirrel mop will help me with that. It's got some water on it and I'm running it over the edge of paint to soften it. I'm looking at my reference photo and I'm painting in those dark areas that I can see. Now I'm putting some water on the other leg and I'll do the exact same thing to it. The moisture on the paper moves the pigment around and it stops any hard edges from forming. I'm deepening the color here with some more pigment on my brush and my paper is still wet here. I make sure the edges of the feet are tidy while I do this. I'm deepening the color here with some more pigment. Now I'm painting the claw in with some of the gray mix. I'm painting it on dry paper. I do the same with the other ones. Back up to the wing here, I'm deepening the shoulder area with some more color one last time. I'm trying to make it look a little bit more interesting. The paper is damp again. Tend to the tail feathers now, I'm deepening the color here with some sepia on damp paper. I've wet the tummy and I'm dropping in some of my gray mix now. It's a bit darker than before because I've put more pigment in it. This helps to make the tummy look round. I'm dropping in some cadmium red here on the damp paper, and again I'm just deepening my colors. Up to the face now and I've wet these area beside the eye. Now I'm using sepia to darken that area. I can paint a few little flicks with my brush. Now back down to the feet again. I like to paint a shadow underneath the feet of my birds so that a grounds them and it stops them from looking like they're floating in the air. I wet the area where I want the shadow to go and then I use some of the gray mix to paint straight onto the wet paper. I also drop in some brown ink while the paint is wet, to add some interest. Now this is something I do sometimes at the end of my paintings. I paint a few fine white feathers overlapping onto the dark areas with some white wash. Wash is an opaque watercolor. Because it's opaque, it covers over the watercolor paint. Now, if you do this, don't overdo it. Use the wash sparingly. I just paint a few little flicks here and there. Now back up to his head. I'm deepening the color with some sepia on damp paper. Some more sepia onto his tummy to help create the illusion of roundness. That's it, he's all done. Well, I hope you enjoyed painting this little Robin with me and I can't wait to see your birds. 14. 14. Final Thoughts & Thanks: Thank you for joining me. I really hope you enjoy the class and learn some new skills. Don't be worried if you find using water color to be challenging because I do too. Every painting scares me. I sit there with this blank piece of paper in front of me and I think, how am I going to do these? What I've learned to do is to just do it. Just have a goal because practice brings confidence. Now please upload your photos of your paintings into the "Your Project" section because I'm eager to see your work. If you have any questions at all, you can add them to the Community section, and I'll get back to you as quickly as I can. Good luck with your painting.