Paint A Songbird In Procreate

1. Welcome: Hello, I'm Jay Johnson, a multimedia artist from Tennessee. In this class you're going to learn how to paint this delightful songbird in Procreate on the iPad. After a quick brush overview, yes, the brushes are provided. You will watch me set up the Canvas, do a light sketch based on my reference photo, which is also provided and tone the background. We move from there right into painting this delightful bird, starting with the eye and then the beak, and working our way through the body in the wings. And finally down to the feet and the branch. Towards the end, we refine and add more color to the background. We'll add some deep texture using my favorite brush to finish things off. And then I show you how easy it is to change the background under your subject to create a brand new look for your final art. In order to complete this class, you'll need an iPad with procreate installed. You will also need an Apple pencil. You will need to have a basic understanding of using Procreate and installing brushes on your iPad. And you will need to understand how to transfer photos onto your iPad before starting this class. I provide you with my simple oil brush set and the bird reference photo. So you can follow along and try to paint this same bird if you would like. So are you ready to watch this bird come to life before your eyes and learn about shading, simple mark-making, and blending to build this bird a sketch into this beautiful painting. If so, then please join me in painting this realistic style of birth. And remember, you can always pay your own photos and the same method taught in this class. So if you have birds or animals or even people that you would like to paint, you can use the same method I teach in this class of work, the same method of working. And I look forward to seeing your finished final paintings. So be sure to share them on the projects page when you get through. 2. Brush Overview: Okay, Before we get started in this class, I want to talk about the brushes I have included here. These are all for doing a certain kind of oil painting. In a certain way. I'm just going to bring in a photo here of finished one to show you a finished one. So these brushes give you plenty of great texture into your piece. So that is what a finished piece looks like. But I wanted to take you on a little tour and just show you what we've got going on here. Trying to get this turquoise color that I want. Maybe a little bit darker. Okay, I've got myself situated here. The first one is the streaky oil sketch. And that makes just a really slick streaky sketch. And you can go a little bit larger with it. If you want to do some bold brushwork. But I usually use this one a little bit. On the smaller side. It's very loose and I'm just making very short marks. And you can hold it down and continue to make marks. But when I go to do the sketch, I want just a small outline if you press really hard and get it a little bit darker. So that is that particular brush. And the next one is a big oil mix. Now this is a, this is a fun brush. This is useful for making big, bold, square shaped marks that has a little bit of canvas texture. And you can overlap them with different shades and different colors. And kind of create some fun art, some fun backgrounds. They are quick way to cover the canvas. If you want to go really super big, you can do that. So that is a fun brush. It's a little bit smooth. It's got a Canvas texture. And as you paint really light, you can see it more, but when you hold it down, it gets a little more solid and you can see the squareness of it because the way I've got it set up, but that's the way I wanted it. I wanted that square. Look on this one, sort of a, just a geometric feel. But it's a great way to block in the beginnings of the painting. Okay. Then we're gonna go to the thick canvas brush. This one is similar to the other one. It's, it's a little bit more tapered on the end. It has a good rich, thick canvas texture and the ego lighter. And it's very light. You, you can scrub with it and get a more solid feeling with it. Or just press really hard like that. So light, hard. As a scrubbing motion, if you do it too too much like this, it'll get a little blocky. So it's just the way I paint as I do short strokes like this. I'm picking up the pen, Apple Pencil, and it's picking up a little bit of color. You notice it's blending, picking up some of that white. Let's switch colors here and go over top. And it blends with the other colors underneath it just a little bit. Okay, now let's go to the thicker canvas, which is basically just a thicker version, very, very thick. You want it to show some very heavy canvas texture. This is the one you want to use. Go with a lighter color over it. If you press really hard, get very thick and it almost gets some oily look in lines in there with that, which is really fun with that one. So let's clear that one. This isn't a very big brush set because you don't need a whole lot. This is the juicy Canvas blend. And this one blends more. This is the same brush as the previous one, but it's blending more. So I'm painting the same color. But notice it's a little bit lighter. That's because it's blending with the white that's underneath it. So let's say you want to bring a different color in here. And you see it's picking up that blue. It's really blending the colors nicely. So if you wanna get some good blending going on, this is the one to use and you can also use this one as a blender. You can use any of them as a blender. But I do it at it a little bit lower opacity. And it will pull that canvas texture from whatever color you start with. It'll pull it over top of the other and it does a real nice job of it. And because it's a, it's set to blend a little bit more. So it really works on blending those colors. So we can just sit here and blend and you'll get a nice mix of all of these colors, which is sort of a grayish blue. So that's that one. Then there's also the mop brush, which you can paint with like this. If you want a really smooth foggy background or area over your subject, you can do that. But I also like to blend with the mop brush a lot. If you've got an area that's got a little too much texture, and you just want to soften it up and tone down that texture a little bit, but still keep those colors. You can use this mop brush, which, you know is good on skin if you're doing a person or, you know, any area that you just might want to soften up like in the background. See, I'm nice and soft. That's making that using that as a blender. The mop brush is very versatile. And then there's the textural brush. And I've included this and a few of my other sets. And this one is kind of a finicky brush. It's very particular. I'm just going to put it down and press really hard. And it does that, make it a little smaller? And if you just drag it real lightly, it just leaves some nice texture over top. I'm just very lightly dragging it and kind of letting it do its thing. And the fact that it's very unpredictable is what makes it so neat, because it'll, it'll put marks in your painting, in your background wherever you want to use it that are somewhat unplanned. That's what you want, but look how nice and thick that paint texture is from that brush. So this is one I use it the end. After I've painted the subject. I'll use this to add some texture here and there. It also works wonderful as a blender. So if you wanted to get on one color and pull that into the other color, whatever color you touch on to start with is the one that's going to pull from. And I'm just once again, I'm doing this very lightly, dragging this very light pressure. If you go really hard, you're gonna get a really solid stroke from whatever color you touched to start with. That's the one that's going to pull from. But it's useful in blending different parts of your subject that you want texture too, but you don't want to add any coloring. If you use it as a blender, it'll pull what's already there, like so and it will pull it together with some nice, really juicy thick texture, which adds that real painted look to your painting. So that's just a little rundown on these. So it's 1234567, lucky seven, lucky seven brushes in this brush set. So these are the ones I'm gonna be using when I'm painting the birds that I'm doing in this class. And we will see what we can accomplish with these brushes. So we'll see you in the next video. 3. Canvas Setup, Sketch & Tone: Okay. Now that bird I showed you in the brush video, this one here. This is the style of painting I'm going to be doing in this class. And this is not painting a photo like some of my other classes are. We're going to use the photo as a reference. So we're gonna get right into that. First thing we need to do is set up our canvas. You hit the plus button up here, and you click the New Canvas button. Unless you already have a square canvas setup, I'm working on square. You don't have to do square. You can do whatever size you want. I do 6 thousand by 6 thousand. So I would type 6 thousand in here and 6 thousand in here and leave it at 300 DPI. It gives me a maximum of ten layers, which you don't need very many layers for this, so that's fine with me. I don't mess with anything else. On here. Color profile. I'll leave as it was set when I've started using the iPad, time-lapse settings. Um, oh gee. We've got a good video time-lapse settings here. I didn't even realize that, but I usually do ten ADP in Canvas properties are set that way. So I pretty much leave everything else alone. Just change the canvas to the size I want, which is 6 thousand by 6 thousand. You can give it a name right here. And you could put whatever you want to right there. And then after you've done that, you hit Create and it will show up on your list. So let me go back because it automatically opens it after you do that. So there you see, I, I did Square 6 thousand by 6 thousand, which I already have above that. So now I have two of them, but that's fine. I just wanted to show you how to do it in case you didn't know how to do it. So when it opens up, you're ready to start. The first thing you need to do is bring in the reference photo. Now I've given you these reference photos. I'm going to start with this little guy right here. Or maybe it's a little girl. This is a tough did *** mouse from my garden. And I'm going to, I click this top arrow here to expand the size out. It's on uniform. It's a square picture to start with. So it's going to keep those dimensions proportional. If I wanted to do free form, I could do that. But I usually like to just keep it in proportion for these. And you can also use two fingers and squeeze, push outward and it will make it bigger. I think I want to do make the bird a little bigger in here. And I liked it. Instead of putting the bird right in the center, I like to put him off center a little bit about right there. Maybe even a little bigger. Then I'll lose his tail. Alright? You got to pay attention to what you want to keep and what you want to lose. So I've resized it quite a bit, which is fine to re-size the photo because we're only using it as a reference and positioning. And then I click my Layers panel and it sets it in place. Now, I like to paint my birds facing from right to left. So he's facing from left to right. So I'm going to click this arrow right here again. And I'm going to flip horizontal and put the bird over there on that side. That to me is just more natural. So now that I have my photo in position, I'm ready to do a sketch and the colors when we paint what I pull from the photo. So I just hold down a finger and move it around to get the color I want. And I think I'm going to outline, sketch out the outline of the bird in this darker orange color. Because I liked that background color. I don't like the background, but I liked that background color with this bird's feathers, the tone of his feathers. And I choose colors from this. But then as I go along, I will also touch the color wheel and move the color around. So let's say I want to go a little darker with my sketch lines. I could do a skewed it down and get a little darker brown. And then it's time to create a new layer to do the sketch on. So tap the Plus and get a new layer above it. I'm going to click on the N on layer one and pull down the opacity. So when I do the sketch, I can see where it's actually going. Pretty good. So that's pretty good. So make sure the layer your sketch on is at 100%. And then the layer below it is at 60. Wow, I've said it for 61, you can set it for whatever you're comfortable with. And then I'm gonna go to that streaky oil sketch brush. And this is what I'm going to use to sketch out the outline of my bird. And I usually start with the eye, and I just make short quick marks around the eye. I'm not sitting here drawing one solid line. I'm doing short strokes. And then I go on this outer rim. Kinda get that in there and I'm not real, I'm kinda messy with this and just kinda scribbling a lot of this because this is just guidelines. This will be painted over. And I don't need to get every feather or every thing else. And you can turn off your original layer at anytime to see how it's going. So I do the I. And then I get to the beak area and you can turn your Canvas with two fingers. To get worried you're comfortable with. And just doing short little marks here. And anywhere that I feel is distinguishable, I will do the marks around. And then here's this little nostril here. He's kinda dark in the middle and lighter around the edge. And so now I'm ready to start going around this portion, the dark areas. I'll just kind of scribble around and I will draw the line between the dark and light areas and kinda get some of these lines in here just as guidelines. Then I start going around the head. I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm just doing short strokes and scribbling. The general shape in here from the photo. And then here's a little dark area that I think needs to be maintained and stay dark for shading purposes. So I put that in there and an hour from side to side under the beak, little feathery area, kind of scribble that in. Then we have a wing here. And then this area of his body where it meets the wing. So I'm basically just tracing over the bird to get the shapes and the size and proportion. All correct. I don't draw from scratch on animals and birds because I want their proportions to be good. You know, I don't want them to be messed up. And I'll get the branch to eventually they want to bring that wing down a little bit right there to tuck behind that branch. Now he's got a few little feathers right there that are kind of standing out. A little darker area under the beak. So I'll scribble some of that in a little white area here around the eye. I scribble that in, just kind of outlining my color divisions. And then we have this area here where the body changes color. So I want that in there. And then start the wing as it extends down and you can't really see it, but there is a couple of feathers in there. And then down the tail. Get that tail in there. And I'm not too worried about drawing these lines in here because I'm gonna be paying more attention to the color variation, but i'll, I'll put them in there anyway. And see this shadow that's occurring under his tail area here where it's really dark and really white. I may not put that shadow in there because the photo was taken when he was in sunlight, so there was a shadow present. But I don't want my painting to look like a photo. I want it to look like a painting. Now somehow I have lost my well, there we go. I lost my top bar. All right, we've got a branch here. Get that in there, and then we've got these feet. And he got a little toenail here. And the little toes. And just go around the edges of those the best I can. I'm not going to be like super accurate with the feet. Because to me the the feet are not the most important part. I mean, he's got to have them because he's sitting there on the branch with the feet and get around this area of the branch. That area of his body. Draw this other section of the branch. We got this leg. And the chickadee painting that I showed you earlier, get along the bottom edge of that body to where that white meats, that darker feathers from the tail. But on the chickadee painting, I I actually forgot one of the legs and had to go back and add it in. Alright, so we've got on the feet here. We've got this foot would this toenail come in under the other one? So this is the second one is coming up from behind the branch. And you may have to turn the opacity of the layer up a little bit so you can see a little bit better where some of this is going. And then this toenail here. This is why I don't particularly care for doing feet. This is why I usually do a lot of head portraits. So you don't have to do the feet. And I don't know if that foot looks right or not. It's close enough. It's gonna be kinda hidden by the tail, but I do have some tail feather right there. And all right, let me go a little lighter again. I'm adjusting that opacity. Get this branch in. Oops, I meant an extra mark. Now, this branch has another piece extending off the bottom. I'm taking my artistic license and saying that's not there. I don't want it there. And these little naughty areas, I just do a little circle around there to show that that's where anodic area is. So I can work on that later. Here's another one up here. This one's really kind of nodded up real good. That'll let me know to pay attention to my shading there in this areas. And you can scribble in where you know that there needs to be a little darker coloring. Like I said, this is all going to be covered up. All right. Let's get the rest of the branch. It turn it all the way around and go this way. Get the rest of this branch outlined. Another little naughty area. I'm holding down pretty firm on this. Instead of doing the short strokes. Just because I know that's gonna be pretty solid and it's going to be covered up anyway. Another little naughty area right there. And then finally the tip of it, which is kind of a pointed shape at the tip. And some little circular shading here. Were that not is. Alright. Now I will turn off the photo layer and look at the sketch. That's not half bad of a sketch to start with. Um, I'm thinking there should be a division line and the beak there that I've missed. And it's probably hard to see, but I do see it now that I'm paying attention. It's right in here where you can see that color change from the bottom of the beak to the top. All right, Now let's look at it. Turn off the sketch. There we go. That looks a little better. Also at the center of his body, there is a coloration difference in here. And I want to make sure to guide myself into that when I'm painting. So I'm gonna go ahead and kind of scribbling some of these color variation areas where I can see there's darker areas. I'm not going to get everyone. I'm not going to paint every feather. I just want to make sure when it comes time to applying the paint that I have this shading, correct. So I'm just scribbling this in. And I usually end up making too many scribbling marks. But it'll be covered up. Shows a little bit more fluffiness to the belly now, which I want to make sure to maintain. So I think the sketch looks pretty good at this point. And it's ready to start painting. I'm going to duplicate the sketch layer. And the reason I'm doing this is I save these files that are layered. And just in case I ever want to do something, repaint this, or put a different background behind it or save the sketch for whatever reason, I won't paint on this sketch layer, I'll have it saved. So I'm going to duplicate it. And then I'm going to turn off the first one. So what's turned off now as the original photo and the original sketch? This is gonna be the layer we paint on, the duplicate layer. I'm going to rename that and call it paint right there. So I know don't paint on the one that says Layer two. And you can rename that and call it a sketch. Like this sketch. And then photo, of course that's obvious. What I do need under the sketch. I like to do a background under the sketch first. So when I paint the upper layers, they will blend in with that background is sort of like toning the canvas. I want to get something down for the background. So under the paint layer, I'm going to hit plus. Now, let me undo that. If you're on the paint layer and you hit plus, it'll stick that layer on top. No problem. You can just drag it down underneath. But you want the bilayer you're going to paint on, on top. This is gonna be the background layer. Let's rename that background. Okay, so we've got to paint layer of background layer, the original sketch and the original photo. But now what we need to do before we get started is we need to bring in the photo as a reference photo so we don't have to keep clicking here and turn this on and off and then put that back to full opacity now. But we don't want that on at all. And it's just in the way. But in case I need to refer back to it bigger in this size than I do want to keep it there. So I'm going to turn that off. And I'm gonna go to the wrench. And I'm going to click on Canvas and see where it says reference. And it's got a little slider, click that, and it'll turn the reference on. And it usually pulls, you can grab this top bar here and pull it around. I do it like this. It usually pulls the reference as what's on your canvas says canvas is selected. So that could be your reference, but I don't know why you would want the canvas to be the reference. I want the original photo to be the reference. So I click on Image, import image, and I will click on his photo. And yes, his photo is not reversed. So if you want it to be facing the same way as this, you can handle that another way, or you can leave it alone and just pick the colors from this. I want it to be facing the same way. So I'm gonna go back here and turn off the paint layer, turn on the original photo layer, and now see how he's facing this way. I'm going to save this out, share JPEG, save image. Now I'm going to turn the sketch layer back on, turn the photo layer back out and go tap on the reference layer. You might have to tap it a few times or squeeze it or something to get it to come up. I want to import a different image. This one is the one I want to import where he's facing the right way. And you can grab the corner of this and drag it down. And I think you can drag this side's out. Yeah. If you grab the corner and drag the sides out a little bit and move it around. And like I said, you can squish with your fingers to blow it up really big, which is what I do because I pick colors from the photo. But right now I just want to tone that background so I want to get some kind of color down. And I'm thinking that same dark brown that I grabbed and you can push, put your finger and hold it down on the reference photo. And it will grab that color. And then I'm just going to make it actually Let me that's more of a brown there. That's a good brown. Make it a little I don't want it too dark. I want it a little lighter. Maybe move it around, kinda in the middle. So it's a medium brown. Just to get something on the Canvas. And I'm on the background layer. I made sure my paintbrush is selected. Now let me tell you a little something here when you have, I don't know if everybody's iPad does this, but when you have the reference photo open, at least for me, I'll be on the blending brush sometimes and I'll go to pick a color like a different color. Notice it did not switch back to paintbrush. It's something to do with having this reference photo open. Because when I don't have a reference photo open and hold down and select a photo. It does switch automatically. So it's something to do with the reference photo being open. So I got to grab my brown again, hold down, grab that color, move it a little more, a little bit lighter. It sort of in the middle. Now when I've done that and select it from here, it did go back to paintbrush, but that's just something to pay attention with. If you select a color over here on this reference photo, and then you go start trying to paint over here and you don't see anything coming out. Check to make sure you're not still on blending because I go back-and-forth, back-and-forth between painting and blending all the time. And I liked the fact that it does it for me. When I select a color, it knows I want to paint something or I wouldn't have picked the color. But when this reference photos open, for some reason, it doesn't automatically jump back to the paintbrush, so you have to make sure it's on there. Okay. Now that we've covered that, I can get some color down in the background. I am on the background layer. And I'm going to do the big oil mix brush. I'm going to do it pretty big size here and just kinda scribble it in. It doesn't have to be exact, it doesn't have to be blended. I might should have done a lighter brown, but I can do that. Let me go a little bigger on that brush and kind of get this in here a little quicker. Alright, let me go to a little bit lighter. Maybe even a gray, maybe even move that color wheel more towards the orange and get some variation in here. There we go. Some of this color variation. This is all happening under the sketch layer. Now I can blend it using that same big oil mix brush. And I've got the opacity set. Let's say, Well, I can't see it with the reference photo there. Maybe about 50%. And got the brush size pretty big. And let's go bigger. And I'm just going to softly tap and blend certain areas of this on this background. And I go different directions with this, with this brush. I don't do it in the same direction or straight up and down. I'm just kinda move it around different ways. You could also use the mop brush if you wanted to. I like the square shape of this brush. So that's pretty good right there. Alright. I'm going to leave that background alone. That's just a base to start with. The background will change color as we go along. But now it's time to start the painting. So if you turn this off, you got yourself a background and you can save that out if you'd like the way it looks, or you can just keep going. So the sketch layer, the paint layer is now on. I've clicked on it. So now I'm ready to paint on the paint layer and I've clicked back onto my paintbrush. I'm ready to start choosing colors for the bird and to start the actual painting. And I always start with the eye. In the next video, we're going to start the actual painting. And yes, I'm painting on that sketch layer. I have the original sketch layer saved. But I'm, I'm not worried about these outlines showing it's not going to look like a coloring book where it's colored in. Because when you paint on top of this, it's going to blend with those lines. You'll see what I'm talking about. So in the next video, we'll get started on painting this little guy's eye and beak, which is the first part I do with these birds. 4. Painting The Eye: Okay, we're ready to paint the eye. We'll start with the eye, because the eye is the life of this. Now you might think that's just a black guy. You're going to use black. Not necessarily. Watch this. I hold down on that color. Now, do you think that solid black? Nope. See how that's off to the left. If you double-tap right here at the bottom of this color wheel, it will go to straight black. So say it's not solid black. You can drag it around in here and see the different shades that are in the eye. And of course you can always lighten it up. I'm going to start with that shade, which is right about there. Now you can use the big wall mix here, which will create a very smooth, a more smooth look. Or let me double-tap and get out of that. I like to use the thick canvas on these. I'm getting into this with these thick canvas brushes. I'm lowering it down to a pretty small size and I'll check it. I'll put a mark down. I've got this blown up. Huge because I want to make sure I'm doing it right. I'm just doing short strokes. Notice I'm going right over the sketch. That's fine. I don't want that sketch to show anyway. And this area above the eyes somewhat dark, that same shade. So we're going to fill that in and come on down. Now I will use straight black in a minute and then this is a little dark, so we'll get that in there. Okay, Now, there are some different colors in this eye. I'm going to get this lovely shade of blue that's in kind of close to the highlight is sort of a blue-green. And staying on the same brush and we'll lower the size a little. And I'm just, I didn't draw the highlight in here, but I can see where it is. I'm going to put a couple of marks so that blue there. And then there's a green, little bit lighter green. And I kinda like that, so I'm going to bring some of that in their gifts, the blue. And then of course there's the highlight which is right there. I'm just going to dock dead in there like that. Now, I know that it looks like this bird has all got this black, I think going on. But it's not really black. I'm going to hold down on the original color. And I'm going to move my outer color wheel around to the brownish orange shade because I liked the eye to show some of the background colors. And I know that they're in there because I've photographed these birds up-close and personal a lot. I'm just playing with my size of the brush. And I'm going to sweep a little bit right there. And then around the edge of the eye is this light gray. So I'm gonna go ahead and put that in there. And that kind of extends outward Around here. In-between these two dark areas. I already did. Look at that nice juicy canvas texture. And then I'm going to pick, there's a little darker greenish gray right here. I'm going to grab that color and get that going down here at the corner of the eye. And it actually kind of has that same color along that top rim. So I'm going to bring some of that in around that top edge and around the bottom. Okay, that's looking pretty good. At this point. I'm going to blend some of this and I'm going to use that thicker canvas, juicy blend. And I've got that opacity set. Probably about 70%. I don't really want to move the reference photo, but you got to play with opacity on the blender. I'm going really small. I don't want it to be too big, so I'm going pretty small. Blend around the highlight area first and blend those colors that are there in with each other. A little bit. Get this brown area. Just sweeping it kind of gently. And it gives us that real nice rich canvas texture. And go all the way around in these gray areas. I did. Just doing short strokes, gentle blending. I'm not pressing hard at all. Then you can zoom out and take a look at what you've got going on. I think the oranges a little strong. So I'm going to blend from the darker area down into the orange a little bit more on both sides. And even bring that blue down there a little bit. And sort of tone down that orange. Zooming out helps you see from a distance. And that highlight in the eye just gives him a very good expression. So now to make the eye really pop, I'm going to pick the darker color. Now watch I'm on the blender and it went to the paintbrush. But if you pick it from the reference photo, it doesn't always go to the paintbrush. On the paintbrush, I'm still on the thick canvas, so I'm gonna get pretty small because I'm going to trim out this eye in dark black, but I got to get too dark black. So I'm pull it down or double-tap to get to solid black. And I'm gonna get this dark area around the eye, around the edge of it. Pretty good. And that darker area will extend down under this top edge into those colors I've put in as I'm gonna go ahead and scribble some of that in there. Good paint terms, you know, nothing technical here. Nothing from art school. I never went to art school. And then over top of this gray line above the eye, I'm also going to bring in some of that dark black because there's some right there over the ridge of that that needs to come in. There's also a little spot right here that looks pretty dark. And then this looks a little dark. Just looking at the tones here where it's super dark. In fact, this whole area should be quite a bit darker up here. So I'm going to make the brush a little bigger and bringing some of that black in there a little bit more. And I'm even going to put little smaller, put a little dash of it down here. Now we'll go back to the blending brush. Makes sure on thick canvas juicy blend. And I'm going to start moving that color around in there. Bringing that black from under the upper ridge of the eye down a little because that's where his eye would be shadowed. And by having this color variation in here, it gives the eye it's shaped. I'm going all around the edge where that black is gently blending that. You can come up into that light gray area a little bit more too. Now let's get this bottom ridge and might need to go a little smaller. Strokes looked a little being that looks real choppy now because we're super zoomed in. I'm just scrubbing that in their blending these areas out a little bit. And then this one down here, this little spot here. And then the bigger area and go a little bit bigger. Blue that's too big. See a little bit of adjustment in this brush really changes the size. And if you don't like when you stroke it from one direction, you don't like the way it's blended stress stroking it from the other direction. And I don't do a whole lot of blending on these, but in the area of the eye and the beak, I will blend quite a bit because those are smoother feathered areas or choppier, looser, feathery. And some of this light gray area, the black extends down over it. Right up here at the top of the eye. I'm going to pull down that black when blending that right there and darken that top edge of that area. Now what we also need is a little bit of highlight in the gray area. It's this lighter gray tone right there. But I think it needs to be a little lighter, so I'm going to raise it up. Make sure to get on the paintbrush and go to the thick canvas brush and just paint a little dash of highlight there. And there's, there's gonna be a little bit and one here, two very small on that bottom edge of the eye. This is what gives the eye shape. Now we'll go back to the blending brush. Pretty small and blend that highlighted area in. And I know this looks real digital right now because I've got it super zoomed in. Alright, ready to zoom out and see what we've done? He's coming to life. He is coming to life. Obviously the black at the top of his eyes a little bit too much. You can blend that back down right now by getting off of it and pulling down towards it like this. And bring some of that another color in there and then blend it out. So it's not quite so bad. As far as darkness. I do need a little dark gray at the corner. I'm going to grab some of that and did did not switch to paint brush, so I'm clicking on it to make it go there. There's a little point right here at the corner that I haven't got an order yet. I'm going to put that in there. And then there's a little bit right there. And then there's also this comes out to more of a point right here. So I'm paying attention to the shape of it. And let's see if we can get some of this lighter gray once you're on the paintbrush, you can paint with it. Well, that's a pretty shade right there. Yeah, That's really pretty. Maybe even put some of that in here. And you can add in color wherever you see fit. That's a real pretty shade I just grabbed out of there. And you can blend this or you could leave that alone. I'm gonna grab that darker gray like right there and a little bit of that in there. And then even a little bit darker and just choose that on the color wheel because there's a little bit of a of a darker shadow line coming out on that side of the eye. And back to the blending brush. And she's kind of scrub some of that in. I might need to go smaller. There we go. Get this corner, figured out, bring some of that black down in there. So it doesn't look all one color. Mix it around. Now we'll zoom out and see. Alright, we have an I. And I'm obviously I don't want this to look like a photograph, but I do want certain things to be very realistic. Which is the eye, the beak. And if the bird has a certain marking that is integral to the piece, I would include that. Like for instance, there's a bird out there called a rose breasted gross speak, Grosse speak. I say gross be people say Crosby. It has a red V on its chest of read section of v. And that red is important in that bird. The tint mouse, that orange that you see on the wings is important. In those areas, I'll pay a little bit more attention. But otherwise we're gonna get quite a bit looser with this. As we go along. In the next video, we will move on to the beak. And then once we get the beak done, we'll start filling out the rest of the colors to shape the head. So stay tuned for the next video. 5. Painting The Beak: Okay, we are ready to start on this little fellows beak. And I'm going to blow the reference photo up really big. And I don't know if you can tell. But there are some blue tones in that upper part of the beak, and then gray and black at the bottom. And there's some lighter gray in there too. I'm going to start I'm going to actually grab a tone from his head feathers to start painting in the beak with that tone. And I'm still using relatively small brush just to get this color in here. And I'm gonna put the color over the whole beak. And then I'm going to grab, go on the beak. And you can see it's a dark blue. Say it's a dark blue shade. I'm I'm gonna go just a little bit lighter than that for the moment. Just to get some good color variation in there. And I'm staying away from his little nostril area at the moment. I just want to make sure that I have not covered that up. A little bit of that blue right there in that bottom, along that bottom. And now I'll go back down to the darker shade and start getting some of this in here. Keeping it really dark, where it looks really dark in the picture, which is along this bottom edge right here. And then underneath, it's very dark. Okay, now I'm going to get this lighter gray surround the nostril and get that color going in there. In the very center of the nostril. It's a very dark gray. Get that in there. And then there's a lighter, almost a purplish hue in there. And that color seems to be in the center of the beak just a little bit. And maybe on this top edge right here to be a nice highlight color. Now let me go to blend that. There's playing with the brush size a little bit. Get that nostrils. Sort of blended out. These colors nice and blended a little bit bigger on the brush. Okay, that's a good look and beak we've got going on. Now it's time to bring in some of this dark black tone. And it did not switch back when I highlighted that to the paintbrush. So I have to do that myself. And let's get this dark tone under this. Onto the bottom beak. Get some of that in there. On top of that blue. And there's a little bit of it right here to tip. Along the edge there. And then there's some up here, this darker tone. As you come down toward the nostril. And les dot the little darker in the center of the nostril and come around like that. Now let's blend some of that. Get some of those darker tones mixed in with that blue. A little gray area. I've gotten it a little bit big, so I'm going to blend some of that down and make that little smaller. And blend the bottom beak, bottom part of the beak. Oops. If you lose the shape of your beak, you can come from the outside edge and sort of blend that in and trim it up. That's looking pretty good. I think we need a little bit of white highlight in there. So I'm just going to grab a white click the paintbrush. Make sure brushes really tiny. Because we need a little highlight right here and right here on either side of that nostril to make it look, give it that depth. And then he's got a little tiny highlight on the tip of his beak there and a little bit more highlight right there. So I'm gonna go back to the blending brush, but really small. And soften that up by blending that just a little bit with a really tiny brush. And around the nostril, I think he needs a little more of the light gray on the outer side of the nostril. So I'm going to try to find that light gray color right there and I'm gonna go just a tad lighter, had sort of a light blue and get some of that in there. And then back to the blending brush. Whoops, I went a little too big. And blend some of that in. Gives it some variation around that nostril. And that light gray kind of extends were the beak meets the mouth right there. So I'm gonna go ahead and paint a little bit of that in this section. And then just a couple of strokes and then blend it in a little bit. Okay, I'm pretty pleased with the way that looks. Might need a little more dab of actual black with a tiny brush. Right inside the nostril edges right there. And where the beak meets the bottom. And then I'll blend that in a little bit. Taking my time with that. Yeah. I think the back highlight is a little strong or that center of the beak is, I'm going to blend over that from the top and the bottom. Soften that up. By zooming out. You can see those things. Now that looks pretty good. So now I'm ready to start working around the head and neck area. And we have more detail area in the feet. But I don't need to be quite as accurate with that as I did with this because this is where I want the eye to go. So as I work away from the head, things will get looser and messier. And not quite so precise. But in zooming out and looking at this, this looks like a pretty good start. So now we're, now we're ready to start getting a little looser as we work on this head area. So when we come back, we're going to start around the beak and work towards the eye and then upward and outward. 6. Paint The Face & Head: All right, We're ready to start working outward from the beak. And as you can see, there's a real dark color there, almost black, not quite modest down there on that spectrum. Make sure you're on paintbrush. This is where I'll start loosening up a little bit because it's really easy to get hung up in realism with the painting. Animals and birds, at least for me it is. And I'm just going to just start making marks along the top edge of the beak. Would that color and crisscrossing and going back and forth, filling in that area. And then he's got a little bit of darkness under the beak coming outward up under here. So I'll make a smaller brush and get some of this in here. And there's a little dark line right here. So we want to get some color in there. Maybe even around the edge of this beak. Work some of that color in there. Now, looking at under the beak, he's got a really dark blue-gray. So I'm going to add some of that coming out from what I just painted with the darker color right on top of it, bringing it out. Then as it comes out a little further, he gets more of a medium gray. So come out from that going in the direction of the feathers. And also starting to work around upward. I'm in this area around the beak there. And this dark line here is really not super dark. So I'm going to tap a little gray in there. And then around the top, there's a little bit of this dark gray coming into play. So I'm gonna go ahead and dab some of that in there. And even around the edge of it, go a little bit bigger brush come outward. It's that nice blue gray tones that he has going on. And maybe even go, It's actually in the red spectrum here, but maybe even go with a little bit lighter. You can pick your own colors according to what your eye sees. Now I'm going to work upward on the top of the head and I'm going to pick a middle of the road color that is in here. Sort of a medium blue. And go with a bigger brush and make those marks all the way across this, getting a little messy back-and-forth, different directions and get to the top. I don't want to lose his little head feathers, so a little bit smaller on the brush. And that color extends all the way around the back of his head. So we're going to keep going here. And I'm painting right over the sketch lines. And it actually starts to go coming outward from here, starts to go down the back. This direction. I'm going to go ahead and add that color in there too. That is a pretty color. It's even got a little dash of it up under here in this area. And we can use that color in through here. We're in the white or the whites gonna be as well. Alright, now we need to get a little bit of this darker shade that's in here. Some pull that color. And that's not as prevalent. It's not need, don't need to go as bigger brush strokes. So it's kind of a streaking up their dash, some of that in looking at the picture frequently to see where the darker shades are. Upward from the eye to the right. In here, there's some of that dark shading. Once again, I'm going in the direction of the feathers. And then where it meets the white, There's a little bit of darker shading in there. And even on up above the eye, down the backside. Get a little bit more of it down the backside. So I'll make the brush a little bigger and just sort of dash some of that in there. And going back to under the beak, get some of that color in there too. Now he's got some lighter shades in here as well. So I'm going to grab that and bring some of that in where the light is hitting on the top of his head. And that color actually comes out from the eye a little bit. So I'm going to put some of that in here and, um, get a little bit under that i2, just shaping the face in the middle there. So we're starting to see him take shape. Haven't blended any of this. And you don't have to blend it. But I am going to blend it a little bit. I mean, if you'd like a real broken look, you could keep going like this. There's a little bit of a golden tone, golden brown present around here. And at the top of this black area right here. So I'm going to dab a little bit of that in there. And then put some of that right there two along this beak. And it kind of extends up above the eye. And also right in here. As you can tell, I zoom out frequently to take a look at things as a whole. I'm gonna do a little blending now. On this head. Back-and-forth, very short strokes. I don't want it to be super smooth. Remember if you want to trim them up a little bit, pull from the outer edge toward the bird. Just trying to get these color variations to be a little bit smoother, but not super smooth. And even work on this area above the beak with a little smaller brush. Once again, going in the direction of the way those feathers would be going. Very short strokes, not pressing super hard. Working on blending all of this in just a little bit. Let's do a little bigger. Brush up in here. Come down. If you make a happy little mistake like that, you know, sometimes it's livable. So I think I'm just going to leave that. You don't have to fix everything. Perfect. This is when I'm starting to get looser and get away from perfection. And just basically get some shadowing and shading in. Let's go down the side of his wing body. Get some of that darker, blend it in with a lighter and pull it out. Word, looks like fluffy feathers then. Okay, he's looking pretty cute. I need a little white highlighting though in that head and start adding some white around the face. So I'm going to grab a white that's in the bird. Go back to the paintbrush and get some white going in here. Just looking at the areas where I see it the most. And even making up areas as I go. Because I'm not striving to make it look identical to the photo. I'm not, I don't want to be super photorealistic here. It a little bigger brush. Get in here around this face and carefully place down some marks around that. I even bring a little bit of that white this direction. Because he does have some going that direction. He's got a lot of the white. Now let me do a little blending and I'll do this through the whole thing. I'll make some marks. Blend, makes them more marks. Blend, makes more march blend, add color blend. That's the process. And get a little messy with the blender as long as I don't get over that, I can work that in around there. Because I want to leave the eye and the beak. Like they are. Just work these blocks of color in that I've put down, once again pull from outward and gives him that little fluffy look. Even pull this out a little bit. Get up under this area here and blend some of that. Starting to take a little shape. Now, the work on this eye area, a little bit more blended a little too much right there. I'm gonna get, there's this golden tone right here, which I want to integrate in here. So I'm going to use a small brush. Let me undo that and just dab some of that in here around the eye. And in this area right here. And along this backside. Just trying to create some good division there. And then this dark blue, it's actually need to pull that down a little bit more. So I got some of that on the brush and bring some of that end. There's also a dark blue line coming out there. And integrate some of that in there. I'm gonna go back that golden color. I'm gonna get a little bit lighter and brighter with that. Drop in a few little marks with that. And then let's do a little blending. You really got to watch the brush size. And I do a little scrubbing and blending and scrubbing and blending. But you want to watch that brush size. You don't want it to be too big. That's bringing some of that color variation with the golden tones in there. And I'll add a little more gray too because he needs that and kinda go around and shape the face a little bit. I mean, it's just a matter of working with it until it gets to looking like you want it to look like. Okay, he's taken shape. Like a little bit more of the blue tone. Little bit brighter in there and I go back to the paintbrush. I was on the blender and didn't switch back. So you can even go a lower opacity. If you want a tone in area a little bit and drop some color in there, I still think it needs to be brighter because I'm doing a little bit lower opacity. It's putting that as color tones in there. Without being quite so strong. Just going over top of what I've already done. You need some more variation in the head area. Now that I've done that, I'm gonna get this dark gray. Let's get some of that in. Oh, that's too big. It's a purplish gray. Undo that. Let's get some of the I'm trying to squint. It helps me see where these shades of color are. And once again, just go in the direction of the feathers. And now let's go a little bit darker on that color wheel right there. A little bit smaller. Brush. Put a few little marks to get this line back. Get some of those colors in there. Because when I added that color on top to tone it at toned it down too much to where it lost some of the detail and I still want some of the detail in there. It's always going to be darker under the beak, so make sure to add some there. Alright, let's blend that. And small brush, not that small kind of work that in back-and-forth, back-and-forth. As I zoom in close to look at it and do a little blending and then I'll zoom out. This is getting all those shades in there. Working all around. Blending that. You see this process takes awhile. And I mean, I enjoy it, but if you are in a hurry, sometimes I am. I just had the idea, Oh, I want to paint this burger that versa in those cases, I paint the actual photo instead of doing it this way. Either way, you're going to come out with a good piece of art. This process definitely does take much longer. It's not for the faint of heart. But some people feel like if you paint the photo, it's not real or, you know, which is the bowl. But, um, this is more for somebody who wants to say, Hey, I did it all by scratch from scratch. That's what we're doing here. Okay, Now I need to bring a little bit more white flicking back in the head area to give that a little bit more pop, I guess you'd say I'm doing a real tiny brush. And just in a few spots staying zoomed out and just looking at different areas where I see dashes of white. And I'm, you know, I'm missing some. I'm sure I'm not trying to be perfect here. I'm trying to just create a nice painting. Using this guy as a reference of where the colors should be. You can get a little bit of that in there. I mean, these are very, very small marks now I'm gonna go a little bit bigger in this area. Around the eye again. Because he does have a bright brightness. A couple of places there. That's a nice-looking stroke. Maybe a little strong though. Alright, let's blend some of this. So it doesn't look like just lines dashed in there, like it is. Blend it in to get the light from them. Some of the marks I will leave showing us they are but usually not these little skinny ones. I tried to work those in. All right. Still think we need a little bit more on the head. Little bit brighter. That's actually the green shade. There's touching very lightly in a few spots. And we're gonna get, start working this area down here. Sort of a creamy look. Alright, I'm going to blend that just a little bit. Not too much. These are marks. I'm going to leave more like they are just touching here and there. Awesome. That blew up through there. Oh, he's looking pretty good. And when you zoom out, you can really see how it's going to look from a distance and even work on your blending a little more. So the head area is looking pretty good. Now, does it look just like him? Wow. It's pretty close, but you can see I've added more of that golden yellow color around the eyes then was present here. And I might like another little dash of that. Let me get another shade of it here. See what that looked like it. Make sure you're on the paintbrush. No, I think I want a little brighter than that. Maybe a little big. I'm getting fussy now. Trying to just get some fun color variation in there around that. I know he's got a little dark gray area coming down from the eye is sort of a dark blue gray or greenish gray, this color. So let me try to dash a little bit of that in there. And it comes down to just a little point right there. Then just tap on that and blend some of those colors in. Not blended totally in. Well, yeah, I think he's looking super cute. I've got the color down the backside of that wing in there. Pretty good. I think I'm ready to work on these orangey areas that are on him to get those in place. And then I can start working on the chest area and I'm just glancing at his upper chest here. It is a, um, the upper chest area right in there is sort of a medium to light gray. And then as it comes down as sort of a yellowish green as it goes through the middle because he's got this little line down the middle of his belly. And then the parts that on the lower belly that come out are really light gray to white. But that's what gives him that shading that shows him being round and fluffy. So we want to work on that. But I'd like to get those orange bits that are on his wings in there first. And I think in the, in the next video we will work on those wing areas and get those little bits. And before we move to the lower chest and or upper chest and belly. So we'll do that and the next one. 7. Paint The Body: Okay, we're ready to add this little bit of orange tones to the wing area. It looks orange but it's really a brown. So I'm just going to get a medium brown to start with. Click on the paintbrush and zoom out so I can see where I am. And I'll start with this little bit. Right here, this little section right here. There's some of that tone right there. And then as it comes down through here, all the way down to here. Let's go to the other side and get some of that tone in here. A little bit smaller brush in here to squeeze that in. That outer edge of that wing is a darker gray. Alright, now, let's see if I can get the golden tone in there. Put some of that there. I'm just dabbing it right over top of what I just did in a few spots. Now need a little bit lighter, but I want to go brighter. So I'm just gonna move up on the color wheel. A little bit smaller brush. Just glancing at the picture to see where the brightest areas are. Alright, I'm going to blend that in just a little bit. I don't know how big my brush is going to end up. There we go. Blend those up, just a little. Mix those colors together. And of course I'm going to have to keep going and refine this. I'm going to get this dark tone now right there. Switch back to paintbrush and get some of that in here. Down that edge. There's a little bit of it right there. And over here on this side, there's a little bit right there. So let me blend that a little. Alright. Now it's looking very golden and I would like it to be more orange. So I'm in the orange coloration here, but I'm gonna go even more to the orange and get a really rich orange. And add just a little bit of that. Looking at a distance here to see where that orange tone is. Alright, blend that in a little bit. Just getting that base color down. And there's a little bit of this creamy yellow tone and I don't think I grabbed that right. Almost a white back to the paintbrush, but it's on this edge of the dark wing right there, right here where it meets. So I'm going to dash a little bit of that in there. And it's also appear over top of that. A little bit down into the orange and even a little bit down here. Now let me look at the other side. And it's at the top and comes down through the middle like that. Let's blend that a little bit. About a nice color variation going on. Now I'm blending it all. I'm just blending bits of it. Just very light touch here when the blending. And it even gets a little wider, but I'm, I think I'm going to have to work in the edges of the wings and the upper chest and belly to really get those tones in there. Good. Now if you look down the middle of his belly, that cream tone is sitting there in those feathers. So I'm gonna go ahead and mark some of that end. There's a little bit of it down here. Just looking at a distance. Where am I seeing the creamy towns? Maybe even a little bit up here. Alright. Now he's got, I'm looking back at the lower belly. This is almost a green. So zoom out. And I'm going to try to bring in that tone. Wherever I see it. A little bit here at the top. Maybe even a little bit right here. And of course there's a lot of the blue-gray is in there. Let's get this one down here. I think it's blue now it's on the green side. So I get some of that. Might've even do a little smaller there because I covered up all the green getting a little bit of that in there. A little bit of that right there. Then up this area right here. This part of the body meets that orange area. And then, um, right there, maybe under the green just a little bit right there. Getting in some of those tones, There's a little bit of his body right here that's visible. I'll put that in there. Now let's get some of the lighter gray and get some of that appear in this chest area. It starts under the darker section I've already done. Maybe we can even go with a little bigger brush. The bigger area you have, the bigger brush you can use. And we're going to go right over that. There's a little bit of it right here. Then there's some right here. Then as we go up here, this area has got some gray, especially as you get close to the orange. And even in this wing there's a little bit. All right, Now let's get some of this white and hold down on it there. Get dash. I'm just short little choppy strokes and they're not covering up everything I just did, just integrating the white in there with it. He's starting to get a little fluffy looking nasty when you add that white in there. I'm leaving some of the original background showing through as well. He's starting to look nice and fluffy. Think I want to blend that just a little bit. I don't want to blend it all together, but I want to blend it enough where it isn't such a strong variation between colors. So you just kinda mix it up a little, but it has all those colors still showing. Like I said, as you get further away from the face and get a little more messy, Get a little fun blending going on there. I think I need a little darkness in the center of his belly. So I'm gonna grab there's a really dark looking grayish green right there. Get back to the paintbrush. And I'm going to maybe go a little darker with that. That's not dark enough. Didn't want to make these feathers look like they're divided down the middle. Just dotting that all the way down where I see it ending up. Now let's blend that a little in, a little smaller brush to blend that. Don't want to lose that dark line, but just want to kid it blended in there a little bit. Okay, Now that looks too choppy. Think I'm gonna go back to a white. I'm going to go into a little bit. Get old paintbrush, little bit lower opacity, a little bit bigger brush. And maybe even bigger. Oops, that's too big. A little lower opacity. Sweep that white in there over top of that other those other colors. Sort of like we did on the head. I feel like I've lost some of my darkness in the center. So I'm going to grab that darker color again, full opacity and bring it back. Actually, I didn't get it dark enough. I'm not really paying too much attention to my brush size at this point. I just lost some of my dark color, so I wanted to bring that shading back in. When that a little more getting really fast and loose and messy. Now with this area. Now I think he needs a little more white switch back to paintbrush. Sweeping those brushstrokes toward that center section to come up, come over it. Because that dark line down the center is kind of just under those. And even just some big brush marks. If you do a mark you don't like just hit Undo and take it back off. And I want to get a little more of this light gray in there up here. Well, they're just putting strokes on top of each other now. Let's go a little darker with that. It's too dark. Now I'm making color decisions. These are just being placed on top of the other colors and not really being blended. Now around this foot is a little darker down there. Let's do big gets darker as it comes down here. There's a little bit of that golden town in there too, so I can see it now that I'm zoomed in over top of that foot, maybe even bring some of that in here. Blend that a little bit. Whoops. I blend, blended it too much. Looking really cute. Now under the tail and these wings coming down back behind the tail, that's really super dark. That is super dark because there's a shadow there. So it doesn't need to be made that dark unless you're trying to paint it exactly as the photo. So I think what I'm going to try to do is use some of the gray from the tail. On the bottom part of the tail, those grays and bring them up to the wing area and where it meets the tail. And bring in some of these blues from the head into the tail as well and then get a little bit of darkness in there. And I also need to finish out these wings around the orange area. And I'm zooming way out to sea. And this bottom dark area right there is a little too dark. So I'm gonna get a white color again, creamy white. And I'm just going to make a fairly decent size. Few brush strokes right there. Just lay them right on top of the other, not even going to blend those. Because when you don't blend, this gives it the more painterly look. And I'm touching up here on his back of his hand a little bit to some of that and the top of his head bring some of that in. Because when you look at it from a distance, you can really see the colors better than when you're right up on top of it. That's why I like to do this. And I mean, he realized he still looks pretty perfect right now, but I'll miss him up a little bit more as I get toward the end. I prefer a more abstract blocked in look. But I know a lot of people like to paint and more realistic side. So I tend to, when I tend to do those abstract blocked and looks, they're not that way to start with. If you've watched any of my photo painting videos, you see that I painted very realistically first and then mess it up. And that's what I'll do here. If I want to, when it comes to the end, I will end up messing this up a little bit, at least around the edges. So I think we're coming along pretty good here. So the next step will be the tail, the bottom part of those wings and finish out these wings along the, the orange area. And then, then we'll tackle the feet. Um, I'm not a big fan of painting feet. And then of course we'll tackle the branch two. And then we'll work everything all over again, basically because once you get everything down, that's when you need to make it all work together. And if you're focused on one area in your painting is separate than later, you might think, well, it looks more like a coloring book or something like that. You have to make everything work together and bring colors from one area into another. And we'll go into all of that. Um, but I'm I'm trying to loosen up, but it's pretty, pretty tough to do. I do notice up under his beak there needs to be a little more white. So while I'm sitting here running my mouth, I'll just dash a few more white brushstrokes over that. And very short, light choppy. I'm not even going to blend those, but now he looks a little bit fluffier up under that beak, who I like that much better. And I've lost part of the dark area coming off the beak. So while I'm doing this, I'll just add a little bit, a few little marks in there. And I may blend that just a little. Whoo, that's too big. You get too big of a brush. It won't do right? Just to soften that up a little, it needs a little bit more white in that area. Now I'm nitpicking. But at least I got that dark area back in there and they're fluffed him up a little bit and he needs more white up here. Usually I'll come back at the end and add. And that's not even a true white. I'll come back at the end and add more white where it's needed. But if I see it as I'm going along, I do like to put a few of those marks in there and loosen things up a little bit. I kinda jump all around and don't work on any one specific area like I do for the video, you know, I'm trying to show you a specific area. But when I'm actually doing one of these for myself, I'm a jump around a little bit more. That may be a little too much. Very light touch right here just to get some of that white over that color. Well, that was an interesting mark. There we go. A little bit smaller. If it's too strong, just double-tap to undo it and try it again. But adding these little white marks here and there as you're going along will help give it that dimension that we're looking for. Now I need a little blue over what I just did. And I like to put marks over top of each other. Once I get to a certain stage rather than blending them all, just lay a markdown. Okay. I'm gonna stop right there and then we'll get started on the tail and the rest of his wings in the next segment. 8. Background, Tail & Wings: Okay, I know I said I was going to work on those wings, but, um, I think we need to get a little background deal going on here. Now, I want to show you here what we have. If you turn off the background I've painted, there is the bird layer and I will save this as a PNG file after I get done painting the bird layer because then as a PNG file, it can be put on various products. And I do put my work on various products like coffee mugs and things like that, where you don't really need a background. You just want the subject with the transparent background on say, the coffee mug. So I keep these separated. But I am going to spruce up the background a little bit before we continue on. I'm gonna get some of this rich, vibrant orange in there. And you see that little bit of turquoise down here at the bottom. I really liked that too. So I'd like to get some of those marks in there. It's unbelievable that this picture has my, my two favorite colors in it, the orange and the turquoise. I'm not quite sure where I'm going to place the turquoise, but I'm going to grab turquoise. Make sure I'm on the background layer. And I'm gonna go with a little bigger brush, maybe even bigger than that and just work some of that end with this brush. Now before I did the background with the big oil mix, which doesn't really have a whole lot of texture. So I'm getting some texture in here now. Just, just for fun. And now I'm gonna get some of the orange tones in there. And I'm going underneath him. Um, those tones will show up in the tail area as the under layer color. Tailing wings. I'm just going to dab some of that in here. And looking at where the light is hitting him, it looks like it's hitting him from the right side, just straight onto the front of his face and body pretty good. That's why it's creating that shadow on his tail. But I liked, I don't know that I'll paint the shadow on the tail. I'm thinking I want. So I'm not going to have that strong of a light source. I don't think in this one, but I am going to paint some of this deeper orange with a big brush in here. And then even go a little darker down in here across the bottom. Let me see what happens. If I go to the blending brush and grab that textural brush. And I like to do this about partway through the painting to kind of get an idea of all the colors I'm working with. So I'm using this textural brush and you drag it very slowly and it will drag those colors around. And I don't know if I'm ready to use that brush yet. So I think I'll go to the juicy Canvas, blend and blend them that way. I don t know that I want to add a lot of texture right now. And I don t know that I want to do too much blending either. Just a little bit to spread this out, some of these colors. The gives me an idea of the tones. When I go ahead and do this that are gonna be in the background. And I do like that, that turquoise blue, but I think I want to get a little bit of a lighter tone of it. Maybe a really light blue. Make sure I'm on paintbrush. Put some of that and I'm going over his face but I'm actually underneath him. This remember that working around him, blocking in some of those colors and then just doing a slight little bit of blending on them. Move them around, some starting to look kinda interesting. Let me go back and put some more of that light blue in that. I might need a little lighter shade of the orange. So I'll put some of that in there too. I don't know that I need it. I just want it. Soft blending just to get the tones in there. So I can see a more accurate picture of what I'm looking at. And I'm going to leave this lighter color in the upper corner. Um, maybe put a few more dashes of that end with this brush. Blend it a little bit. Just gives us some interests to the background. Really short. Single strokes with a big brush. Kind of a blocky look, but yet it's got the canvas texture, which is really nice. It gets some of those colors in there that are from his original background, which I actually happen to like. If you hate your original background, you could always pull in a texture background. And I do that all the time. I mean, I don't like the way this original background looks, but I do like the colors in it, which is why I'm painting with them. So you can paint with whatever colors you want, but you could also bring in a background. And I wanted to mention too, once you get your background looking like you want, turn off your paint layer. And then you can see it a little bit more accurately and make sure it's blended the way you want and look it there. I've got a nice background right there that I can save and use with something else. So I'm going to do that, save that out as a JPEG file and into my photo library and then that will be there when I want to use it with something else. But let's say you don't like the colors in the original background. You don't know what color you want to paint, but you want to, you want a different background. All you have to do is add a new layer underneath him. Go to Insert a file or insert a photo. I'm going to insert a file because I have this fall melody. Texture said I just finished. So let's say I wanted to pick a background from one of these to put in there like that. I can import a texture background behind him and look it there. Now, that actually looks pretty darn good. So I have the choice of that background or the one I just painted. Just depends on the look that I want. This is a more subdued, rich look. If I use that background. This other one is a brighter, more colorful look. But you can certainly do that with any background that you have that you've already painted, or textures and backgrounds that you've purchased. You can just bring any one of them in there. You don't like that one, bring a different one end. But you can see how it changes the whole look of your piece just by having a different background in there. And I mean, I have mine saved in files here, some of my collections. And I can just, I've saved by the name of what they are and I can just go pick one at anytime to change up the look. Now that's a really nice, cool, dramatic look right there. That might be interesting, but a lot of times I'll wait to the end before I do this because I'll paint the background like I feel like I want it painted at the time, but then I'll also bring in other backgrounds just in case I might like something better. But it's very important to turn off your sketch layer after you've painted your background and go ahead and save that. Because that could be a background for another subject on another time. Or it could be a background that you could use to start another, like an abstract painting or whatever else you might want to paint. So definitely shut off your paint and sketch layer and save your background once you get it looking like you want. And then if you want to, later on you can bring in other backgrounds and see how they look compared to what you just painted. Or you can even merge them together and create. A whole different look for your subjects. So just something I wanted to mention there. I'm going to stick with the background I'm painting because I like these colors and I want to work these colors into him. So by having those colors down on there now I have the ability to work with them a little better. So now we can start painting. The wings. Get back on our subject area. I'm layer and I'm going to start with this medium greenish gray over here on this far wing. And go with a well among the blending brush, go with a pretty small paintbrush to fit that in there. It's actually a almost a brown gray. When you get that darker shade from the outer edge and get that in there. And of course I extend it out a little further than I wanted. So I can go to the blending brush and blend from the outer edge of that towards it. And it will trim it back up. There we go. That's got a little lighter gray in there to make sure you're on Paintbrush For you start painting that I can get a little lighter shade there isn't even really a gray. It's a I don't know what it is. It looks great in the picture. But when you pull it, there's a lot of colors floating around in here. Because photos have a lot more colors. Go more toward a lighter gray right here. And also on the edge just a little, there's a little highlight of it. And blend that in. Trying not to lose my orange and yellow just gives a hint to that wing right there. Probably go a little bit too much orange in there. Let's go with this darker shade and go black. And get because there's a really dark black line there. And another one right there, which comes down right in here. So let's darken that a little and then blend that in. I'm just kind of scrubbing it to blend it in. Tone down that orange on that side and a little like a little carried away with my orange over there. That's okay. I do need a little more white. On top of that wing. I'm gonna go all the way up to white. I keep hitting that for some reason. Just thought a little bit of that in there. And then when that on then to brighten it a little. And then maybe just a little swift brush mark there, which create that little highlight. And then there's another one right there. That one I may want to blend a little. It looks a little strong. So blended a little. There we go. Now, that same dark gray is present under here, but remember I said on the tail I was not going to go quite so dark. So I'm gonna get outside the shadow area and pick a gray to paint with in the it's sort of a bluish gray. It's going to have to be darker than the feet though. Otherwise you won't see the fetus good. Be sure to get in-between those toes around those toes. Good. A little bigger brush, sweep some of that color in there. I'm trying not to totally cover my tail lines and wing lines and just getting a base color in there. Now I do want the darker shade that's right there. Right there. So only work that in. And you know, these wing feathers have dark and then they have light. Dark right up. Near the foot, There's a little bit more dark. And then on this side is darker. The darkness will help provide the contrast, but I don't want to go as dark as the photo is. It's really, it's kinda difficult when you have a shadow because you got to imagine it without the shadow. I do know up where it meets the body, it will be darker. And then there's a little outer line that'll be darker. Okay, now I need some of this lighter tone in there. And I need to get not they're not too big. I mean, I need to get in here. And the little light, It's almost like a light blue. Then of course the foot is has got this lighter blue, so I'm gonna go ahead and put that color and for the upper leg. So I'm not painting the foot yet, but I am painting the foot just trying to get that color in there. And then over here they're probably a little bit of it, not too much over there because that'd be underneath. And then some of it here. Some of it here. And I were the foot meets the body, there needs to be a little bit darker. Right up in here. Little smaller brush. Anywhere where there's tail me, somebody, it needs to be a little bit darker. Alright, let's do a little blending on that to work that out. Lending on top of the foot, along the bottom edge of the body. Given that fluffy, feathery look. Trying to stay away from blending the foot right now. And let's get this upper wing area. That winning is going to be a little darker because it's in shadow under his body. So I'm going to pull that darker color down when blending on that. I'll darken it some more to how long it's looking pretty good. All right, let's work on the bottom part of the tail. Don't press real hard. It'll blend too strongly. Doesn't matter if it goes over into the branch because we're going to do the branch later. A little fine white lines and that tail. Make sure you own paintbrush. And let's add a little fine line there. We've got some coming down here. I can't draw a straight line for anything. I mean, it doesn't need to be perfect. I'm going to blend it. Somehow. I've lost part of this tail here. Comes up there. Comes down here. Alright, let me blend some of that. Well, let's click on the blender. Oops, that's too big. Undo. Just soften that up a little. Where I drew this then down here. Just trying to give myself a little guideline as to where the tail is. I'll have to go back in. There were some darks. Okay, in-between these feathers, there's gonna be a sort of a medium gray. I think that might be to bring it down as a blue-gray. And at the bottom of these feathers, darker on the one side. Need to go even darker. There we go. Yeah, We need to get a little more darkness in there. Show a little bit more division. And then we need a little bit more white on this outer edge, especially down here at the bottom. I mean, it's hard to imagine not seeing the shadow. I don't like to paint it with the shadow in there unless I, the shadows and integral part of the piece. In this case it was just an accidental son shadow. I didn't set it up this way. Just trying to loosely blend these tail feathers in. It doesn't matter if it goes over the branch because we're going to paint the branch. And then around his foot. I really need some of that darkness. That's super darkness to make his foot stand out. So there's a little bit right there at the top of the foot and then along the edge. And even under that foot right there. Alright, let's blend this to soften it up. And shadow that leg just a little bit. Still probably going to have to put some darkness back in there to really make it stand out. Maybe not. If I do the foot right, I might not need to do that. Pull that darkness out and away from it. Because the foot is pretty bright. But when you add the darkness, some dark marks in there, it does give you that dimension of where the leg is. This feather is going to be darker because it's underneath pretty good. So if I darken that feather, even though I'm not putting the shadow and I'm darkening it under his toes is going to be a little bit darker there. So I'll put a few dark marks in there. When those down. Okay. His tail is looking pretty good. Need a little bit more work around this wing. Since I'm already on that dark color. Let's work on that. Tapping in some of that dark where I see darkness, have even got a section of it up through the middle of that wing. Maybe even bring the wing out a little more. Blend it to soften it up. There we go. I need a little white highlighting. Grab a white. Hear from him. I don't need it very big. I've got a little bit well, that's not very white. Well, I'm on the blender. See, I didn't go back to I chose the paint color but didn't go back to the paintbrush. Alright, let's try that. That's what I'm talking about. It doesn't switch when you have the reference photo, I'm just glancing at where I see some brightness. And I'll go ahead and blend that in. So it's not so strong. I'll redo it and add an add another stroke or two in there. What brushing mile. I'm on the right brush. I guess it's just not big enough or not white enough. Just want a few little dash marks in there, but I don't want it to be too strong. I am going to blend it out a little bit. It's still a little strong. Need to blend it some more. You can really tell when you step back from it or zoom out. If it's too strong, it will stand out like a sore thumb and that kinda did to me. There we go. Something is bugging me about the top of this orange area. And I think I need to bring in some more orange color in there, a little bit richer. And then go more to, I'm just picking colors now. Get a little golden there. Go more toward the white and then blend it just a little bit. Now that looks a little better to me. I'm I'm just nitpicking now. But he has a tail. It doesn't have the dark sun shadow. I'm pretty much all the tail as it comes down from the body is going to be quite a bit darker than what's further down the tail. In fact, I could add a little more darkness, darkness right under the edge of the body. So I'm gonna go with a straight black and a small brush. Just add some of that in there. Like under the bottom of those feathers, just scribbling it in. Now let's do a little blending of it to work it in. Hit upwards into this feathers and work at downwards into the tail. This is what creates that shadowing. That makes him look, makes him look super super realistic. There. Now it looks like he's got a little bit more fluff to his feathers. I could even go with a little bigger brush, I think, and make some dark downward marks right here. And then blend that just a little bit. Whoops. Blend too much out. So undo it and go back the other way. Lost a little bit of his feather fluff there. So I'm going to pull the white down over the dark. Just a little, dabbing it. I want them to be fluffy. Zoom out and zoom in. All that. He looks a little fluffier down there now. Okay. So and then, um, well, I forgot this wing, this little piece of his body right here, this little piece right here is not shaded, right? So we're going to put a little dark on their blend that in a little bit. Now he's got a toast it can over that area. If you can see right there that little toe is poking over that area and I've kinda lost it. So I'll have to paint that back in, but that's okay. I can do that. But now he's got a little shading there because it was, if you don't do the shading, you get a very flat looking image. And you don't want a flat looking piece of art, you want something that looks formed. This is what gives the shading, gives the the subject its 3D shape and brings it to life. So he's looking like super cute at this point. And now it's time to work on those feet, which I've been dreading. But I'm going to have to do it. We can't have a flightless birds sitting on a branch and then of course we have to do the branch to. So when we come back, we're going to tackle the feet. And we may end up tackling some of the branch around the feet. Um, maybe I should do the branch first. There's no set order in way that I do things. I just kinda work around and see what feels best at the time. I'll probably start doing the feet. And if the feet don't seem like they're working, I'll stop the feet. Do the branch. I mean, it's up to you. You're the artist. You can whatever feels right to you. And I tell people that all the time. That'll say what colors do you want? What colors do you need to use? It's up to you. What shade of blue doing it? It's up to you. I mean, it's all in what year I envisions that you want to see in your painting. You know how, how, how saturated you wanna go to color, how desaturated you want to go, how dark or light? It's all up to you. The main thing is the shadowing and the shading, because that's what brings the subject, gives it form and brings it to life. And I don't really follow any rules. I just kinda go along and I glance at the picture and then I glance back at the painting, usually from a distance like this, because that helps me see it better as if I were looking at it from across the room and then just looking at it now, the orange wing on the right side, it needs some darker orange in there. I can see it in the picture right there. But I do not see that it's dark enough in my painting. But if I add that little bit in there, it will definitely help things. So let's just do that right now. But we're gonna go dark. And we're gonna make sure we got a decent size brush, but it needs to be right here. And it nice even be darker than that. Right there as it comes down here. As it comes into this area. And now needs to be blended just a little bit. And pull the orange up, pull the dark color down. Kind of scrub it in there. And it, it when you're zoomed in like this that you might be going, Oh, that looks doesn't look right. But you really can't tell until you're zoomed out. And then you can also blend from a zoomed out point. When you can see it much better. At a different perspective. I'm just blending right now from the zoomed out point back-and-forth over from bringing the dark into the light and the light back into the dark. But it's giving it that shadowing. Let's even go a little darker with a mark or two in there. Just some little touches and blend some of that down. Now that wing has a little bit more dimension. They're a little too much, maybe someone to cover it up some, but it's definitely darker when you pull that lighter color in with it is darker than it was before. And so it has a little bit of variation. We can even go with the orange and go out and get a more, more rich orange in there and then go to the yellow and a little rich yellow in there. Then we gets to be too much. Just undo it or covered up. That gave a little variation in there and brighten that side up because that side is brighter than the other side. Okay. I think that looks a tad better now. And when we come back, we're going to tackle the feet. So we'll be back shortly. 9. Painting The Feet: Okay. Are you guys ready to paint bird feet? I am not beat or not my favorite thing to do. But I'm going to try anyway. And I'm not as careful with these because I don't want to draw the attention to them, but they have to be shown. So I've picked a light blue color. And remember I said I kind of eliminated that one toe nail right there. I've just painted it back in. And I'm using the light blue color that's prevalent in the feet to get the base shape in. So we've got one foot there and now there's a darker line dividing in between the feet. So I'm going to swap a little bit between colors here. Because if I paint all the feet, all one color in the beginning, I'm not going to be able to see what I've done. So that darker line is there and around the edge of that toenail. And I know it's right there too. On this outer edge of it. A little darker. Make that brush a little smaller. There we go. Alright, now let's go back to the lighter blue, a bit larger. This one painted. Now, the birds feet aren't really blue, they're more gray. But when you're working from a photograph as a reference, photographs often have an emphasis on the blue and green tones. Just part of it. Sometimes the photographs have warmer tones. You know, it depends on the camera. I've had some cameras early on that produce very warm tones. It depends on the lenses too. I have some lenses that are produced very warm tone photos and others that produce darker tones. I get the edges on this one. It's got a little tip there on that toe nail. And I know there's a little rim right there. This edge is not quite as thick as the other one because I'm painting with a smaller brush. And there is a little area right here where it's a little bit darker. So I'll go ahead and input that in there. Gives that roundness to that. Now I'm zoomed in too much where I can't see, so okay. Now I see what's going on. This this one right here, this next one that I'm working on, that is the foot coming under the branch. And then this is the toenail of the foot coming from under the branch. So this book is circling under the branch. But there's another one right here, circling on top. So it's kinda hard to see this. T you look at it, you know, quite a bit closer. One toenail is curved under the branch and wrapping around from the underside because that's how they grip and they hang on. Okay, so that gets the basic colors down, but now I need a little darker. I need a black because I really need to get some of the black in there. In the areas where it's the darkest. To show the division of these toes and I'll blend, this is a little dark area right there. Then you should come up here. This is pretty dark right here. And I'll blend that in a little bit better. And then this toenail, there's a little black right here to shape out this one. I'm probably not getting it shaped exactly right, but it's close. There's a shadow on that one from the sun. This toenail looks super big. Just the way it's wrapped around the bottom of that branch. I'm going to do a little black alone, the outside of this one to this one. Now I need some shading variation there. I need a darker blue. To help form this out. So it's on this side of the toes. Then under here. And right here on this one. And then I need some of this white. Oops. Get some of that in there. A little bit right there. Little bit right here. That actually comes down a little bit right there. There's a little reflection right there and a little reflection right there. And a tiny little bit right there. So I'm gonna go ahead and blend what I've got down on this one so far. Not what that bigger brush lower that brush size. It that dark blended in there. And then the light, the light is more of a highlight. So I'll probably go back and touch that backup. The dark I can drag from the dark area into the lighter blue area and drag from the body downward over the foot a little because that's where the feathers are. And then this one is pretty dark under here where it scoops under the branch. This is just getting the initial blending in. And then our fight refine things a little bit. Blend that out a little bit more toward that other one. So when you zoom out and now you can tell, it looks like toes, we're getting somewhere. Now I want to go back to the white and the black a little bit more. So let me grab the black tone, which is really along the lines of a dark purple. Let me zoom out this time a little bit more. So I can do this from a distance. Well, I guess I need to be on the right brush. Like I said, paintbrush. Go back to the paintbrush. That's too thick. Redo that foot. That TO little darkness right there. Down through here. There's a little bit darkness right here to differentiate it from the body. And then this toe has little knot on the end of it. Then there's a little triangular area right there. It's pretty dark l up through here. Then this toe is kind of an awkward shaped. But I think it's just the way it's laying. There's a pretty dark area right there. And then there's a dark rim around this one. Let's go to the white. Let's just pick a white from the purple shade. If you double-tap near the white, it will come out and there's some little lines here, will highlight their little highlight down the middle of that toe. A little highlight here. Little highlighting. Lines here. A little bit right here. Then some right here, just kind of scribbling this end. And then the one that's on the underside, There's actually a little speck, white right there, right here, and right here. And you can see the gray tone on the one that's on the underside. So I'm going to grab that, the one that's coming from the underside and bring some of that tone in there. That one, and this one, they're a little more exposed to a different color from that side. Let's go a little darker on that and go across the top of these toes. Zoom out. And I need a little darkness here. I mean, you're going to have some darkness in there because this is where the branch is. So I might as well draw some of that in. And then the beat is creating. The foot is creating some shadow right up under here. So I'll just prepare myself for that and go ahead and put that in there. Now I can blend a little bit more, little bit bigger. Where I've placed the white blended in a little better and where I've placed that black line again, pull that toward the blue a little better. Just blending these little marks and so it doesn't look so structured. And I'm really being loose and messy with this. At least I feel like I am. Get that little white highlight blended in this dark rim. I'm probably going to have to bring back the highlight. Again. London's some shadow, outer edge of that branch. This right here, and above the toes. Now let's zoom out. Okay, I've lost my highlight on the next to the bottom one is too strong. Let's fix that by blending in some of that blue right over that bluish gray to tone that down. This highlight is a little, little long. This one, this highlight seems like it may come out a little more because it's the top TO blend that in. Now in that bottom one, there's this delightful shade of blue right? Right in here somewhere. If I find it exactly, trying to hold my finger down, there we go. So I'm gonna go back and it's right here. That's a little big undo that just dots some of that in there over that shadow area right there. And then I need to pick up a little white again because I blended it out too much. On this one because the toenails are hard and they're shiny. So I'm going to try to blend it again, but not blend it totally out where it's a little bit more visible than it was. And this toe right here, I'm going to reshape that little pull from background towards it. I don't know if I've just screwed that one up. Probably. Yeah. Let me undo that. Reshaped from the end a little bit. Now let's look. Well, he's got a pretty looking a little foot now. I'm going to stop right there on that foot before I screwed up and go to the next one, which we've got some brighter colors of blue in this one. I'm going to start with one of these brighter shades and see where I'm at here. There we go. Get that in there. That's his leg right there at already painted a little bit of a lighter blue color in there. We've got the same thing with one curling around from the bottom. We got a lot more color variation here. I'm going to get some of this lighter blue going in there, or medium blue. Now I want to get there's a darker blue, bluish gray at the top. So I'm going to scribble some of that in. It's a little darker on this one side, all the way down, but kind of in pieces. If that makes any sense. Kinda some little lines right there. And then a little darker blue next to that. And this toe nail right here is actually a dark blue. This toenail coming down this way is actually more of a black, but I'm going to use the dark blue and put some of the dark blue there. There's actually some dark blue in-between there. And then up against this, that toenails got a tip of dark blue. Alright, now I'm going to grab the white, the widest I can find. How about right there? We're going to color this section would that that's pretty bright. And then this one has a pretty bright spot right there with a tiny little bit on the toe. And then this one, there's two toenails wrapped together under here. I just now saw. Why did I ever decided to do the feet? I don't know. I should have known better. I'm just going to have to wing some of this some of this white in there because there's some white. So we've got to toenails criss crossing over and this gray right here. There's one and the other one is sticking out underneath it from over here. So we need to try to include that. Now need to get some black in here. So I'm just gonna go pull some black and try to form this out a little better. So we can see where they actually are. This is pretty dark, this little area right here. Let me zoom out. About to toenails, Chris Chris cross over each other. I'm just needed to draw that in wood, that black, that's just the easiest way for me to see it. Little black in here. Because this is the bottom of another one. Oh, that's the tail, I think in their darker color there. Sometimes you don't really know what's what until you've blown it up and looked at it a while. We have a shadow happening right under here. Go ahead and get that in. And there's a shadow up here. There's a little bit of a shadow right here alongside that foot. Alright, now I need to blend this leg. Let me zoom out a little so I can see it from a distance. And just softly blend this, picking my pencil up in blending the different parts to try to get that variation of color that's happening in that leg. I'm telling you beat or not my thing. I don't like doing them. But you can't have a bird on a branch sit just sitting there. So let's blend TO areas a little bit. You can have them sitting there with no feet. So he's got to have some feet. I'm just kind of scrubbing all this together, but trying to be very careful not to move those colors too much from where I had them and hoping that this will maybe make sense. When I get done. We'll see it's starting to look like little toes. I need to get There's the part of the blue. This is behind the toes right here. This is a lighter shade. And that is right here. Actually needs to be lighter. It's almost a purple right there and we'll add some of that color into that feather. And maybe this feather, maybe this feather and this feather just to disperse whatever color I've added around a little bit better so that it doesn't look like there's just some random lavender, purple color. It's now become an integral part of the painting by me adding it into some other spots. Let's work on that shadow area and pull that down a little bit, move that around. And this shadow area above. I think I need some more color variation in that white area. I need some more gray right in there. So it's not quite so bright. But I still need to bring some more white back in. I think. I mean, in reality, nobody is going to look at your feet on the bird that closely except you. The goal is to get an impression of those feet there as best you can. Alright, let's zoom out and look at it. That half bad could use a little more white on the leg area. I'm going to double-tap. To a white. Pull down that brush size. Make a few little, not very strong highlight marks, just a few little dashes in here. Looking at it from a distance. Those marks are upside down. There's these little marks were that go across the top right here. They go like this. I had them the other way. I'm going to blend those in. Okay, Now I'm gonna go back to the white. There's a little bit of white right here. And right here. Needs to be a little white right there. There should be a little white on this toenail. But not not too strong of a white. I'm going to have to work on that a little bit more. I don't want it to be too strong, so I'm going to blend some of the black over it to try to fix that up. Blend this a little bit of white in. On the upper part of that toe. Pull some of that color over into that white lined up on the leg a little bit more. I got a bit of black right here. It's pretty strong. So that can stay that way. And then this one is just a little bitty part of that toenail showing. Okay. It looks pretty good for a foot. I'm trying to figure out if there's something off. Do you notice right here between the tail, the side of the body and the branch, there's the orange showing, but in mine, it's not showing. And it should be. So I actually need to import some orange into there. At least a little bit. I don t know what I guess I brought too much color in there. Let's go a little richer on that. Tie in with the background a little more. I got a little off track there somehow. And you'll notice these things as you go along. But now that orange is showing, like it is, they're pretty close. It's a little bit too dark and blend it down a little more. Once I paint the branch shuttle, straighten that up a little bit. But hey, the feet are done. I did like that purple that I added into the tail and that foot just a little bit. So It's important, I think if you introduce a new color from a certain area to introduce that color into another area. So I'm going to grab that purple and go a little bit lighter on it because that's underneath the body where that is. And I'm actually going to add a little bit of that purple tone. Maybe in the head. Just a few little dashes of it. Maybe even the wing there, maybe the chest area a little bit. Just a few little dashes here and there. Just introduces some more color variation. And I could blend that if I wanted to, just to tone it down. But now that purple hue is introduced into the bird and some other areas as well as in that tail. So now it looks like it's done that way on purpose, could even bring a little bit of that purple hue into the background. Let me try that. Go with a bigger brush for the background. And just I don't know if I locked it in the background. Maybe it's a little strong. Go more toward the gray side. Maybe if I bring it down here on the orange is to gray. There we go. A little bit up here. Now this is changing the look of my background, which I've saved. So if I mess up my background, I can always just repaint over that or I can just double-tap and undo. I don't like it. Which I think I just doubled tapped it all. I wouldn't mind the purple being in the background. If it looked right. Make sure I'm on the background. Now. Just maybe a big sweep with a, with one stroke or two of it in their fellows. Kinda nice. A little variation. I think it's a little too much. I'm going to double-tap couple of times. It takes some of that back off. Well, I took all of it off. Let me go back to the background again. That's too much. Apparently, when you're doing some of these brushstrokes, you have to wait a second before you double-tap or it will disappear on you. I got a little bit of it into the background. And then I can that in a little bit. It's just very subtle. This is what makes your stuff interesting. When you take the time to think about a color you're adding in one spot and then add that color to another spot. So I'm back to my paint layer with the small blending brush and small paintbrush because it's now it's time to do the branch. I just realized I was holding my hand in front of the mic, so I hope you could hear all that, but let's look. Zoomed out. The two. I think once the branch gets painted in, this will become this one. It will make this picture come together. But we're, we're awful, awful close here. So when I come back in the next segment, we're going to paint the branch. 10. Paint The Branch: All right. We're ready to paint the branch. I don't spend a whole lot of time on branches because you can get really messy with it. I'm just trying to pick a medium color. That brown looks pretty good. Just to get some start getting some color in it. And of course you have to re-size your brush to fit in the branch. And I'm going to try to leave the knot areas alone and do them separately. And just kind of work my way down with this medium color. I didn't intend on this painting looking as realistic as it does. I usually like my subjects quite a bit more abstract than this. But if I don't abstract this, mess it up, maybe I'll have another class or maybe I missed this one up. But probably not without duplicating it. That's always a good tip. If you're going to, if you've got something good, you can always save it as it is. Duplicate your file, and continue on and add what you want to add. Right now we need some of this dark color, this really dark brown in there to get some of these not areas. We want to go top to bottom. Why not? All right. Now to go with a smaller brush, the outside edge. Little smaller. Me undo that. Little too much. Scribble some in there. Scribble, technical term, shape out the, the not with the dark edges. And then work your way in with the lighter stuff. And we've got a little shadow under here. Work that in. While I'm on this color. Let's go down this edge. This side is gonna be the underside, so I'm just going to be darker. Find our way to this little knot. It gets a little bit darker right there. And then under it darker. And I got some little darker area up here with the branch. You can pretty much do whatever you want to do about putting darker areas in it. Let's go to this big naught down here. We've got a little dark area here. Right there. Sort of a rounded dark area. Dark they're dark. They're dark hair and dark under this. Not dark right here. I'm pretty much drawn my lines already when I did the sketch to get the dark areas in there. We got a little bit more darkness on this side, which will build that up. Let's get down to the next night. Dark area here and dark area here. And then kinda comes out right here. I mean, that doesn't look exactly like that, not but it doesn't have two knots are not any specific way down. I know it's going to be dark all the way down there. Then we have the shadow that we've already got in here. You can add a little more to that. And we have the dark under this, not this little dark area here. Let me get a little bigger brush here to go down here because this is a little darker on this side, down through there and there's a little too big, a little darkness in here in a few spots. And then under the foot. And then it shifts and it gets darker on this side because the tail is shading is still dark over here. But up on top where the branch is not shaded on that side, like it is down here. I'm starting to look like a branch. Let's zoom out on a branch. Looks at it from a distance here. Because I think I need there's some grayish color in this branch. I think I want to get some of that in there. Some of that is at the very tip, top on top here. There's not. Like I said, these don't have to be exact. Once we add the highlighting, you'll see that's a little too big and go a little smaller. And this gray hue kinda comes down this side. All the way down that side really guts where the sun is hitting it. So it's a little lighter. On that side. Fill in some of this. There's also some green greenish tone in that branch. We've got the gray going on. This not has a lot of gray. Then under that not-we need some gray. I think we need a little darker darker gray up under that, not right there. Just kinda speckle some of that. This knots pretty gray right here. Speckle some of this in here, dab it in there. It's not as some gray. Worse that green. There's some green right here. Like to get that in there. But I got to see what not that at actually, I'm just going to dot that in a couple of spots. Give some variation. I'm over here. I kinda lost that not I'll have to redo that. I see there where I've got a mark out on the canvas. This is that greenish color that's in there. Let's go to a black, pretty black. We got to refine these knots a little bit. The dark areas haven't even blended it yet. This one I really messed up. And this one I really messed up. We're trying to form a circle with the not. Get a few little textural marks in there too. We need to get to this one under the foot that I really messed up. Just looking at where the dark areas are. That shadow area needs to be darker. Right there. I got one more not here. All right, It's time to get some highlight in those knots. So we're gonna go back. Here's a good highlight color right here on this one. Pick that got a little bit, It's a tip top, a little bit right there. And we've got some wrapped in here. Seemed like we got a little piece right there. Then we have this knot, which I totally missed with the green. It's pretty white. And grab that green and put it in there as well. And you can click your color wheel and go back to the color you're at if it was there, but it's not. So it's sort of a peachy peachy white. Let me get this top one a little brighter. Okay. Now where am I at? Right here. This is the area that's really, really brightly highlighted. There's a couple of little highlights here. A little highlight right here. Right here, right here. There's some little highlights just on down through this branch. I'm just going to scribble a little bit of that in there. And a few spots. This has a pretty good highlight on this side. And then this as a highlight there has got some highlighted in the middle of that green. And it's got some highlighting down through here. And then we have this one under the foot that also has a pretty bright spot. I'm not sure if that's going to end up looking like a knot or not. The good thing about your Nazis, you don't have to have in there if you don't want them there. So if one gives you a fit and doesn't look real great, you can always get rid of it. Blend it out. All right, Let's zoom out. What do we need in the branch? A little golden color. We need a little golden color in there. Just a little bit here and there. I'm just adding color now. Trying to get a good blend of colors, which is going to help form this branch. Alright? This little mistake I made right here is bugging me. So I'm gonna go to the eraser brush and just wipe that out. Okay. I think it's time to do a little blending on the branch to see where we are. I don't need a very big brush or you'll blend it out. And if you need to trim it up, come from the background side and blend toward it. I'm just going to soften all of these up. And I draw little circles, turn little circles with the brush in the middle of the knots. I can tell right now the branch is going to need some more browns in it. I'm going to blend the areas and then go with a bigger blending brush for the rest of the branch. Right now I want to focus on the areas and right around them. So I'm using the same sized brushes. I scoot down the canvas. I'm not even looking at the picture now. I'm just straight looking at the blending of the knowledge areas. Just trying to get them formed out. And so they look a little rounded. That's all I'm trying to do right now is get them to look, have a little bit of shape, and look a little rounded. Especially where those highlights, our highlights are pretty bright. Okay. From a distance, they they pretty well look like nots. Let's bring the size of that brush up and start brushing a little bigger strokes with the blending. You can go back and forth side to side, up and down. This is a odd area right there. Come from the outside edge and blend towards it to trim it up. Highlighting in they're still moving a little faster now because I'm getting closer to the end. I can feel it closer to the end of this part anyway. Branches are good thing to practice on. You want to practice even just a small section of the branch. Wow. Kinda looks like a branch. I might want to bring a dark shade of orange color in my pick the orange and go down to a really dark shade of that. And keeping in mind, my light is coming from this side. So this side will be darker. So with the orange, the darker shade of orange, I want that to be on this side. And I'm just going to gently sweep some of this color in. I think I can go a little bigger with that. It doesn't matter if it goes over the whole thing. Oops. Maybe a little smaller. I might be a little too big. Backup. It doesn't matter if it goes over the yellow area because I'm doing it so gently that the yellow, golden yellow area is shining through. Just trying to darken up that. What I know is the darker edge. Some of that in there too. So this is a totally different color. Very gently. Say that whole bottom section is kind of in shadow. I see I need to do a little blending there of the tail area. There's that medium orange from the background is peeking through there, so I need to fix that. Okay, So I've got that lighter or darker orange color. Now I want to get some of this creamy, creamy color in here. There. Let's try that. Give this branch a little few highlight marks and I'm going to kind of gentle on them. I don't want to overdo it. On the highlight marks the most the highlight Marsha can be seen here at the top. As you get down underneath. You're not going to see as much of them. You see a little bit. That doesn't look half bad for a branch by just a bunch of little marks and could have a little bit more distress in the branch, a little bit more flex. Before I do that, I want to fix this area right here where the the tail see that peachy orange color that needs to be blended. Close up against the branch, those colors. So I'm just going to pull down to get right up against that branch. I don't mind a little bit of that color peeking through. But I don't want a lot of it. So I'm pulling down on the tail colors to hit right up against the branch. And then from down underneath it I'll pull up to hit the underside of the branch. All right, that's better. That was bugging me. But we can add a little texture to the branch. Let's try the thicker canvas brush. And it's pretty much time to add some texture over all anyway. And let me grab some of this dark, dark blue from the beak area. Say it's not a black, it's a dark, dark blue. And let me see if I can make a few. Well that's a little strong. A few marks as too strong might need to reduce the opacity of that a little bit, just in a few little areas of that to give a little extra grittiness to the branch. A few areas. Like the way that works, I'm going to blend, blend out, blend from the background towards it. I took a lost some of my shape. Okay. Just gives a few little heavy texture. Gritty marks. I mean, it's very subtle, but it is a nice, heavy texture there. I'd say we've done pretty good so far. And one thing I'm going to do right now before I miss anything else up. And I recommend you do this if you ever want to put this on a transparent or on a product with a transparent background. Turn off the background, make sure your background color is not on. Turn it off. The only letter that's honest, the paint layer. And I believe you have to save this as a file for it to save correctly with the transparent background. I'm going to try it. I'm going to save it as a PNG. And I want to save it to Files because when you save it to the photo library, it automatically gives it a white background. So I'm just going to put it I don't really know where to put it. I don't really have a category for it. Let me just put it in. Well, let's see. I can give a new folder. Get on their new folder. Birds there. Okay. I hit the New Folder, plus gave us started a new folder called birds. And I've got that highlighted so I could save it there as a PNG. So let me show you when you go save it as a PNG to your photo library. It'll stick just by hitting Save Image. It'll stick a transparent background, I mean a white background behind it. So if I were to import a new layer from the photo, you'll notice, well, it did save it as a PNG. Last time I tried this, it saved it as a J pay for our saved it with a white background. So it's, it's showing it as a PNG here. In the photo library. You can also get it from your files though. If that makes any sense. Alright, so I've saved everything. I will save the original procreate photo as well, the sketch in case I ever wanted to repaint this, which I probably don't. Usually when I do something, once I'm done, let me turn on that background color and see if it probably needs to be on when I go save it as a JPEG. At this point, we have a very realistic painting that looks really, really good. And it could be signed and done with this point, but I'm never done. I always have to mess things up or do a little something extra. I am going to go ahead and add a signature on here. And usually I sign in the bottom right corner, but since the birds positioned in the right, I'm going to probably sign it over here on the left. I usually use my streaky oil and that's on its own layer, the signature. So I can resize that and move it over exactly where I want it. You can even put it up under the bird if I wanted, I can move it to the other side. I'm just going to leave it there for right now on its own layer. And I'm going to turn it off because I'm gonna do something somehow with all all of this to tie things together a little bit more. So when we come back, we're going to take a few extra steps and see what else we can do to make this painting a little bit more exciting. 11. Final Touches: Alright, let's see if we can get this done before my iPad runs out of juice. Back to what I did while ago was saving the PNG to the photo library and then to first to the file sent to the photo library. It did open it as a PNG from the photo library here. But when I pull open my photo library on my computer, That's when at least on my computer, it has a white background solid. When I download it from there, by putting it in files, I can pop my little sun disk drive in the plug-in part here on the iPad on the side. Where, where are you plugging into charge it. Those little sand disk drives are wonderful because you can easily copy files to and from the iPad files, photos, et cetera. That's what I use to get things out of my files when I save some data files. Or that's how I used to put a large amount of photos on here rather than uploading from the computer. That little sun disk drive is amazing and it's perfect. And it's super easy. So if you don't have one of those, it's really good if you're transferring from your iPad to your desktop. If you're not, if you're only working on the iPad, it doesn't matter. But if you're transferring them like I do, then it matters. Alright. Let's see what we can do to finish him out. Now, my signature is on Layer five, and I've got it turned off. I am going to duplicate the paint layer and duplicate the background. And I'm going to pull the background up under the duplicate paint layer. I did this because I'm going to squeeze these two together to merge them into one image. Now, I'm going to turn off the original layers, saving them this way separately. But now I can work on the painting as a whole. Because when you do a real painting in the studio, you don't have your background separate from your painting, from your subject. It's all painted on one. So by working on it on one, now, we can get a little bit more interests to this. I do not need the reference photo anymore. So I'm going to tap on that and make it come up where I can X out of that. And it's gone. Because we've already finished with that. The signature layer is still turned off, but I'm now working on the merged painted bird and background together. And I'm going to go to that textural brush as a blender because I'd love to add some texture. Now we got these brushes generate a nice oil on canvas texture, as you can tell. So you don't need to do anything else beyond this. If you don't want to. If you're trying to paint a really nice oil portrait of bird or an animal or pet or something. And you'd like this look, Then you could stop right there. But I like to add some marks with this brush. And remember I said this brushes a little finicky. You touch very lightly and drag. And as you do, it will pull, it will put some texture in there. See, I like when it does that, and I'll drag from different directions. Sometimes it doesn't look like it's doing anything. If you don't like what it did, just tap out of it. I'll drag different directions and see if I can get some interesting texture. And you can press a little harder and get a little thicker texture out of it if you want. But I like to add some of this texture in here and it's, it's kinda hard to see. Sometimes you don't want to go over the same area too much because it'll, it'll disappear on you. Now you can also paint with this. I mean, this is very subtle what's happening right now because I'm doing it very light. You drag a darker area over lighter area, you'll see it a lot better. You can drag one color into another and so forth. I'm just doing a few spots like this to add a little interest. So you could see it on when I did the light. You can see it pulling that texture into there. And that's pretty cool. I'll come down right over the branch in some spots because it adds texture to the branch. Just a little bit. Very slight little marks. You can reduce the brush. And actually get on the bird. Well, obviously that's too big on the bird. And you can actually add a little texture onto the bird. And I'm just pressing very light there. It put a little bit right above the eye. Let me stay zoomed in so you can see it's putting just some of that heavy paint texture and I don't really want to blend the colors too much. That's why I'm doing it so light and very slowly. And if I don't like something, I undo it, that, that made a nice mark. This is basically mark-making here. You want to add some interesting marks. I accidentally drug off the edge there. Now this is what I like to do. I like to drag off the edges to sort of mess up my subject. Sometimes I like to bring colors into other areas. And the lighter you go, the more interesting little fine detail of texture you get. If you press super hard, you're gonna get something like that. So just very lightly touch and drag, touch and drag. And you'll just have to play with pressure. If you want to play with this brush to see what you like. And I don't want to wipe out anything that I that I liked. So I'm usually doing one stroke at a time. Oh, that made it brought that orange out and made a little interesting Mark. I'm usually doing one stroke at a time. And the harder you press, the bigger the brush will get as you move it. But it just add some interesting little bits of texture. And then I like to go round the edges in a few spots and pull it out to make it look a little messier. Sometimes I'll pull towards it from the background and introduce a little something. And if you don't like it, take it off, double-tap and bring down from another area. They added some nice texture right there. And obviously you can make the brush size smaller to fit in a smaller area. This is just hit or miss. What this brush is gonna do. I like to use it kinda big because it gives you some more unpredictable marks as you drag. I'm leaving those feet alone. Even get on the branch and pull it if you want to. But I'm more focused on the bird area and I tried to hit all areas with a little bit of it. Whatever I do in a painting, like if I introduce a new color, I introduce a new brush. Like this. I try to hit various areas with that same color or brush. Oh, I like what that just did off the bottom of the tail. That was interesting to see when you zoom out, it's very mild. But if somebody's looking up close and personal than it looks, it just adds interest to it. So this is great, a great one for messing up the edges. And you get too much. You can just back up. Pull from the background toward the subject or from the subject toward the background. I didn't like that. That's a little too much. And if you get a little too much like right here where it's a little strong. Go back to the canvas. Juicy blend brush and just gently sweep down over some of that. So it's not quite so much. You can go, you can drag with this one too and drag out. But that textural one I just really liked for adding some little bit of interest. I'm just dragging stuff over the branch. I don't want too much covering the branch, but I do like introduction of a little texture into the branch. Oh, and I just brought the orange over the tail. I actually liked that. So I'm going to leave that alone. Um, I got a little too much texture there on the branch. I'm going to go back to that juicy Canvas one and soften some of that up. Break it up a little bit. This is just personal preference. You can also paint with the textural brush. So let's say I want this turquoise color. And I want to put a mark, a few little marks. I want to bring some of it over here. Can, and you can go right over your subject if you want. You can go bigger. And then sometimes it'll make a mark and other times you'll be like worse the mark. So you go the other direction. Put some little marks in there. And then how about get this darker orange? See if I can get some of that in there. Oh, that's kinda interesting. You can even go to a slightly darker shade. You wanted to add some. Down here at the bottom. It was too much back it up and do it. Do it again, drag from different directions. That's too much over the tail. I don't like that. I'm just going to darken this bottom a little bit with some of this. And if you feel what you did here is too strong, you can turn on the previous layers and adjust the opacity of the layer you just worked on. So you can have a little bit of it, but not all of it. That's just if you feel it's a little too much. Or you can just simply go back to this thick Canvas. Do you see blend and blend some of it down to tone, tone it down a little bit. And it's basically bringing a little more of that canvas texture right over top of the rough texture. And get that blue. Let's just added a little bit of interests. And another thing I like to do at the very end is go with the thicker canvas. Brush. Pick a light color and go lighter. In that general area. Play with your brush marks. Just dot where you might want some of that brighter color, dot some of that end. And it's not even at full opacity. Notice that because sometimes at full opacity It's a little bit too strong. It just gives a little bit more thicker canvas touch to it. I got a little carried away with the blue over the wing right there. So when you go to the Canvas juicy brush again and blend some of that down and out. Just so it's not quite so strong right there. But I like to do the white with that thick canvas brush and just kind of place it in a few spots where I want to add a little thicker interests. And then I'll also do that with the black. Let's go to black. Double-tap near black. You can also add some with the black. If you areas try not to go to too much with it. So you don't overdo it. But it's, it's kinda interesting to dot that thick canvas texture in there. In a few spots. I try not to put the thick Canvas too much on the beak or the eye, just on the areas where the feathers might be. And once again, if it's too much, you can soften it up with that blending brush. I think his eyebrow looks a little bit too strong, so I'm going to blend that a little bit more. Just soften some of that up. Oh, he's looking really nice. Really, really nice. I'm very happy with him. And the way he's turned out, I really like the texture of that is I've just added in, I really liked that. I can't think of anything else I might want to do to change him up at this point because he's just turned out so well. And you know, it's one of those things where you just don't want to mess it up. So at this point I'll turn my signature back on. And I will go ahead and save this as a JPEG, which will send it to my photo library. And I can pick it up on my computer and look at it there. Now on the computer I may do some deeper editing on it. Enhance the sharpness a little bit, enhance the saturation a little bit play with that. But I wanted to go back just real quick light to before we did the merged. Layer and turn that off and turn these two back on. And remember what I said about bringing a different background in. If I did not like this background, I can bring one in by putting a new layer, adding and inserting a different backgrounds. So let's say I wanted to do this one. I just want to see what it looks like. Well, that looks that looks pretty good too. So I have that as well. Just by pulling in a totally different background. So that's what I did. And this is why I did two totally different looks. That's why I like to save these would their layers separately so that you can do this. So say that you put this out to the world. Nobody's interested in it. Say you're trying to sell. This says print. Nobody's interested in it and you're thinking, what can I do with this to make it better? You don't have to repaint the whole thing. If you've saved your file and saved your layers like this, you can always bring in another background and represent the image as a totally different piece of work. And that's, that's pretty nice to gosh, I'm not sure. I like both and that's the thing. I like both. I I like so many different things. That's why I make so many different kinds of backgrounds. I like just different looks. This is a more moody look. This is a more fun, fresh look. There's just so much you can do with these with adding different backgrounds in as long as you save your layers. Now a lot of times I make the mistake of merging everything. And if you do that, you're not going to have the ability to do this without masking out their original background. But by having this separated, you can pull in any background underneath subject and try a totally different look like that. So anyway, I'm going to stop right here before I mess anything up because I'm really, really happy with the way he turned out. And I also really like the way this looks with this particular background and I just pulled this out. And as an example, this wasn't a plan. But I actually liked the way that looks. So I'm gonna go ahead and save that one out too. And every time you save it as a JPEG to your photo library will automatically merge everything for you. So I've got two versions now saved, this one and this one and then I could keep going. I could put another background behind here. You can blend these backgrounds that you put behind here. If you didn't want that one at full opacity, you can blend it. You can change the layer mode and get even more different looks. The possibilities with this are endless aisle. That's, that's pretty nice-looking, makes it a little richer. Who I really liked that one to say, I better stop. You guys are going to end up hating me for rambling on and on and on. Anyway. I hope you guys have fun trying to paint this little bird and take it slow. Um, take your time. Take your time with laying down the marks and the blending and look at look at the pieces very close and individually, but then zoom out. Just like that branch, I bet you never thought when I was really zoomed in on that branch, it was going to end up looking like this. And I think it turned out really, really good or the feet. But when you're zoomed in, it's really hard to get a perspective on it. As NC, this is just marks. That's all this is. Is little marks placed down together near each other, over each other and blended slightly. But when you zoom out, That's a not on a branch. So practice on the bird I've given you the original photo of mine to work with and practice on him and see what you can do with him. Practice on the branch. You can always take a photo of your own birds in your own yard or your own branches or whatever. You can put flowers with your bird. And that's another thing I wanted to mention by having these layers separated like that. Let's say I wanted to add some flowers in with him. I could lay her flower that I painted behind him as long as you paint them with the same brushes are very similar. Look, you can do this. So like if I wanted to paint a couple of flowers and have some flowers behind him, or some greenery or something, or I wanted to put a flower in front of him. You could do that by going on top of that layer. Possibilities are endless with what you can create by painting on the iPad. And I hope you guys have enjoyed it. I've named this little guy Teddy. And I think I'm going to add him to my collections where I sell my work because he's just like totally super cute. And I hope you'd like to class and we'll find some of what I've rambled on about useful in your painting journey. Thanks as always for being with me and for watching. Have a great day.