Summer Art Series: Realistic Feathers in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Welcome to another class in my summer art series. In this class, I'll be showing you the techniques that I use to paint realistic feathers in watercolor. Hi, my name is Monica sterile ski and I'm an artist, online instructor, oracle deck creator and nature lover. So you're probably wondering why did I choose to include this class in my summer Arts series? Well, I chose to include this class because I wanted to encourage and inspire all of you on your next outdoor adventures to keep your eyes peeled for these magical small gifts. Over the last few years or so, I've amassed a pretty good collection of feathers myself, which you can see right over my shoulder. And a lot of them have come from hikes or even parking lots and my own backyard. It's not something that I actively search for. They just kind of happened into my path. And I like to see these as little messages from the universe. So Feathers do carry a lot of symbolism, and especially throughout history and across many cultures and religions. And seeing a feather can symbolize the connection to the higher realm. The element of air could be a message from a past loved one, or even a connection to the bird itself. And feathers have been used to adorn clothing, hats, head dresses. They've been used to make jewelry. And they've also been used in many different types of ceremonies across a variety of cultures. And they always carry meanings of strength and honor, freedom. And the symbology of a feather can also go deeper based on the color or what type of bird that it came from. So if this resonates with you, I encourage you to go out there and do some research of your own because these little magical gifts can become a part of not only your outdoor adventures, but a part of your creative process. And I wanted to learn about feathers myself, especially the ones that I've collected, and also pay homage to them by painting them and including them in my own bird journal, which is exactly what we're gonna be doing in this class. So I have seven different types of feathers. And I'll show you my techniques to create realistic looking feathers in watercolor. And this will make a great addition to your own nature journal. Will go over the supplies. And we'll also go over how to create a composition and how to sketch out the feathers. If you don't have feathers of your own, no worries. I'll provide you with the reference photos that I've taken and also with a line drawing. So you'd be able to transfer that line drawing right onto your watercolor paper. So my hope is after you take this class, you'll have the confidence and the skill to paint any feather you find on your next outdoor adventures. 2. Supplies: So let's talk about the supplies that we'll be using for this class. If you'd be working from the photographs that I provide as a reference, then these will be the colors that I use the most. If you have feathers of your own, chances are you'll be using a lot of neutral colors. So you can use probably much of the same colors that I use as far as, as the neutral ones go. All of these watercolors are Daniel Smith brand, except for this one which is made by Grumbacher and this is called Davies gray. It's a very, you can see on the tube It's very greenish type of a gray. I don't use a lot of this. I think it's a very minimal. So I would say that this one would be optional. But I'll go over the list of colors. And these here are the ones that I use predominantly. These are the neutral colors that I go into quite often. So I have a hematite genuine, a burnt umber, a permanent brown, a Payne's blue-gray shadow, violet, and our neutral tint. And I think if you have some nice neutral colors, you'll be golden. These are the extra colors that I use, especially for like the Blue Jay. Um, I have quinacridone, violet, Indian thrown blue amethyst genuine, a phthalo blue. And I also have this burnt sienna, which should be over here with these neutrals. So those are the watercolors that I use predominantly. Now on one of the feathers, there are, there are some little metallic details that I add in. And I wanted to show you the palette that I have. And these pans of metallic colors have been pans that I've collected from shops online. And I believe this is from Kraemer, these metallic one. Most of the other ones are from a company called hydro color. So you can look them up if you'd like online or just go to your local craft store, you can usually purchase metallic palettes, very inexpensive, and that would be enough to get you buy if you're using the photograph that I provide as a reference. But the colors that I go into the most are these two blues. One is a little bit more violet, and I also use this green. So I think a joint go into a purple. I don't think so. I think I stuck mostly with these three colors. So you did good with just three metallic colors. So for brushes, Let's see. I have a couple of different options here. I have a large brush which is a size ten round. And this one is made by Princeton Neptune line, and this is made by Black Velvet. This is their silver line. This is a number four round. This one I believe is a Princeton. All of the lettering has been rubbed off. And I'm gonna guess that this is probably a number two around. And then I have a script liner brush. And this is just for, or if you can call it a rigor. This is for creating very fine lines and this is a 30 over 0. So most brands of brushes have their own sizing. So basically what you want is a medium-sized brush to fill in larger areas, and then a few smaller brushes, and then some sort of a rigor or a liner. I also have a fine liner pen. This is made by Lappin and it is Brown. And I am not so sure of the size of this. It doesn't say I would say maybe it's comparable to maybe like a micron size one. Maybe. That's what I do the lettering with. I also have a kneaded eraser and I have a pencil that I use quite often. This is a to H and this is for sketching. And we use the H series because the lead is a lot harder and the lines are lighter, we don't want to add a lot of graphite to the paper that we're working on because we don't want to muddy up our watercolor paper because we're sketching directly on it. So it didn't want to show you my little etch or lab pellet. All of the colors that I have here, I have in this palette. And you'll see that I work out of this palette for the entire class and you see how small the wells are. And that works just fine for me. So you can either lay your watercolors out wet, just lay out a very small amounts. If you're not going to let them dry and reuse them later. And that's just so that you don't waste paint. But you can, you can create a palette, especially for this class or maybe something to use for later and just let it dry naturally and you can use them always. It's never a waste with watercolor. So for the details at the end, when we go back in and we add some highlights, I have a couple of different options here and you'll see me use both in the class. I have this Liquitex acrylic gouache, and this is titanium white. And I also have this opaque white ink. And this is made by Copic and this is actually what I prefer to use. The only thing is I was not able to get this in the little jar that it normally comes in. This was my only option. And it comes with a little brush which is like totally wrecked after. I only use this to get it out and put it on my palette. But you're always best to stick your brush in there and get some out. I am not super excited about this setup, but I do love the ink, so this is really good if you have any other type of white opaque ink, feel free to use that to. Here I have what's called a frog, and this holds usually plant material that you can use as you're working so that you can look directly at your reference. And like I said, it's great to hold any sort of plant. The problem is with the feathers. The point of the feather is just too small and it wants to stay upright. So I added this simply tacky, which is really good to use for framing if you want to keep a picture straight on a wall, that kind of thing. It's a non permanent adhesive, almost like a piece of gum in. Okay. Just pull a small piece off and put it right on the frog and then I stick my feather in it, and it holds the feather nicely. And when I'm done with it, I can just pick the techie stuff off and if it's too dry or usually toss it and if not, I can stick it back in the bag. And what else do we have? We have paper here and I've got a kneaded eraser as well for sketching. And the paper that I use for this class is Arches cold pressed. It's a £140 and it's also a 100% pure cotton. If you do want to use a less expensive paper, I would suggest keeping it at a £140. So that's everything that you'll need for this class. And I'll see you in the first lesson. 3. Layout & Sketching: Okay, so now that we have a good idea of what we're going to use as far as supplies. I wanted to show you how I began this painting. And I've taken my actual feathers and laid them out on the page. And this will give me a really great way to compose this whole painting from the feathers that I'll be painting from. Now. If you don't have any feathers, don't worry, I'm going to post a reference photo that you can use so that you can paint along. We have our woodpecker feather and our Bluejay, or to Mourning dove feathers, what I believed to be a pigeon feather, a wren feather, I think. And this one, I'm still a little bit clueless about. It's brown and it has that iridescent top. So I have these laid out and to make it really easy on myself, I'm going to grab my pencil and this is a to H, like we talked about in this applies. So the LED is relatively hard, so I'm not going to be making a really dark line on here and I'm not going to be pressing really hard either. So if you find that you can't see this, I'll be sure to hold my paper up once I'm finished so you can get a good look at it. So a great way to start would be to make a little bit of an annotation. You can even lightly trace around these feathers, which is probably what I'm gonna do because we only need a basic shape to get started painting. I don't have to I don't have to draw these out in so much detail. They're relatively simple shapes anyway. So this is probably the easiest way to do it. I'm just lightly going around, being careful not to draw on top of the feather itself. I can make note of the angles and things like that. So I have the general shape and I'm going to hold this up very carefully to the camera. Now I'm just gonna go back in and lightly fill in the lines. And I'm also, I'm going to add this center line, which is actually called the Racket's from here to here. And that's the part that all of these barbs come out of. This part down here that doesn't have any barbs coming out of it is referred to as the Columbus. So I'm gonna draw this and it's pretty much in the center. And I'm lightly going to draw this in. And I'm going to also draw another line next to it. This does get wider. The closer we get to the bottom. We have some little fuzzy parts down here. Also. Something else you can do. You can add some little directional lines. I'm Peter at the top of the feather are really the only areas that I see that have any major gaps. Except for right down here at the bottom. You can make any annotations to if you have some distinct patterning. And I wouldn't say that this is distinct, but there is a definite change in color from here to here. And right here in the middle, there's a little bit of a stripe that mimics this one. So it's the same sort of shape. So I'm going to lightly sketch that in just as a reminder for myself. And these two shapes are not really symmetrical. They're just, it's very subtle. So I'm gonna put that further aside. And I'm gonna do the same thing for all of the rest of these feathers. Now we have all of our feather shapes laid out on our watercolor paper. If you feel like any of the lines are too dark, you can always take your kneaded eraser and you can lightly roll it over the top to pick up any extra graphite. If the lines are too dark, they will show through the watercolor. So it just depends really on what type of look that you're going for. If you don't mind the pencil marks showing through your paint, then by all means leave the sketch. I kinda like the way that it looks. It doesn't really bother me a whole lot. So I'll just go through here and pick up any of these areas that I had previously erased. Those they don't necessarily want on the paper. I can always do that after I've finished painting as well. So once you're happy with your shapes, we can move on to starting to paint. 4. Pigeon Feather: We now have all of our feathers sketched out on our paper. I have my watercolor paint here ready to go. And I think the first feather that I'd like to start out with is this pigeon feather. And we'll be painting this 1 first because I think it's the most simple. It really only has a shift in color. And so this will be a great way to get started. I'm going to pick up a little bit of a larger brush. And I'm just going to wet my paper because we will be dropping in color. So we'll be working in a wet in wet. And I think I've got a little bit of paint on my brush here. Which isn't a big deal because there'll be painting this in browns and grays. So I think this helps you to be able to see this water later than i'm, I'm actually laying down too. So I'm going to paint this water right up to the line. Because we want to leave that center area of the rack is I want to leave that alone until the very end. And all of these little fuzzy feathers, I'll wait after we paint the main part of the feather to put those in as well. Now, depending on your studio or where you're working and how quickly you think that your paper might dry. You can either work both sides at the same time or you can just wet one area. And my papers seems to dry pretty quick. And so I'm going to stick to painting this half of the feather first. And then I'll work on the other half. We already know that this area is darker on the tip and it's actually a little bit lighter than we have that little band which is the darkest area, and then it lightens up to a gray. So I'm gonna go with kind of that middle color. And I'm going to pick up a little bit of burnt umber. And I also have some indigo laid out in my palette from another painting that I did. I'm going to pick up a little bit of that. We can always make adjustments to. So I'm just going to start dropping this in. And I'm using the tip of my brush so that I can get into these little areas. So they'll have the appearance of being a little bit uneven here at the top. And as I start to move down the feather, I'm going to start picking up a little bit more of this neutral tint. I'm not sure if I said indigo a minute ago, but it's a it's actually a neutral tint. And I'm going to drop a little bit more in here at the top. And now I'm going to pick up some of this. I have a Payne's blue-gray. As I work down, I'm cleaning out my brush and I'm just going to move the paint that's already on the paper down so that we get this kind of graded effect. So it goes from dark to light and we already have water on the feather. I'm just moving this paint down into this area with a fairly clean brush. And that gives us this nice gradation of color. So I'm just dropping in a little bit more than neutral tint and burnt umber mixed up here at the top. And I'm going to clean my brush out and I'm going to wet the other half. And if you have a problem seeing where you've been, just tilt your paper and you don't want any standing puddles. Just try to get a nice even coat of water down. If you don't make it all the way to the edge with the water, that's really not a problem because you can always push that paint out close to the edge while you're painting. And my dog agrees, I have a puppy, so I'm filming these classes has been an adventure that's for sure, especially with her. So we'll do the same thing for the other side of the feather. And I've already added water to this side. And now I'm just dropping in some of that burnt umber and kinda pushing the paint around and adding those little details at the top. And I'll be picking up a little bit of that neutral tint and I'll be dropping that in. Also. It's really easy to pull out some of those little details at the top and your paint is wet, just use the tip of your brush. And here I've switched brushes, have gone to a little bit of a smaller brush. And number four. And I just want to try to capture some of those little, little parts of the feather while the paint is wet. And I'm darkening up these areas because I know that my watercolor will dry darker or I'm sorry, will drive lighter. Which is why I'm trying to make it as dark as I can because this is the darkest part of the feather. I'm picking up some of that neutral tint and adding that and just pulling it down. And I'm trying to be very careful about not going into that center line. I want to leave that white so that I have a little bit of a guide for myself. And I just grabbed a little bit more water on my brush. And now I'm pulling the paint that's already there down. I have fans going because it's been really super hot this summer. And my papers seems to dry pretty quick. So I'm adding a little bit more water so that I get this nice gradation of color to the bottom of the feather. Something to note when you're painting with watercolor, if I were to pick up a lot of water in my brush and go back into those areas that I've already painted. What would happen is it would create a bit of a bloom. And the water would basically push the paint out of that area. Sometimes it creates a really nice texture, especially when you're painting animals with fur. I like it because it adds texture. I don't see it as a mistake. And I think that you end up with more of a mistake when you try to go in and correct these things. So my paper is still damp and I'm just darkening up the area with that band of darker brown. And the funny thing is about this, this band, It's, there are a couple of places where there are noticeable harder edges. But most of the edges, especially the bottom part of this band is really really a soft edge. Which is my thinking behind adding in this darker color while the paper is still wet so that it blends out a little bit and blends into that neutral tint color. And now I'm picking up a little bit more of the neutral tint. I'm just going along this center line and darkening up this area. And my paper is pretty dry as you can see. So I'll rinse out my brush and grab a little bit of water and kind of tampered off on my paper towel and just run my clean, damp brush along the edge to soften up any hard edges I might have. So I'm adding some water at the bottom. These are those little fuzzy bits at the bottom of the feather. And I want this area to stay somewhat soft. So you'll see I'm adding the water so that I can just drop in some color. And these two areas, the bottom of the feather and these little fuzzy parts are not quite connected at this point and they will be later on. So I'm just dropping in some gray. This is that indigo or I'm sorry, it keeps saying indigo and it's not, it's neutral tint. And while this area is wet, I'm pulling out these little bits. When your paint is wet like this, it's really easy to get some nice fine lines. So clean my brush off and grabbed some water and I'm just pulling out some paint in the center because I want that area to stay fuzzy. And this area too, I'm trying to soften up these edges here. We'll be going over this again. So if it's not as dark as I would like, That's fine. So if waited until the paint has completely dried, and I am going back in now with really those same colors. And I'll be adding water to both sides because I want to try to keep the gradations in there. I don't want any hard edges. And I'm going to add water to both sides and work both sides really at the same time. And you'll see her, I'm working with a brush to that. I didn't really talk about in the supplies section. And this is a Da Vinci brush. And the only reason that I picked it up is because it holds a lot of water. You can do the same thing with your Number ten round watercolor brush. It works just fine too. So I am mixing up some colors here. And to get that darker brown color, I've mixed the burnt umber with a little bit of the Payne's blue-gray and some of the neutral tint. And I'm just following back along some of those same lines. And this is a little bit more of a concentrated version of that color. At this point, I'm just really trying to push and push the colors and the values a little bit darker. And I know that I already have to darken up the bottom portion of this feather too, which is why I wet the entire feather. And I'm going back in with some of the neutral tint. And the funny thing about feathers is when you look at it in a certain light, some of the light and dark areas have a tendency to shift. So it just depends really how the feathers catching the light. So I'm adding in a couple of these little indications of the barbs that are attached. And I don't want them to be super hard lines, which is why you see me fuzzing them back out again. But I do want there to be an indication of an indication of these barbs so that we know what direction they're going in. And I'm doing the same thing on the other side. And I'm trying to keep that edge wet so that it doesn't dry with a hard line. Going back in with just a little bit more of that neutral tint. And it's fairly watered down. And adding in some of those lines while the paper is still damp. And I'm fuzzing them out just a little bit. And I'm adding some of these darker details in the burnt umber and neutral tint up at the top of the feather also. And you can see at this point I'm still holding the feather and I don't have that frog out yet. I'll do that in some of the later lessons. Let's kinda, the nice thing about watercolor painting is that you can continue to push your painting. So if your first layers are too light, then you just let it dry and you can always go back over with more color. And you can deepen your values, which is what we'll be doing. We'll be working to constantly create a little bit of form within this feather so that it looks realistic. I'm taking my damp brush and just softening that edge at the top. So right now I'm taking my brush and I'm just lifting out a little bit of the color at the bottom and taking a little piece of my paper towel and just dabbing off that area. Everything is dry and I am going back into the bottom portion of this feather and I'm picking up a little bit of a neutral tint. It's a little more concentrated, it's not quite as watery. And I'm adding in a little bit of definition to these little fuzzy feathers at the bottom. And what I'll do is I'm rinsing out my brush to after I get these in and I want to wipe out a little portion in the middle just to keep them looking fuzzy. I don't want a lot of definition. Which is why I am continually fuzzing out the middle of these. So I'm trying to decide if this is dry enough for me to add in a little bit of a darker value. Across the top of this band. Like I said, watercolor always dries lighter. So the paper is still just a little bit damp. And I am going to darken up this band one more time. And this is another opportunity to pull out some of those little details at the top as well. I'm just making sure that those edges are soft at the bottom. I'm adding water again to both sides of this feather. I'm going to take some neutral tint. And I'm going to drop it into these areas that are closest to the center. This is actually the pains blue-gray, trying to create a little bit of form in the feather without it being too overt. I just want this to be a subtle transition, which is why I keep re-wetting the feather. And I don't have any standing water. I mean, it's a very light layer, very even layer of water. It's a good opportunity to add in some of those directional lines again, because I know that the water will diffuse them. So I'm taking a little bit of that concentrated, burnt umber and Payne's blue-gray mixture and going along the edge of the feather to add a little bit more contrast and depth. Now I will go back on that left side and run my brush down the edge. It's a clean brush with a little bit of water and to soften the edge a little bit. And my paper is still damp, so I have an opportunity here to darken this area up ever so slightly. Now when I add in these feathers at the bottom, and I want them to look as though they are part of the feather. I'll make sure that I take some of the, these little flicks of feathers that I'm adding in and kind of overlap them over the bottom part of the feather so that they look like they're connected. I'm just plotting up some of the paint in the middle to keep that fuzzy look. And I'm adding a little bit of a darker color at the bottom. And along the column is, which is the bottom portion here of the feather. We want that to have the appearance of being round. So I have to add a little bit of shading so that it stands out and there's contrast. At this point, everything is dry. And I've picked up a more concentrated version of that, that dark mixture with the burnt umber and Payne's blue-gray. And I'm just adding that down. I'm just using that center line again as a guide. And I can go back and clean up this line later after everything is dry. And I'll show you how we do that when we pull out our white ink. But for now I'm just concerned with making sure that this is as dark as I need it to be. And how this part will transition to the bottom. You can see there is no hard line. So I'm cleaning up my brush, wiping it, and just pulling the color down all the way to the end. So while that's drying, I'm going to pick up some more of that same color and go in on some of these edges and pull out some of these extra little details and some more of these directional lines. And when you're putting these directional lines and I only do them in a few spots. The brain is really good at figuring things out so you don't need to add all of the lines in. And I tried to vary where I put them, so I don't want to put them directly across from each other. They can get very boring. If you do it like that. And I'm taking a little bit of that dark paint and just edging this out again. I'm not dragging a line all the way down. It's a little bit broken on one edge. If you outline something, it has a tendency to flatten it, which is why I always break up the line. And I'm adding a little bit more of this darker color into the bottom too, just to give it a little bit more definition. And I think this middle part is dry enough now that I can go back in with this second layer of this dark color, watercolor is really forgiving. A lot of people think that it's not. But if you're pulling a line like this and you feel like you've bubbled just a little bit and it's not super straight. You can always clean out your brush, add a little bit of water, make a damp brush, and kind of scrub out the areas that you feel are mistakes and blot it up with a little piece of paper towel. I'm adding just a little bit of a dark color to the bottom. I do want this bottom portion to read white, but there needs to be some sort of contrast. That's how you indicate form. So I need to add a little bit of a darker color in there first. When we go back at the end with our highlights, will add the white into the bottom. And I'm just trying to straighten out some of these areas here. I think the shapes gotten away from me a little bit. And this is what I mean when I talk about fixing your mistakes, you can easily wipe it out, blooded up with a paper towel, go back in and make a correction. And I'm just softening up that edge again. So I have completely let this dry. And now I'm going back in with some of the acrylic gouache. And this is the titanium white. Now you do have to add a little bit of water to it to get it to move off of the brush. And I am adding in some of these little fuzzy feathers at the end. The idea is to keep it looking fuzzy so I don't want it to be super defined. And I'm adding some of the little, the little white dots that I see and some of the highlight areas at the bottom. And at this point, what I'm trying to do is to clean up this dark line in the center by adding some of this white. And you'll see it's a bit of a broken line. It's not enough pulling a line all the way down. There are some gaps in there. But it does help to give the appearance that it's a lot straighter than what I've painted. And it also helps to add a little more contrast and a little bit more form. And I'll do the same thing on the other side. I just had to flip my paper over. I'm adding a little bit more. And if you feel as though it's not opaque enough, wait till it dries and just pop in a little bit more white. And I'm cleaning up a little blob of paint that I seem to have splattered. And I'm going to fuzz out these little guys just a little bit more. And that's pretty much it for the pigeon. I think we're done and we'll move on to the woodpecker. 5. Downy Woodpecker Feather: So here we are with our downy woodpecker feather, and I have it on the frog this time in the little tacky stuff. And I'll set that in front of me so I can reference it as I'm painting. So we already have everything sketched out. And what I'm gonna do when I start painting this is, I'll just be painting around the little white spots. So most of this painting, we'll be done with a mixture of burnt umber and neutral tint. And I use the neutral tint to really deepen and darken the burnt umber color. And for the initial wash of color, I'll be laying down a wet paint on dry paper. I'm not going to go in and pre wet the paper at all. And the reason that I'm not doing that is I don't need to worry about any sort of gradations because the feather is all one color. Now the left side of the feather is a lot darker than the right side. So I'll be working on constantly pushing the values in this feather as I'm painting. And I'll do this by going over in several different layers. So I'm just being very careful right now. And keeping a wet edge so that nothing dries with a hard edge. And I'm going around those white spots. And as soon as you notice that you're running out of paint, you don't have any more paint to kind of push down, pick up some more paint on your brush. And that will help you avoid any hard edges. And this isn't a huge feather. So filling in these little areas goes pretty quick. I am adding some paint on the far edge of the feather just to enclose the shape a little bit. And I'm paying attention to all of the irregularities on the edge. Now at the bottom of the feather, there is, it's not a white spot. It's just a white area at the bottom. And I'll be leaving that until the very end. And as I'm painting and going around these white spots, you see that I'm pulling the paint up into the white spot and I'm giving it a jagged edge. And that's because those white spots are part of the feather. They don't sit on top. So in order to make them look as though they're patterning, you need to make them look as if they are cohesive with the feather by adding in a little bit of a jagged edge to it. I flip my paper around and I have just picked up some more of that paint. It's a little bit more concentrated so that it's darker. And I'm doing the same thing. Now you'll see that I'm avoiding the center line only up until a certain point. And just like I did in the first feather, I'm leaving that as a guide for myself so that I don't lose my pencil line. And you also noticed that this side of the feather is a lot smaller than the other side. And the reason for that is that it's a wing feather. And that's one way to identify what kind of feather you are looking at as well. If you notice that the rack is, is not directly in the middle of the feather, on one side of the feathers, a lot smaller than the other side, then that's typically a wing feathers. I'm just being really careful and going around those white areas again. And I am painting the far edge. I don't want to leave I don't want to leave those white areas open. I do want them to look as though they are part of the feather and not, not, not a lost edge into the paper. So a will be enclosing those shapes by going around the outside edge. When you're painting with watercolor. It is a matter of adding layers because the watercolor in fact does dry lighter. So you just have to be patient and give it some time. And when you come back to it, take a look at it again and decide which areas need to be darkened up. And I'm just seeing how dry this is and my paper does dry relatively quick in my studio. I know that I want to make this area darker again. So I am adding some water. And I really want to concentrate the color towards the middle. And the reason that I wet that area first is that I don't want any hard I don't want the paint to dry with a hard edge. So all drop the color in at the middle and just let it bleed out. And you can see, I'm pulling out some of those those lines that you find in the barbs to. And that helps to give the feather a little bit of, a little bit of detail. And it also acts as a reminder for me the direction of the barbs. And it won't be super detailed at this point because that area is wet. So everything will just kind of blend out. And again, I'm just making sure that I am pulling some of that color up into those white areas. The patterning and feathers is actually a pretty interesting if you really take a good close look at them. And I'm picking up some more paint. And I'm going in again with this darker color. And I'll just start dropping in paint in that middle line again. And I'm always looking at my feather and checking where the dark areas and light areas are. And that left side of the feather is significantly darker than the right side. And I'm just being very careful to go around those white areas. And I'm trying to add in some of the directional lines as well. In any areas that you feel aren't working, you can always wet your brush, clean it first at a little bit of water and knock it back a little bit on your paper towel. And then lightly pick up any areas of paint that just aren't working or blended area out. So I'm adding in the midline here. And I'm trying to keep this line at the top, very thin. You'll notice that when you're looking at a feather that it starts off very thin at the top. And as it goes down towards the bottom, it starts to widen out. And you can get a really nice thin line if you hold your brush perpendicular to the paper. So I have cleaned my brush off and it's damp, and I am basically pulling some of the paint down from that midline down to the bottom of the feather. And the bottom of the feather is light colored. So I know I don't need a lot of paint. And I can just use what's already there and just pull it down. And even if an area is light-colored or white, There's still needs to be a little bit. Shadow so that you can define the area and create a little bit of form. And you do that by adding contrast. Even if it's a very light color, like a light gray or light brown. I'm just very carefully pulling that color down in it. And it quickly gets too wide so I can clean my brush off and start scrubbing a little bit of this out. And then just pick off a little piece of your paper towel and you can always blot out any areas. So at this point it was just kind of softening some of these edges. And I am taking a very, very light wash of the paint that I have, which is that burnt umber mixture with the neutral tint. And I'm lightly going over these white areas because they are in fact not actually white. Now I'm adding a little bit of the shading at the bottom of the feathers so that this part of the feather reads white. And that area at the bottom is not actually a spot. It's more of a band of color or a band of white. So I'm adding in some of those directional lines, two of the barbs. And I'm trying to keep it just very subtle and very light. I want it to be there, but I don't want it to be super, super obvious either. So just picked up a little bit more of that burnt umber mixture in a more concentrated form. And I'm just laying in a little bit of shading along the edge. Then you'll see I'll take my brush and I'll clean it out and add some water. And then I'm going to blot out. And at the very, very end of this entire class will go back in and look over all of our feathers when they are completely finished, we'll decide if anything needs any darkening or any highlights or any added extra white. So this is another pass. And I know that as, as I'm darkening up this right area, the right side of the feather, that if I darken that side, then the left side is not going to be or appear to be as dark as I want it to be. So I already know that by darkening this side, I'm going to have to go back and darken the other side. And that's just really hope painting is it's this constant push and pull until you get it to a place where you're happy. I'm always careful when I'm adding in this paint to either side that I'm following the direction of those barbs to. And you don't have to paint in every single one of them. Just a couple here and there. And I'm mixing up a little bit more paint and adding a little bit of the shadow color. So that neutral tint to the bottom of the feather. And darkening up this line as well. Trying to keep this line as straight as possible. And I already know, like I said before that now I need to go into the other side and add in some more dark to the left side of the feather. And if you feel like some of these lines get away from you a little bit, just rinse the paint off your brush, and then go back in with a little bit of water to soften them, which is what I'm doing here. And I'm really trying to push the dark on this left side. So this feather is dry. And what I'm doing now is I felt like the feather wasn't reading as warm as I would have liked. So I am rewetting and I'm gonna make up a mixture of permanent brown. And it's going to be a real watery pool and I'm just going to glaze over the feather. And the reason I'm using the permanent brown is it's a lot warmer than the burnt umber. And I'm gonna go right over those, those white spots as well. And if it gets a little bit too dark on those white spots while it's wet, I can just bought up a little bit. So I waited until that was completely dry and I'm going in with a concentrated neutral tint and burnt umber. And I am darkening up some more of these areas. And I'm also breaking up the edges of these white areas. Like I said, I don't want them to read as though they were like little white stickers put on top of the feather. You want them to be a part of the feather. And the way to do that is to break up those edges and use the same directional line as you are using in the past to create these barbs. They are part of the feather. They don't sit on top of the feather. I'm trying to very carefully do that on the other side without losing the lighter areas because they're so small. And I'm adding in a couple of those lines in this area down at the bottom. And I still want it to read as a light-colored area. So I'm very careful how much of the paint I'm actually laying in there. And I think that about wraps that up. 6. Mourning Dove Tail Feather: Okay, so now we're moving on to this morning dove tail feather. And I'm just going to put this in the frog. And I am figuring out at this point how I want to approach this. So I think I'm going to lay in the local color, that base color. And we'll worry about that dark band at the top after we're done laying in color. And it's a gradation from light to dark, but it's a lot easier to paint it dark to light. So I'm flipping my paper over and I'm going to mix up some color. And I'm picking up a little bit of burnt umber. And I kinda see a little bit of a pink hue to this feathers. So I will be adding in a little bit of the quinacridone violet into this mix. And a little bit of my Payne's blue-gray. And I will be wedding out the feather so that we can create a nice gradation. And I'm testing out my color so he can get it just where I'd like it. And we'll start painting for this feather. After I, after I lay in this this wash of water. And I still have a little bit of paint on my brush so you can actually see how I'm laying this water and I am going to include these little feathers at the bottom. At this point. I'm not going to do those after the fact, so I'm going to wet that area as well. And I'm also going right over the entire feather. I'm not leaving any sort of white area in the middle. I feel like it'll be able to see my pencil line. And this also falls directly in the middle of the feather because it's a tail feather. So I am getting a nice layer of water down so that we can start dropping in some color. And I'm just being mindful of the edges. And I'm going to start at the very, very bottom. And I'll start dropping in this color. When you have a nice wet area like this is always a great time to pull out some of those little finer details too. Which is what I'm doing right here. So sometimes with watercolor, and it depends on the color really and the paper you use. Sometimes the paint does not spread the way that you would like it to. So the easiest way to deal with that if it's not spreading, is to clean your brush off. And with just a little bit of water, you can coax the paint into the wet areas, which is what I'll be doing. After I wipe my brush off for cleaning, wipe it off a little bit and start pulling this paint down. And I know that this area at the top of the feather, It's not completely white. Do have some shadow areas. And you can create those by by adding a few gray areas. So I'm mixing up some permanent brown along with some burnt umber and also some of that Payne's blue-gray. I know that the bottom of the feather has to be darker at this point. So I'll continue to clean up some of these edges and drop some of this color in. Also, while this is still wet, most of the darker areas are in the center and I'm picking up some Payne's blue-gray right out of the pan. And I'm dropping in where I see the darkest areas and letting it bleed out. Now I'm adding a little bit of shadow violet. And I'm going back into the. Top, which is actually the bottom of the feather. And I'm dropping in some more of that right in the middle. And I'm trying not to be too heavy handed at the top of this feather because I know how light the color is. And I'm just pulling out some of those directional lines. And I know that it'll diffuse because it's still wet, which is fine. And I just picked up a little bit more of the Payne's blue-gray. And I'm adding that into the very bottom. And I'm going to flip my paper around now because I feel like I'm finished with this gradation of color. And I'm just cleaning up some of these edges just a little bit more. Now, I've cleaned my brush off and I have a little bit of water, but I'm pulling out some of the paint here to create some of those directional lines. And the paper is still damp, so it's easy to do. And I'm pulling out some of the color on these bottom pieces to create that fuzzy effect. I never want that area at the bottom to be to find. A damp brush works pretty much like an eraser. I'm just wiping my brush off every time I'm picking up paint. It's a great way to create a little bit more interest and some highlights. So I'm going to let that dry. And when we come back, we're going to work on this little brown band that we have going across. And this is completely dry. And you'll see I'm just gonna go in and start adding some water here at the top. And I changed my mind. And I feel like I need to sketch this in a little bit so I can see what I'm doing before I go in with the paint. Now the top part of this band is a little more defined than the bottom part. The bottom part of this band looks like it just blends right into the feather. So that's what I am thinking about as I'm sketching this out. And I'm picking up some of the burnt umber, and this is a fairly dark brown colors. So I'm going to add in a little bit of that permanent brown, some burnt umber. And I'll start painting this in and this is just wet on dry paper. I haven't wet anything. Even though I had started to initially and I'm just kinda following the direction of the barbs. So when you're painting any sort of patterning, again, like we did with the woodpecker feather, we didn't want those white areas to look like they were stickers stuck on top of the feather. And it's the same thing with this band. So I'm blending out the edge with the damp brush. I'm picking up some more shadow violet and some burnt umber. And now that this area is wet, I don't have to worry about anything drawing with a hard edge. It'll blend in nicely and I can just lay in some of these directional lines. And I'm noticing that the bottom part of this band is a little bit too uniform and one side is actually lower than the others. So I'm fixing that. And blending out this edge again. So I'm dragging some of those directional lines down through the band and into the gray part because I want them to look like they're one feather and not 22 pieces of the same feather. I don't want it to look disjointed. So I have grabbed some of that same color that I used for the band and watered it down and I'm just very lightly glazing over the bottom part of the feather which is dry just to warm it up. And because I glazed over, this area is still wet and I'm just dropping in a little bit of a little bit of a darker mix into the middle and pulling out some of those lines while it's wet. And I'm dragging some of the brown and some of the gray into each other. So they look a little more cohesive. So I'm wetting this area because I want to add in a little bit more of a shadow color. I know that I'll be going over some of this area in the tip of the feather with white. But in order for the white to show up, you have to actually add in a shadow color. So as I'm painting this, the paint is spreading just a little bit further than I would like. So I end up pulling some of this back out. And I'm mixing up a little bit more of the burnt umber and some of the shadow violet. I'm going to start darkening up the edges and some of these directional lines. And I'm being very careful to blend out that bottom edge. So now I'm picking up a little bit of the Indian thrown blue. And I'll mix that with some of the burnt umber. It makes a really beautiful dark color. And I'll be adding this into the center of the feather and this is completely dry. And I'm holding my brush perpendicular to the page so that I can get a really nice fine line. And it's best to move your entire arm and not just your wrist. You'll get a smoother line. You can always practice that on a scrap piece of paper before you pull a line on your feather. And I'm laying the feather out and it keeps sticking to my finger. I'm laying the feather out so that I can see what the bottom looks like. And it's not completely white. It's actually a little bit darker at the tip. And I'm pulling out a little bit of that paint. And I'm kind of looking at the details and figuring out where I want to go from here and just how dark this central line is. And you'll notice, like I said before, when you're looking at your feather and holding it, you'll notice there's a shift in colors and values just depending on the light. So I'm grabbing some more burnt umber and a little bit of that violet color. Actually, I think I went into the rows and I didn't mean to and I'm adding a little bit of that down at the tip. So I'm testing out some extra colors here and I know that I'm gonna go in to the top and I'm re-wetting this. Because I just want these to be extremely subtle. And I'm going to pick up some of that water that seems to have bled out a little bit. I don't want my paint to bleed out over the edge. So if you do happen to get water on the outside of your feather, just be sure to blot it up before you add any paint. I'm just defining some of these little feathers down here at the bottom. And I'm going to clean up some of these edges with some of the darker paint. And if I feel like there's something that gets away from me or I don't like the line then I can always wipe it right back out with my brush. You do want to give any area that you wipe out just to give it a minute to dry before you go back in. And I'm just pulling some of these lines from the edge to give it a little bit more definition. And I'm being careful not to cover up those light areas that I pulled out earlier. And I'm gonna go in with a little bit of this dark. And I'm gonna go right over the edge. This is a great way to make this patterning a part of the feather. And I'm going to add in a couple of extra little dark areas. And then I'm going to fudge those out a little bit. And I'm going to darken up the bottom portion of the feather and a little bit more shading to it. And I have let this completely dry. And I am going to go over this with some of the Payne's gray that I'm mixing up. And I'm going to glaze over this with a little bit of that quinacridone, violet. It's like a very pinky kind of a gray. And I'm going over the entire feather. And anytime you glaze over something with one color, it also helps to unify everything. And I'm blending that out because I'm feeling like that's getting a little bit too dark up there. And I've got some Indian thrown blue that I'm mixing up the little bit of this burnt umber and some of this Payne's blue-gray. And I'm making a really dark color to go back in and redefine some of this center part of the feather. And like I said before, don't feel like you have to get that center line. Absolutely perfect. We can always clean that up, which is what we're gonna do. Now, I have this acrylic gouache and titanium white and my feathers dry. So I'm going to put some of that out in the palette. And I'm going to add a little bit of water to it so that it will actually move off of my brush. And I'm going to start adding in some white at the bottom of the feather. Now, if you're using acrylic gouache, just know that if there's an area that you want to soften up or blend out an edge. You have to do it relatively quick. Because acrylic gouache, once it's dry, it's not going to move. Now if you're using regular gouache, it's water-soluble and you'll be able to go back in and soften up at an edge even after it dries. So just be careful if you're using the acrylic gouache. That's what I had on hand. And that's why I'm using what I'm using. So if I had regular gouache, I could use that to and I'm just adding some of these little areas down here to help break up any of these bigger, darker shapes. And I can do that by laying in some really fine white lines. So now I'm gonna go up into the top and add in some of these white areas so that I can break up the dark the dark gray areas. And I'm going to pull some of those lines down too. And I'm softening up any edges that I feel like has gotten a little bit too hard. And I'm just going to add a few little white details into the feather. Mostly in those areas where I've pulled the paint back out. And we're gonna call our morning dove feather finished for now, let's move on to the next one. 7. Wren Feather: So here we are with this little what I believe to be a wren feather. I could be totally off for the longest time. I thought this was a hummingbird feather, but it turns out it's too big. So I did a little bit of research and the closest I could come was a wren feather. So that's what I'm going to stick with this for this video. I know it's a little bitty bird because this is a wing feather and this feather will be really quick to paint. It's so small that I want to be sure not to overwork it. That can happen actually quite easily, especially if it's something that's small. So I am figuring out my color right now. And what I want to mix together to create this, it's a very light brown, almost a tan with a lot of pink in it. At least that's what I'm seeing. So I am mixing together some burnt umber and some of the quinacridone violet to get to a place that I'm happy with and I'm feeling pretty good about what I've just mixed up. So this is what we're going to use to paint the entire feather. And I may drop in a little bit of burnt umber to darken some areas up. But I'm going right in with wet paint on dry paper and nothing has been pretty wet. So I am just very carefully paying attention to my edges. And the left part of the feather is darker in appearance than the right side. The right side is very late, and there are a lot of the barbs that are, that looked very fuzzy. And it creates a very uneven, an airy edge, which is something that I want to try to capture. And again, I just really don't want to overwork this because it's such a small, simple feather. I want to keep this as fresh and clean as I can. And a lot of the Racket's in the middle is white. So I am a slightly avoiding that area just to save myself some extra paint as far as adding in white later. So it did wet this edge because it's a little bit more blended. There are some darker areas on the right side of the feather. And I just wanted to have a really soft kind of a feel. This feather kind of reminds me of a little fairy feather. I don t know why. Usually see little wrens and fairies together when you look at fairy yard. So I am pulling out some of these soft edges while the paint is wet. And I'm being very careful not to go too dark, but I want to get that paint in there while it's while it's wet so that it doesn't create a hard edge. So I'm adding a little bit of the darker paint right into the middle. And I'll go into this other side, the left side. And I am trying to wet the furthest edge to the left. I wanted to add a little line of water so that I can drop in a darker color and then it will automatically bleed out creating a soft edge. It's such a small space though. We'll try it out and see how this works. So there I'm dropping in the color. And on this side, even though it's a very small space, it is lighter. Right? Right up close to the center of the, right up close to the rack is there is a little bit of light. So I'm trying to avoid that area. And just very carefully dropping the paint right on that furthest left edge. I'm just defining the bottom just a little bit more and taking some water on damp brush, I've wiped a little bit of it off. And I'm softening that edge. Adding a little bit of water to the top here and I've got a little bit too much water down. So just brought that up with a paper towel and kinda spread this over the feather. And I always re-wet an area that I want to be soft that I don't want any hard edges on. So I'm dropping in a little bit more of that mixture, a little bit more of a concentrated version of that mixture. And adding it to those areas where I just laid in some water. And I'm pulling a little bit of this paint out because I feel like this area is getting a little too dark. And the way to fix that is to either pull some paint out or go into the other side and make that darker. Which is, I believe what I end up doing anyway. I'm adding just some more detailed to the edge. It's a really sweet little feather and I wanted to keep it as simple as I can. And I'm darkening up the center line and adding in some more of those directional lines. And you'll see is we're, we're working through these feathers that the process is pretty much the same. Once you've painted a couple of these, you'll be able to paint pretty much any further. I'm going back into that other side and I am darkening up the edge and very carefully trying to leave a little bit of a light area. And you get a better idea of what you're looking at with your watercolor. And once everything has dried, and this is such a small feather that everything that I'm painting, it's drying pretty quickly. So I can just go right back in on top with some more concentrated paint to add in some of this detailing. And I'm blending that out just a little bit. I don't want any harsh areas. And I'm pulling out some more of these little barbs at the edge. It's really wispy on the right side. So I'm trying to capture that. And I'm adding just a little bit of shading to the bottom portion because even though it's white at the bottom, again, you need some something to contrast. You need a dark. So I'm adding in a very, very light gray, which is my Payne's blue-gray. This darker mixture that I have is just is just the burnt umber added into the initial mixture that I made with the burnt umber and the quinacridone violet. I have grabbed my smaller brush and I'm popping in just a little bit of little bit of the white to clean up these lines and to add a highlight to the elements at the bottom. And I'm going along that edge on the left, that's supposed to be light very, very carefully. I want it to be subtle. So we're going to call this little sweet wren feather finished and move on to the next. 8. Mourning Dove Contour Feather: Now we'll move on to this morning dove contour feather. And these are the feathers that lie close to their body. And we're going to approach this feather much in the same way that we did the tail feather of the morning dove. So we'll be laying in our wash so that we can create a nice graded blended effect from one color transition to the next. And after we have that laid in, then we'll add the patterning, which are those two spots on either side. So I am laying in a layer of clean water. And I'm painting right over the middle part of the feather. And it's a lot easier to go back in and add that rack is in the middle of the feather when it's in the middle and you don't have to worry about positioning so much. I think that the paints light enough also for me to go back in and locate my pencil mark. So like I said before, you can choose whichever method works best for you. You can leave the middle portion of the feather completely white to use as a guide. Or you can paint right over it and add back in the darker areas later. So I have just mixed up a little bit of this permanent brown and a touch of the burnt umber. And I'm dropping that color in at the top of the feather. And I'll be picking up a little bit of the Payne's blue-gray and shadow violet to drop into the bottom portion of the feather. And I'm pulling out those details again. At the top. This is a little bit of the burnt umber and Payne's blue-gray. I've just added in a small amount of the Payne's blue-gray. And I'm sticking mostly with the burnt umber on this section. Now, you'll notice that on these contour feathers, that at least half of these feathers are made up of this Downy of feather, which is all soft and fuzzy. So we've had a lot of practice with this part of the feather already. So I am laying in these little fine bits and pulling out some little detail areas won't be going over that repeatedly. I am leaving the bottom portion of the racket or the Columbus. I'm leaving that white. And you'll notice that I didn't leave it white in a straight line. It's broken up because you don't see all of the chemists. It's kind of hidden underneath some of those downy feathers. Now I've let this completely dry. And I'm going to pick up some more paint. And I'm gonna do a couple of little test swatches here to get to the color that I like and I'm actually looking for something to warm up. So I believe I picked up just a little bit of the quinacridone gold. And it was just a very, very small amount. And I'm going to glaze right over the top of this. And I'm even going to bring some of that down into the bottom portion of the feather. Now he didn't add this quinacridone gold to this supply list because it's just such a very small amount. And all they did was glaze over this. And quite honestly, I could have glazed over this with some of the permanent brown or maybe even some of the burnt sienna. Just something to warm up the top. And I wanted to pull some of that color down towards the bottom also. And here I'm adding wet paint onto dry paper. I'm just adding a couple of little details and cleaning up the edges and bringing that brown color down. There is a very concentrated the section of these downy feathers that create a darker value, which is what I'm concentrating on. So I'll pick up a little bit more of that darker color that we mixed up with the burnt umber and a little bit of the Payne's blue gray. And I'm just very lightly going in and adding some darker areas along the edge and towards the middle. I'm adding in that center line. And I'm very careful to make sure that I don't pull a solid line and I'm kinda skipping the sum of those areas where the downy feathers are covering up that part of the calendars. Adding a little bit more of the burnt umber. And this is a very watered down kind of a mixture. And I'm very careful not to bring it all the way down into that fuzzy section of feathers. I want to stay in the middle of the feather at this point. I'm just making sure that the paint is wet on the edges so that I have a soft transition. And we'll be covering up a lot of this with those darker spots. But I just want to make sure that the colors are there and the transitions are there before I lay in those dark spots. And I'm adding in a few of those directional lines while the paint is wet. And I'm going to go back in and darken up this area. And it's almost like a scumbling type of a process. And I'm just randomly pulling out little bits and pieces. And now I've gone back in with some clean water to soften up the edges. And while that's drying, I can go back in and refine these edges a little bit, little bit more with the burnt umber. And I've let that completely dry once again. And I'm going to lay in with my two H pencil. I'm going to lay in those spots. Now you'll notice on the right side the larger spot is actually more blended in at the bottom than it is at the top. And the shape on the left side is more defined. It's more of a circular shape. So I want to try to capture those shapes because they're not symmetrical. So I'm mixing up a really dark color. So I'll be going back to my burnt umber and my my Payne's gray blue or pains blue-gray. And a little bit of shadow violet. And I'm wetting this area because the bottom portion of the shape on this side, like I said, it is, it's blended in. So I want to make sure that that Kind of bleeds out and creates a soft edge. The edge at the top is more distinct. So I can go in at the top without having to worry about wedding that edge. So I'm making sure to add in some of those directional lines also. And kind of following the shape of the feather as I'm laying in these darker spots. And I'll do the same thing over on this side. This one is a little bit more defined and it's more of an actual spot. But I want to make sure to follow, kinda follow the line of the feather, those directional lines. Because again, we don't want these spots or this patterning on the feather to look like they're sitting on top of the feather. So in order to do that, we have to kind of blend out the the edge at the bottom. And we also have to add in those directional lines around the edges to make them sit more into the feather as opposed to on top. So a lot of attention is paid to the edges. And I'll break up the edges by pulling the color down. Like I'm doing at the top of this one and I'm refining the shape. I was a little bit off. The thing is too is that if you're off on something, it's really not a big deal because you don't have a reference photo that sits next to your paintings. So when somebody looks at it, they have no idea if this is, if your circular shape is correct or not. So you can go easy on yourself. And if you've made a couple of bubbles here and there, It's not a big deal. So I have wet my brush and I'm just pulling some of this paint out. So this is the idea behind integrating these shapes into the feather so that they don't look like they're sitting on top. I'm just pulling some of that color into the feather in the direction that the barbs attach to the rackets. And I've lost a little bit of this line up there. So I am going back in the little bit of a more concentrated brown and popping in some of these darker shapes. And I'm skipping some of those areas where the fuzzy feathers are overlapping. So it looks like we have a little bit of dimension going on, a little bit of form. And I am mixing up a little bit more paint here so that I can go back into the spot and darken up some of these areas. And I am very carefully breaking up that edge. Now I wipe my brush off and I'm pulling out some of the paint. And every time I do that, when I pull the paint out, I wipe it off on the paper towel. So do the same thing over here and darken up a little bit of this, making sure that I'm following the direction. And i'm, I'm using the very tip of my paintbrush. And then I'm going to blend out this bottom edge a little bit. I'm picking up a little bit more of the permanent brown and very lightly going in and dropping in some of that color. Just to kind of unify the entire feather. I'm just kinda cleaning up the, um, the shape here. And adding in some of those darks where I see them. And lifting out a little bit of this paint so that this bottom edge stays blended. So I'm darkening up the middle line and adding a few more details in this brown color. And I actually end up going back in with a little bit more of a darker brown. I'm cleaning up the edge, adding some of those details and darkening up some of the edges towards the bottom as well. And I'm just, I'm really trying to keep those edges soft. Now that this is completely dry, I'm going again back in with the darker paint and adding in some of the edge details and pulling out some of those uneven feathers that I see or barbs. And I'm darkening up this area again, needs just a little bit more contrast. And I make sure that when I'm doing this, that I'm going in all different directions. So I have my ink and I am very lightly going in and adding in a little bit of light to the side of the Rockies. And I'm pulling that line into the rest of the barbs going in the same direction. So I'm grabbing my brush, that stamp, and I'm just blending out the edge. I'm trying to keep it as clean as I can. And now I'm adding a couple of little highlights to the bottom. And then I'll add in some of these fuzzy feathers. And the key really with adding these in is to blend out the bottom part so that it remains fuzzy looking. And I'm also trying to break up some of the darker areas that I added in by adding in this white. And I'm adding in any sort of little highlights that I see in the feather or lighter areas. Like I said before, if you feel like it's not opaque enough, wait until that layer dries and go back in. And painting any subject is really much the same process. You start with all of your larger shapes and as you refine your piece, it's a lot of back-and-forth, pushing and pulling until you're happy with where you're at. And this is where I decide that this area needs to be a little bit darker. Then I'm making sure to even go right over the spots and it helps to unify everything. I'm just making sure that this is all blended. I'm bringing the color down across everything and this will be the final the final thing that I do. And we'll call this morning dove contour feather finished. And we'll let that dry and move on to the next one. 9. Blue Jay Feather: So here we are with our blue Jay feather. And this will be really fun to paint because we will get to break out some blue paint. And we're going to start off on the left side of the feather, which is the dark brown side. And I know that at first glance it may appear as though it's black, but it's not. It's a very dark brown and we're gonna go with our burnt umber and Payne's gray mix. I'm going to start off with a very I'm just kind of a light wash. And this is what paint right on the dry paper. And we're going to paint this color all the way down the length of the feather element and pay special attention to all of the breaks in the barbs and also the edge of the feather. Whenever you find that you're running out of paint to push along, make sure you load your brush backup. So I'm following my sketch pretty closely. I'm leaving in some of these white areas that I see to act a little bit as a highlight. And they're also a little bit. Some of these white areas are breaks where the barbs are not connected. And if I remember to add those in, then I don't have to go back in and add them in with white ink. And I'm careful to follow the form. And I'm using the tip of my paintbrush so that I can be a little bit more precise. Then we'll add in these these little guys at the bottom that seemed to be all separated. And I'm going to go back in and clean up a little bit off right there. And I can easily do that while it's still wet. So I am mixing up a darker version of this burnt umber and a little bit of Indian thrown blue. And I'm going right back in to the top. And I'm going to darken up this area and the paint is still a little bit damp. It's not super wet. I have a pretty good idea of how fast my paper is drying. So I knew that I could go right back in on the top. And I'm just doing the same process. And I'm leaving some areas of that lighter color to act a little bit as a highlight. And I'm very careful to just keep following the direction of those barbs and to get in as many details as I can along the edge. And I'm being careful to paint around those white areas that I left. And I'm always looking at the feather. And I'm picking up more paint and I'm just kind of following along the same the same area. And it's kinda nice because that lighter washes serving as a bit of a map. And I can add in a few extra lines to create a little bit more interest in some detail. And I'm blending out that edge. I feel like it got a little bit too hard. And then I'm gonna go into the bottom here and I'm pulling out a little bit of this paint. So I am going to hit this with a blow dryer. And when I come back, we're gonna go ahead and add in a little bit of Payne's blue-gray and some shadow violet, It's very watered down. And I want to add that to the top part of the feather which is white. And I don't know if you noticed when I first held the feather up, that part of the top of this feather is missing. And I'm just ignoring that. I'm just going to paint it as though it were a full feather. So I'm adding Clearwater to the left side again. While the top dries. And I want to drop in some darker areas. And I don't want them to I don't want the edge to dry hard, which is why I added the water in the first place. And I want to drop in this the dark burnt umber with the with the Payne's blue-gray, mostly down the middle. And I'll let that bleed out. And just so you know, all of these feather videos have been sped up about 1.5 times. So I do not paint this fast. I'm a little bit slower, a lot slower. Actually. I like to keep these videos moving along, but don't in any way feel pressured to move this quickly because I don't. You have to kind of gauge your painting process with the timing of your paper and how quickly it dries. And if you have too wet one area and work on that and then move to another and that's totally fine. I'm just trying to create a little bit more form by adding in that darker area to the middle. And then redefining some of those, those details. So I am going to let that side dry and we're gonna move on to painting the right side. And I'm picking up some phthalo blue and I have made myself a nice little puddle. And we're just going to paint this entire side in one solid color. And we're gonna do it very much in the same way that we did the left side. Paying attention to all of the edges and any white areas that we'd like to leave. This fellow blue is, is going to act as the highlight blue color. The feather, the blue part of the feather is actually much darker. But I want this they low blue to show through in some of the areas. So that's why I'm starting off with this lighter layer first. And as I'm painting, I am following the direction of those barbs to which helps me lay in the edges. And you'll notice at the bottom I'm going to pick up a little bit of Payne's blue-gray in some shadow violet mixed together. And I'm just going to drop that in and start painting at the bottom. The feather transitions to gray at the bottom. And I wanted to make sure that I added that in. And it'll be dropping a little bit of this color in towards the top also. And making sure that I pull out some of these individual fuzzies at the bottom. I don't think that's the technical term. I'm adding a little bit of that extra gray. And I'm also a mixing up some Indian thrown blue. And I'll start dropping that in pretty much down the center. This is the primarily the color of the blue. It's a very dark blue. And I'm just paying attention to where that fits in. And I'm softening up the edge. And then I'm bringing some of that Indian thrown blue to the edge. So we're basically going to paint around the phthalo blue, leaving it more in the middle to act as the highlight. And I just wet some of the area down at the bottom so that this Indian thrown blue will not drive the hard edge. And I'm dragging that color up. In the direction of the barbs. Well, making sure to leave some of that payload blue. I don't want to cover it up completely. Now we will be going over this with some of the darker brown to add in the striping. But I wanted to make sure that I got this in first. And now I'm dropping in a little bit more of the shadow violet. And I know that area is wet because I just wet it so that it makes a nice blend at the bottom. And while I have that darker gray mixed up, I'm gonna go ahead and go into the top and add a little bit more contrast by adding some more of these darker shapes to the top. And it's okay if you don't get these exactly how you want. So I have just hit that with the blow dryer. Everything is dry. And now I am mixing up a very much the same color that's on the left side of the feather. So burnt umber and some Indian thrown blue. We're going to start adding in the stripes. And I'm gonna do this very carefully and I'm paying special attention to the direction of the barbs. If you look at the feather, it's very obvious how they meet at the rackets and the direction that they're going and how they overlap with the outer edge of the feather, which is what I'm trying to capture here. Now this won't be as dark as I want it. I'm just creating a little bit of a map right now so that I have the shapes down. And I'm constantly moving my brush up and down, up and down. I don't want to lay in a solid mass of color. I really want these patternings, stripes to look as though they are part of the feather and not sitting on top. And it's much the same process as the woodpecker feather and also the contour feather that we did for the morning dove. And some of those black barbs actually are part of the outer edge as well. So I'm adding those in where I see them. And I'm trying to get as close to the shape that I'm seeing also and this spacing. You can very much go in with a pencil first if you want to do that, if you feel better about doing that. I didn't do that on this feather. I felt like I could add those, those black areas and without adding in any sketch lines, but do whatever is comfortable for you. And again, I'm holding my brush perpendicular to the page. It helps create those really nice, fine lines. Now while I have this darker mix out, I'm gonna go ahead and fill in the center line and add a little bit of that to the bottom. This color actually stops abruptly on the feather itself. And any mistakes that I've made as far as that middle line will clean up when we go back in with our white. So I am picking up more of that dark color. And I'm just going over what I've already done and I'm making sure that those edges of those stripes are are broken. We don't want a straight line growing going across. So you can see how I'm moving my brush constantly moving it up and down. Pulling out some more of those barbs on the outside edge of the feather and making the edges as irregular as I can. So I'm taking that same dark color and cleaning up some of these edges on the other side. And adding in a little bit more detail. And the central line has dried so I can darken that up as well. So I'm adding a little bit of that dark or very light wash up at the top and adding a couple of little extra details. So at this point, I have decided to go back in with a little bit of the Indian thrown blue. And I want to create a little bit more of a darker shadow towards the center and add a little bit more dark to the edge that meets the striping. And this is very subtle. But I felt like the color or just wasn't dark enough towards the middle of the feather. I'm pulling some of that out because they don't want to lose my my highlight. And I am working on the bottom now with a bit of that darker gray. I'm just trying to clean up the edge and I will go back in with some white adding a few more subtle lines. Anywhere where I feel like it needs to be a little bit darker, especially along the edge. And I've made a little bit of mistakes. So I am describing that out with a damp brush. And now I am going back in with some white with my small brush. And I'm using the white ink. And I'm going into the top of the feather and breaking up a lot of those gray shapes. And I'm also concentrating on where the dark brown edge meets the white. And I'm pulling that white down to break up that edge. And I'll do that on the other side as well so that it doesn't look like a straight line. And that's one of the reasons that you can you could have painted the entire top section gray and going back in with the white to break up all of the gray, it would have just taken a lot more white than what I'm using right now. So I'm going into the bottom and adding that white to the bottom portion of the callousness. And then I am adding this in a broken line down the middle. And a couple of little glimpse of light on the side. And I'm just softening up the edge. And I'm just adding that to those lighter areas of blue. And I went back in and picked up some of that darker brown with this smaller brush so that I could clean up some of these lines. And I think once I blend it out this edge, that this feather is going to be complete. So I'm feeling pretty good about the Blue Jay feather. And we'll move on to our final feather. 10. Duck Feather: We are at our final feather, and this is a beautiful feather. Upon first inspection there it looks brown, but the top has a beautiful green and blue iridescence to it. Now, I'm calling this a duck feather. I did my research and it could be a couple of other feathers or birds, but I'm not too sure. I'm, I'm leaning towards the duck feather. We have a lot of ducks around here. So we're gonna go with that. And if you have any idea of maybe a different feather that this could possibly be, feel free to let me know. So I am starting out by wetting the entire feather. And the reason that I'm doing this is there are a lot of lighter spots and the color kind of gradually fades and gets lighter. So I'm just creating a little bit of a gradient wash. So we're going to move from dark to light. I'm not going all the way up to the edge. I have this bigger brush. So I'll pull the paint out to the edges when I'm actually dropping in the color with my smaller brush. And now that I have the clean water laid in, I'm gonna be making up a mix of color that is actually very close to the color that we painted the wren feather. The other mystery feather. It's kinda funny that they're very close in color. So we're looking at a burnt umber and quinacridone violet. And I dropped in some Indian thrown blue as well. And I've always got a piece of paper where I'm swatching out colors so that I can look and see and I'm feeling like that's a little bit too warm. So I'm adding a little bit more of that quinacridone, violet and there, it'll just keep doing this playing back and forth until I get to the color that I'm happy with. And at this point I'm hoping that my paper is not completely dry. I can still see there's a sheen on it, so we're okay so far. And I think we're going to start dropping in color, and I'll drop this in and then I end up switching to a smaller brush. And the reason I'm switching to that smaller brushes, I really want to pull out some details along the edges. And even though there is an iridescent at the top of this feather, I still want to lay in the local color that lives underneath that iridescence. So we're going to paint the entire feather first and then we'll go back with our metallic paint. So I'm just pushing the color along and picking up more paint where I feel like I needed, especially along the edges. And I'm following my sketch pretty close. There's some breaks and the barbs, so I want to capture that. This is actually a pretty big feather. And I'm always amazed because I do, I do get out the ruler and measure these so that when I do look them up and try to identify them, I can get more of an accurate result. So I am just working on getting my shapes down. I'm working with the paint that's really on the paper at this point. So I've just pulled some of that paint down so that it's lighter at the bottom. And there are some areas that are extremely light. So I am pulling those back out, wiping off my brush, going back in and pulling out some areas, wiping off my brush. Here, I'm softening out an edge and I'm picking up some more paint. Wiping that off is a great way to save some highlights too. So even if you forget or shove left an area light. You can always go back in with a damp brush, just make sure you don't have a whole lot of water on it. And I'm trying to figure out a good approach to pull out some color that I see right down this side of the feather. And I'm trying to pull out this color in the same direction that those barbs grow. A little bit tricky reaching around and I should have flipped my paper over. And now I'm just pulling out some of the extra color towards the bottom. So this has completely dried. I hit it with a blow dryer and I am picking up a little bit of this yellow ocher. And I created a very watery puddle and I'm glazing over this because I felt as though it wasn't as warm as I would like to be. So I'm glazing over it and then I'll let that dry and then I'll continue. I am going to pull out some of these lighter areas. I don't want those to become darker. So I'm just going to pull out some of those lighter areas that we pulled out before just to make sure we don't lose those. So now I have my metallic paints. And you can see at the top of this feather, I'm hoping that's in there. There's some blue and some green, and there is a little bit of purple in there. So I am going to wet down and make a little puddle. So I have it ready to go. These paints take a little bit of work to get them activated. So I want to make sure that they're ready before I start laying anything in because we're going to do this kind of a wet in wet. Because I want this paint to blend in nicely with the brown part of the feather. I'm just getting these ready to go. It's always fun working with metallic paint and my paper's a little bit damp. I'm going to add a little bit of extra water. Like I said, I don't want I want this to be subtle and I want to be able to drop this color in and have it blend seamlessly with the brown of the feather. And you'll notice these metallic paints. They have a little bit of a different field than regular watercolor, and they don't spread quite as easily. So you may have to make a few adjustments and blend out some edges, but that's okay. I'm dropping in a blue here. I don't want this to be all just 11 color. And I am going in and adding some of the brown mixture as well. And I'm softening some of these edges at the same time. You may have to tilt your paper a little bit just to see the metallic. And I'm getting a little bit of a bloom there. So I just want to pull that extra moisture out with my dry brush. I'm picking up a little bit more of that metallic green and dropping that in. It's really a lot of fun to work with metallic paint. I did an entire series of butterflies and I use the metallic paint as an accent on the wings, and it was just a lot of fun. And you can purchase these paints pretty readily now at any craft store. And they're pretty inexpensive and you can buy a small palette just to get yourself started. So this is the dark purple metallic. And I am noticing that there is a line, very subtle line of this dark purple that runs along the left edge of this feather. I want to make sure that I get that in there too. And it's gonna be super subtle. But it's there. We're trying to create realistic watercolor feathers. So I don't want this to look garish in any way. I want the metallic paint to enhance our feather and to make it more interesting. And to show that this is an iridescent feather, I don't want that to be the focal point of all of the feathers that are on the page. I am grabbing some more of that burnt umber and quinacridone violet mix that we have. And I'm just going back in and cleaning up some of these edges here. And I will be pulling in some of that brown on top of the iridescent and adding in some of the directional lines. And I'm also going over the edge and pulling down some of those lines. And I'm also cleaning out my brush, wiping it off, and then feathering out that edge. I'm mixing up a little bit more paint. This feather is pretty interesting. It's it's got a lot of dark and light areas and barbs that are kind of folded back in on themselves. So I'm trying to pay attention to that. And trying to pay attention to the iridescence and how I can make that look as cohesive as I can with the rest of the feather without losing all of the iridescence. So this is actually a little bit of a lighter wash. I'm laying in same color and my feather was turned in a different direction. So I'm seeing all of these different areas that are a little bit darker, but it's mostly dark down the middle and lighter than in the middle. And then out towards the edges, it darkens up again. So I'll go through and softened up these edges and pull out some of those directional lines as well. That's the nice thing about watercolor. You can build up your layers slowly and it helps to create a lot of depth in your work. So I wet this edge so that I can go back in and lay in and even darker mix of the paint. And I think this is just straight burnt umber. But I wet the edge so I wouldn't have to worry about going back in and blending anything out and I'll let the water do that for me. And now I can pull out some of these lines too. So I'm going to grab some of that darker mix that I was just using and add in the central line. This one gets really thick towards the bottom. And I know that this was a larger bird because the column us is super thick. And you'll see that when I start pulling the paint down and creating that shadow area. And I'm just cleaning up that line a little bit. So I'll be working on the edges over here. And my intention is to add in some shadows and some directional lines so that this part of the feather reads as being upturned. And later when we add in the shadows. That will help the three-dimensionality of these as well. So being very careful to follow the direction and the actual form. And when you're working in a really small areas, sometimes it's tough to keep some of those areas a little bit lighter. So I laid that paint in and it got dark on me real quick, so I had to pull it back out. And I'll let that area dry a little bit. I'm just going to add in this little shadow at the bottom and here at the tip of this one and around the bottom. And I am just cleaning up the edge and darkening this up. And I wanna get to a point that I'm happy with as far as the values go, and how dark and how light something is. But the way that I'm approaching this is I'm building up to it slowly. I don't want to go in so dark that I can't pull it out. Or I'd rather build up slowly in multiple layers. So I'm dropping some more of this same feather color. And I did add some water so that we don't have to worry too much about our edges trying hard. And I'm pulling out some of those directional lines as well. There are certain areas of the feather that are lighter. And so I'm going back in and pulling that back out. In a way I felt like this feather was like playing mine tricks on me because every time I looked at it, it looked different. And I'm guessing it was just from the light. So I'm strengthening this this dark area right in the middle and I'm really trying to stay away from that middle part that I just lightened up. And it's just multiple layers of pretty much the same color. We're just getting to a value that reads correctly. And I'm very lightly glazing over the top of this just to blend in some of those darker lines that we have. And I'm gonna go back in with some of this burnt umber and some of these pains blue-gray and very carefully darken up this line. And I'm trying to pay attention to how it widens out at the bottom. And where are the colors starts and stops. So this is a very light gray, a watered down version of what I was just using. I just paying attention to where this color sits. And I know that I'll be going back in with a little bit of white later. So I'm not too worried about leaving a lot of these white areas. I know that I can go back in and add those in. So at this point I'm just really trying to create a clean edge. And I'm went out of bounds a little bit right there. So I scrubbed that out and then plotted it with a paper towel. And I am pulling some of this color back out. And just kinda softening everything up, making the transition a little bit more blended. And I'm pulling out some of that color in the middle as well. I want this to look like it's all one piece. So one more pass with this darker color. And to clean up some of these edges, I'm adding in a few little details and some darker shadows. And when I'm painting the edge, I'm not pulling a straight line all the way down the edge. It's very broken and a little bit random. If you outline something in its entirety, you will have a tendency to flatten the image and I don't wanna do that. So this is really my darkest dark in this further. And this will help as far as the forum goes. And it creates a little bit more interest. So we're just kinda detailing everything out and darkening up those edges and some of those lines. And as we had talked about earlier, I'd like to keep these directional lines sort of random. Makes sure that you're varying them and that you're not mimicking the exact same line. On the other side. It can get really uninteresting really quick if everything is super symmetrical. And now I'm getting kinda fiddly, which is really easy to do when you get to this stage of a painting. This is the part of the painting where you have to know when to stop. So I am darkening up the edge so that the Columbus reads as light. And I'm just adding a couple of little darker areas and some details in towards the bottom here. And I did add a little bit of that quinacridone violet at the bottom of the column as we are pretty much at the end. I'm going to call this feather finished. And we'll move on to adding some shadows. 11. Drop Shadow & Lettering: So here we are in the final stages of our feathers. And I decided to go back in and add some shading to each of these feathers or rather shadows so that they look like they're actually laying on the paper. And this is very subtle. I don't want anything too overt. And I'm going in with my two H pencil and I'm looking at my reference photo that I took of the entire layout and just noticing where are the shadows fall. And I'm lightly sketching that in. So I'll do that on all of the feathers. And then we'll mix up some paint and add a light wash where our sketch lines are. So I'm now mixing up some paint and I'm using some of the Payne's blue-gray along with some of that shadow violet. And I think I put in a little bit of the Indian thrown blue and I'll switch this out to see where it's at. And that's where I add in a little bit of the Indian thrown blue. And this is gonna be a really watery puddle and it's going to be super light. So any sort of a cool color will work. Actually, you could probably just use a shadow violet by itself and that would work fine. So I am just lightly placing in these shadows. And something I do want to mention is that usually the darkest area of the shadow, we'll be close to the subject. And as it moves away, it gets lighter. But we're not gonna go in superintendents, so you won't even notice that transition anyway. So something else I wanted to mention, if you would like to make your little drop shadows darker, my suggestion would be to go ahead and add in your first wash. It will act as a map and then you can always go back and add another layer to make it a little bit darker. So now that I've finished up the drop shadows, I'm gonna go in with my ink. And put some of that out on my palette. And I'm going to grab my script liner or my rigor. And I'm going to make sure that I've got a little bit of water in that ink so that it will flow nicely off of my brush. And this is where I'm going in and bumping up some of those extra white areas, whether it be in these little feathers or down the center. And this just really helps to kind of bring all of this to life. So here you'll see me pick up a little bit of that burnt umber mixture that I use so often in these feathers. And I'm just going in and cleaning up that white line that I made. And I'm adding a little bit of extra dark to the edges of this feather. So now that I'm finished with all of the detailing, I am grabbing my pencil and I'm adding in the names of each of the feathers. I'm just following the line of the feather. And I'll go back in with that fine tip pen that I showed you in the supplies video. And I'll add that in. So as I finish up the lettering here, I wanted to mention that the final step will be to let everything dry. And once it's dry, go back and erase all of your pencil lines. So we are calling this finished and let's move on to the wrap-up section and the project. 12. Wrap up: So now that we've finished our feathers, I wanted to talk a little bit about the layout and composition. I could certainly frame this or scan it and make prints from it hanging on the wall. I feel like the composition works well enough that we could do that. But I wanted to show you what I plan on doing with this. I have my journal here. This is my, what I have dedicated as my bird journal. And I had started painting these feathers in my journal as a part of this class. The paper just did not want to hold up at all. It's a very thin paper and I believe it's only £90, which is why I did not get the same results on this paper that I did on the Arches watercolor. So instead of using this and framing it, I think what I'm gonna do is cut these out. And I'm going to actually affix these to my journal in here. And on this side, what I'm gonna do is for each of the feathers that I cut out, I'll be writing down this symbology behind each one. So I just wanted to show you that and I'm gonna go ahead and start cutting these out. If you want to cut yours out, feel free to do that. These would actually make pretty cool bookmarks. So this would be a great gift to give to somebody to. So I'm always looking for ways that I can use my art in fun and creative ways. So I'm going to cut these out and I'll show you what it looks like when I'm all finished. Yeah. So I have everything glued in. I finished this side of the spread and I'm really happy with the way that it turned out. I was able to include these watercolor feathers in this journal, even though the paper is not all that great. Now, I did add a little bit of a wet wash over here with the same colors that I used in the feathers. And I did that just so that it looks a little more unified. And paper like this is okay to do something like this. But as far as painting these realistic feathers, it was much better that I used higher-quality paper. So don't be afraid if you have a journal that's kind of if he as far as the paper goes, don't hesitate to cut out anything, glue it in. That's half the fun of owning a journal is that you can try things out and experiment. So after I did that, I just wrote in my text a little bit of a quote, and that's pretty much it. So that is a wrap for this class. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that you are able to take away some new techniques and some new skills as far as painting feathers in watercolor. I look forward to seeing what you create, and I also look forward to seeing you in the next class. Take care.