Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hello everyone,
and welcome to my channel. Today we're going to
paint a watercolor bird. This is actually a part one of a two-part series
where I'm going to show you how to paint
different birds. But we're going to start with
this beautiful blue jay. If you like the class, don't forget to
subscribe because in the next class I'm going to show you how to paint a red cardinal
and a yellow chickadee. Hi. My name is Anna. I'm a professional illustrator, designer of Canadian money and I love teaching watercolor. In this class, we're going to paint a blue jay step-by-step. I'm going to share all my tips and techniques with you so you can come up with a
beautiful, realistic bird. This approach can be applied
to any watercolor painting. It will definitely
help you feel more comfortable with
watercolor medium and plan your layers and
washes in the way that will achieve the
most realistic result. I will share my
list of supplies, and these are just
suggested supplies. I also have a list of alternatives that you
may want to consider. We will talk about how to
build our color palette. If you've seen my previous
botanical classes, you know that I have a very specific
structure for a palette, we'll use something
very similar to organize our colors for
this beautiful bird. If you ever wondered
about how to build your palette around a
particular subject, this will be very helpful as we talk about
our base colors, our light and shadow colors
and our boost colors that really help accentuate your work and
really make it pop. In terms of the process, there are four key
steps and I will explain the rationale
for each step. We're going to start with an
outline and masking fluid. We'll talk a little bit
about the reasons for using it and how it can
enhance your work. In Step 2, we're going to talk about
our background layer. We'll talk about the
direction of light and how it affects your subject, and how it can really
inform your color choices. Step 3 is all about
the definition and that's where we're going to start adding more details. I'll talk to you a little bit
about different strokes and different approaches
on how to create a realistic effect of
feathers on a bird. Step 4 is our accent layer, and this is where we
finish our painting and put on those
finishing touches, those accents that will
really enhance your work. The bonus lesson, I
will show you how I painted these red leaves
and some berries with snow, but you can pick any surrounding
for your beautiful bird. This will be your class project. Now this class is more
suitable for those who are already familiar with
the watercolor mediums. But if you are a beginner, don't be afraid to try. You will definitely pick up some useful tips and techniques. You will be able to see my every stroke in real time
and I'm going to narrate. You will also have a written
explanation on the side of the screen so that you can understand every stroke
and every color placement. If you're ready, let's take it to the table and get started.
2. Supplies & Tools: [MUSIC] Hello again and
welcome to the class. Before we start painting. I wanted to talk a
little bit about the supplies you need and please keep in mind that this
is just a general guide. I encourage you to use
the supplies you have. If you see something that catches your eye that
you really like, you will find the full list
in the supplies handout, which I saved in the
class resources section on SkillShare website. But I also created a
list of alternatives for you and you can modify any of these and substitute for your favorite colors or
your favorite brushes. The only thing that I
always mentioned is, paper will absolutely be
key for this painting. We're going to put down three
layers of color and you want to make sure that your
paper can withstand that. Going with professional
watercolor paper is my most important
recommendation. I use Arches, cold pressed, 140 pounds. You can go up to 300 but 140 will be enough for
three layers of color. For the actual painting, I used quite a large block, but you can use Arches in smaller blocks or
use loose sheets, which you would have to stretch. The reason why I
prefer blocks is because they prevent
the paper from buckling and they're already stretched so it's convenient. But again, you don't have to use Arches brand as long as you use professional
watercolor paper, that's 100 percent cotton, you will get good results. Another thing we will need is a pencil to create
an outline and I recommend going with a
hard pencil so you can find that specification usually on the side of the pencil. If it says 2H or 4H,
which indicates hardness. That's good enough. We will need a soft eraser to erase
our masking fluid. I like these pointed erasers
because they let me get into the details without
lifting the paint around. The masking fluid we will need in the very first
step of the painting. This is to make sure that we protect little spots on the bird that we
want to keep white. It's possible to paint around
them, but quite difficult. I usually recommend
starting with a masking fluid just to
preserve those highlights. I'm using Winsor and
Newton masking fluid. There are many wonderful brands of masking fluid
and you can find all my favorites in the list of supplies in the project
resources section. Now in order to
apply masking fluid, you'll need a good applicator
or an old thin brush. You can also use a matchstick. I prefer rubber applicators. They act like a brush but don't require cleaning and
they're quite flexible. The brand I use is
Royal Sovereign. We'll need a jar of water. I know a lot of people
like to use two jars. One to clean your brush and the second one
to make sure it's completely cleaned
because your water can get quite dirty
during the process. So one or two jars
of clear water and a piece of tissue paper. You can get rid of excess water on your brush when you need it. In terms of the brushes, you have a couple of options. What you will see me using
is Kolinsky Sable brush. It's a natural sable brush. Sable brushes are one of
the best for watercolors, but they're also
quite expensive. In Canada anyway, rare to find. The reason why I use just one brush is
because I wanted to focus on the process and not switching between
different brushes. Kolinsky Sable retains
a lot of water, but it also has a
very precise tip. I'm able to do larger washes
and also smaller details. If you don't have a
Kolinsky Sable brush, you may want to pick a couple of synthetic brushes or squirrel
brushes in different sizes. Depending on the
size of your bird, you can choose something larger, like in size 4, 6, or 8. Also. a couple of
smaller brushes in Size 1 or even zero if you're painting on a
smaller piece of paper, for those smaller details. We'll need a palette. I prefer porcelain
palettes because they don't absorb any color
unlike plastic ones. You can really see
what your pigment will look like on paper
when you're mixing it. In terms of the
optional supplies. Some people like to
use watercolor medium. I'm using core
watercolor medium, just a few drops in
your jar of water. It helps with water control and it keeps your water
from drying too fast. It also improves the
flow of color on paper. It's not necessarily
the bird we're painting is quite small, so you will have good
control over your pigments. But it's a good, nice-to-have tool
that you can add to your favorite supply list
if you feel like it. These are just
recommendations and in my supplies handout that
I created for this class, you can find some
great alternatives, other brands, other sizes. Let's move on to our next lesson and talk
about the color palette.
3. Color Palette: [MUSIC] Before we
start painting, let's talk about
the color palette, and I have a very specific way of organizing my colors
for any painting. If you've seen any of my previous botanical
watercolor classes, you know that I have a
whole system and you may have seen this
little diagram. Essentially, it helps me
organize my background colors, my light and shadow colors, my boost colors, and
some additional colors for darker spots and
things like that. When it comes to birds, my palette structure
is quite similar. For birds that don't have many different
sections of color, that have one main color, like our BlueJay, the structure of the palette is exactly the same in the sense that I always pick
my base color. In this case, it's
going to be blue, and I'm using ultramarine blue from my Winsor
& Newton scent. You may find something
similar in your set. Ultramarine is quite common and exists in
virtually every brand. Here's what it's going
to look like on paper, and we're going to use
quite a different range of values so from
very dark to light. For our boost color, which is different from
a highlight color, this is just a color that we choose that's
similar to our base, but much more vibrant and potentially adds a little
bit of warmth and intensity. I will use my Winsor
blue green shade. It also comes in different
sets from different brands, and it's typically
called Phthalo blue Winsor & Newton calling it
Windsor blue, green shade. You can see it's a lot more saturated and it does have
a bit of green in it. We'll often use it
with our base color. For our dark spots, our BlueJay has a lot of those, especially on the
wings and the tail, a bit around the eyes, we want to choose the darkest
color on our palette. I always say, don't
use black because black can make your painting
look a bit unnatural. Indigo is a very good choice because it's almost like black, but it has a bit of
those blues in it, and it will blend nicely
with our base color. If you don't have indigo, you can use a mixture
of black and blue, or you can also use
something like Payne's gray and add some blue to it. Now, we also will have just a couple of
highlights, not a lot. If you don't have this
teal color, It's optional. But I did use just a few drops
of teal in the beginning, and so let's say this is
our highlight color on the spots that are
closest to the sun where I really want
to add some warmth. Now, the two final
optional colors are coral and purple, and these are optional
because you can get away with using your base
color on white feathers. But I like to add
some variation and some visual interest
on my white feathers because white often reflects other colors and
I want to choose something warm and something that's complimentary
to our blues. If you have a nice coral color, I'm using Quinacridone
Coral from Daniel Smith and some purple. I'm using dioxazine
purple from Qor. It's one of my
favorite two colors, and they will blend
nicely with our blues. I'm going to use
them just a bit, just on the chest of the bird
and some of the other areas where I have white color,
but they're optional. You can use your favorite blue or purple or violet here again, we'll only use a bit of
these and only as a very, very light wash or a
few very light strokes. In the next lesson, I will talk about our process, start to finish
really high-level in our drawing so that you can understand the steps that
we're going to go through.
4. Your Project & Process Overview: [MUSIC] For your class project, you're going to
paint a blue jay. I will show you all the steps
very slowly in real-time. In terms of the background, you can choose where you
want your blue jay to sit. It can be wintertime, which is what I painted with these red berries
and a little bit of snow, or it can be summertime. I often painted blue
jays sitting in flowers because they create such beautiful contrast
with their blue feathers. Any flower bush
would look great. It can simply sit
on a tree branch or another thing that I like to do is paint them in
red maple leaves, which again, just creates very beautiful contrast against the blue feathers of the bird. I encourage you to pick
whatever plant or a flower, or tree you like. If you are interested
in seeing how I painted the leaves
and the berries, in this particular painting, I saved a bonus lesson for
you all the way to the end. Now let's quickly talk about the process of painting
that we're going to follow and the key steps you need to be aware
of and prepare for. Before we start
applying the colors, we're going to need
to create an outline. You can download the
reference picture from the resources
section of our class. We'll use masking fluid to mask some white
spots on the bird. Once the masking fluid is dry, we're going to proceed
with our color layers, and there will be
three layers in total. The main thing to
remember here is, as we always do
with watercolors, we paint from light to dark. We're going to start
with a very light layer, I call it my background layer. It's not an official name, just a term I use to help me differentiate
between different steps. The background layer is key in the sense
that the colors that we're going to use here
and the different value, different saturation levels, are going to help us define how the next steps
are going to proceed. We're going to keep it
very light and what you're going to end up with
is something like this. Just a general shape of a bird. No details. Very light color areas
blending one into another. We're going to use
wet-on-wet technique here. The second step will be
our definition layer. This is where we're going
to switch to wet-on-dry, meaning painting with a
wet brush on dry paper, our first background layer
will be completely dry. We're going to start adding some definition to our
areas of light and shadow. You will see me using a
lot more saturated colors. Not quite the darkest
most saturated, but much more saturated
than in the first layer. We're going to really start
creating some texture here. This will be our
opportunity to start defining some of the
areas on the feathers, on the head and you
will see the shape of a bird emerge and starting
to look more realistic. But we're not quite there
yet with our details. Until we move on to
our next color layer, our third color layer, which I call an accent layer. Essentially, this will be our finishing layer
where we're going to really accentuate our
areas of light and shadow, accentuate our colors, add some boost to the areas
that we want to stand out and add a lot more
detail on the feathers, including some tiny details around the eye of the
bird and the beak. This is also the step
where you're going to paint those
beautiful details, those markings on the
feathers and the tail and so the bird will start
looking a lot more realistic.
5. Step 1: Outline & Mask: Welcome to Step 1. Before we start painting, you will have to download the reference image
of the Blue jay. It's in the resources
section of this class. You can use whatever
technique you're most comfortable with in terms of transferring the
outline to paper. Either do it by hand or you can use a light-box tracing paper. You can also use a window
and some sunlight. Just print off the outline, put your watercolor paper on top and trace it lightly
with the pencil. The key here would be to
use a very light pencil, so you don't leave a lot
of markings on paper. Once you outline is ready, we can start applying
masking fluid. The reason why this is
our first step is because we need to mask some of the
white spots on the bird. It's possible to paint
around them with watercolor, but it would be quite difficult. I recommend just
putting a little bit of masking fluid using your
favorite applicator, so you can grab an old
brush or a matchstick. My favorite tool for
masking fluid is actually a rubber color shaper. It's this tiny applicator
that allows me to put really thin lines
and you can see my favorite masking fluid
brands on the left. I'm using Winsor and
Newton right now. Just looking at the
reference drawing, I'm going to cover the
areas that I want to keep white with a light layer
of my masking fluid. Mostly on the wings, a few lines on the tail and
around the back of the bird, just a few strokes
and this will help me create some highlights
on the feathers. I'll also put tiny
dot on the eye. This is for the highlight. I'll put a line along the beak. Do a couple of tiny strokes
on the head of the bird. Again, this is just to indicate where the highlights
will be and this will help us create a very
realistic effect. When you're ready, let your
masking fluid dry thoroughly. I left it for about
an hour and we can start painting our
first layer of color.
6. Step 2: Background Layer: Welcome to step 2, and we're just creating a background layer of
color, very light. Our goal here is to create a very soft color wash so no details will be
applied at this stage. We're going to use what's
known as wet-on-wet technique. So first, cover the
whole area with a very thin layer of water
and then start adding paint. Another way of doing it is
apply a very light wash of color and then add additional drops of
paint, see them spread. Here I go with a very
first drop of color. I'm going to do a
super light cobalt teal highlight just
on top of the wings. It's really warm. I'm going to do the same
thing on the tail. That's about it for
our teal color, I really want to
focus on my blues. The first one I'm going to
use is ultramarine blue. I'm using Winsor & Newton. This color is very common and you can find
it in your favorite set. I'm going to just add a few drops of it all
around the bird's body. You can see that
I'm trying to leave certain parts white on
the back of the bird. That's because I decided that my source of
light is on the left. This will be very important
because it will help us organize our colors and makes sure that
the saturation is correct and it all follows
the logic of light. On the tail as it slower
and more in the dark, I'm going to use more saturated blue and on the
back of the bird, I left a few spots
completely white. Now I'm doing the wing. I'm going to add a few
additional colors right now. These are not required. You can just leave the ultramarine blue without
any additional colors. But if you do have
some purple or coral, you can add a few for visual
interest and it really does help creating beautiful
shimmering effect. You can see I dropped
the few purples on back of the bird
and also on the tail. Now I'm moving on to the area
of the chest of the bird. The chest of the bird
is hidden away from our source of light so even though the
feathers are white, I want to add a
little bit of color because of the shadow and also because of the
potential reflections that we get on white feathers. I'm going to use
again my purple and my coral and do a much
lighter wash there. Now we're ready to
add our boost color. In my case, I'm using Winsor
and Blue Green shade. You can also find this color in your side and may be called
something like phthalo blue. But essentially it's a much
brighter blue and I just dropped a couple of color spots
on the wing and the tail. Now let's do the shadows. We agreed when we talked
about the color palette that the best choice is probably indigo and not black so I'm
going to use my indigo. Now I'm watching the colors
spread and dry and I have a little bit more control
over how it spreads. So I'm going to go back to
my base color and start building more saturated areas. So you can see on
the tail I'm able to do some straight lines without
color spreading too much. I'm going to use a little
bit more indigo for shadows. I'm doing this
very, very slowly. As the paper dries out, although it's still damp, allowing my colors to blend
I have much more control. I'm keeping the areas that
I want to keep light. I'm keeping them
without any color. You can see there's a
little bit of blending happening right now on
the back of the bird. So that highlight is being more defined by the
colors I put around it. You can see the masking
fluid is starting to show and those will be
our feather highlights. But overall, all colors are
blending into each other. So it creates a nice
background layer that will really help us define how our
subsequent layers will look like [MUSIC] Now let's do the same
thing on the head. So following the same process, I'm just going to do
a super light wash using the base color. I'm going to leave
top blank for now. I'm going to add
just a little bit of teal for that warm highlight. I'm going to continue with my base color all the way
down around the beak, [MUSIC] around the eye,
underneath the beak. Now that it's drying out, I'm going to start
adding my boost color. Again remember, the source
of light is on the left, so the further away we
get from the light, the more saturated
our colors can get. That you can see I'm using
just a tip of the brush to get into those areas where
we have white feathers. Just to make it a
bit more realistic, you don't want a hard edge. You want to create a bit
of a jagged edge there, just to indicate where white feathers will overlap
with darker feathers. Much darker blue or indigo
underneath the beak. I think I'm going to
leave the head for now and move on to the legs. So the legs are really dark, but we're going to do a base
layer under painting with our boost color or Winsor and Blue Green Shade
or in your case, it could be phthalo blue. So you can see I covered the entire area on each
leg with that color. Now I'm going to go
back to the beak. It's roughly the same palette. So I'm going to also start with my phthalo blue underpainting
and lastly, do the eye. Again, those will be
really dark in the end, but I'm just doing the
underpainting to give me a chance to reveal those highlights later on when I
apply darker color. Now a super light wash of our boost color just
on the white feathers. That's it. This is
our background layer. This is probably one of the most important
steps in the painting. We're establishing a
background color palette. It will help us keep the
overall color scheme cohesive. Up next, the definition layer, we're going to start defining
some details on our bird.
7. Step 3(a): Definition Layer (Body): [MUSIC] In this lesson,
I'm going to show you how to create a
definition layer, which is the second
layer of paint. We're only going to focus
on the body of the bird. You want to make sure that the first background
layer is completely dry. We're going to use
wet on dry technique, creating definition
and outlining our shadows,
accentuating highlights. We're going to start
adding some details on the feathers to create
some beautiful textures. Our goal here is
really to define areas of light and
shadow that we started in the first step
with our background layer. Here we can start applying
more saturated colors. You'll see our bird emerging and it's going to look
a lot more vibrant. I'm going to start with
the back of the bird. This is our biggest highlight. I left it white, if you recall
in the very first step. Right now, what I'm going to
do is add a little bit of ultramarine blue all
around that highlight. I'm going to, for now, keep the edge quite soft where it blends
into the highlights. You can see I helped
myself by doing a light wash of clear
water on the highlight. But as we move forward
with our layers, it's going to become
more and more defined. You can see I'm not putting too much color on the area right on top of
the bird on the left, but a lot more on the right and on the area where
the wings start. Again, this is exactly according to the
direction of light. I don't have a reference photo, but we have some good
understanding of how the light lands
on our bird because we decided early on where the sun is shining
from which angle. Now I'm going to move
on to our wings. Here I'm going to start with
the boost color right away. It will help me
differentiate the wings from the body of the bird
and the back of the bird. I'm going to start
with these side wings. Just a very light wash, although much more saturated
than our background layer. I'm going to follow and add a bit more base color just to make sure that it's
getting darker and darker on the tip of the wings. [MUSIC] Here I decided to come back and add a bit of our boost color to the back just again to accentuate
that highlight. [MUSIC] The paper there
is still a bit damp, so it's spreading nicely. [MUSIC] I like the
effect it's creating. Now let's do the tail. First, just a light wash of our base color all along a side of the main feather and then
a bit of a boost color. Now I'm going to
do the other side. This one I'm going to go
with the boost color first. The reason why I'm
doing this is because that side is really
facing the light so I want it to be a bit
lighter in terms of the value and also warmer. [MUSIC] Really we're creating a realistic shape just by
using our colors and values. You can see that I'm leaving a very thin blank line in between the two
sides of the feather. There's a bit of a contrast
because the two sides have slightly different angle and so the light illuminates
them differently. I'm going to finish the
right side with a mixture of my base and boost colors then I'm going
to do the left side. This side is really much lighter and I want to make sure I keep it lighter
than the right side. I'm just going to start
by doing a bit of my base color at the bottom and then spread it up just
with clear water. I really want to make
sure I keep it light. [MUSIC] Now let's do
the chest and the legs. These feathers are technically white but we do want to add some definition just by outlining the shadows
under the wing. I'm using my indigo, a very light wash. If you don't have indigo, you can use a soft gray, like Payne's gray, and just a few tiny strokes
in the middle of the leg. This is just to help create
some texture and reflect that feathers sometimes
stick out so there might be some additional
shadows but again, super light. Now let's use a bit of a darker
indigo mixture, or again, Payne's gray or you can
mix your black with blue. Now we can do the legs. What I'm doing here is, if you recall in
the previous step, we use a light wash of blue. I'm going to start outlining
the leg with my dark color, leaving a couple of highlights. I don't want them to be white, so that's why we
did that blue wash. The leg is still dark so
our highlights will be darker than say the ones
on the back of the bird. But nevertheless, there is some good contrast of
highlights and shadows when we use our indigo and
leave a couple of spots of that Pthalo
blue shining through. [MUSIC] So far, this is the darkest area of
the bird that we painted. [MUSIC] Now let's go back to our top feathers and start defining the
beautiful patterns there. This part will require
your smallest brush. I'm using a kolinsky
sable brush in Size 4, and sable is super pointed. This is a pointed round
brush from Muscoda. So I can get away
with using Size 4. If you're using
synthetic brushes, you may want to downsize to Size 2 brush just to
make sure that you have enough control to create those little patches
of color on the wings. It's important in this stage to really look at your
reference photo or the reference painting
just to make sure you get the sequence of light
and dark spots correctly. You can see what I
did on the left side. Now let's do the right side. I'm going to start by doing thin outlines and then
paint those darker spots. I'm using my base blue
and my boost blue. [MUSIC] I'm going to come
back to this area later. I want it to dry right now. Let's do this cluster of
feathers on top of the wing. Going to start with
my boost blue, and a little bit [MUSIC] blended
with clear water. Then as it dries out, continue adding
more and more right there where the blue spots
end the white spots begin. [MUSIC] Now let's move
a little bit down. Using our boost blue color
outline the cluster of feathers add a bit of
indigo, let it spread. The further you move the darker
it will become typically. Now, let's apply the same logic to these long
feathers on the side. I'm using a mixture of indigo and sometimes
my base color. I'm just shaping those feathers according to the
direction of light. Even though the color of
those feathers is solid, I want to make sure that
I create nice outlines underneath each feather just to show that there
is a shadow there. Couple of thin lines
on the top feathers. Now let's leave it to dry. I'm going to use a very
light mixture of my purple, but slightly darker than the one we used in
the first layer. I'm just going to do a couple of tiny strokes on the chest. [MUSIC] Let's allow this section to dry and let's focus
on the head of the bird. We're going to apply the
same principles start creating some
definition on the head.
8. Step 3(b): Definition Layer (Head): [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to create a definition layer on
the head of the bird. Just like on the body,
our objective here is to define areas
of light and shadow. We're doing it with a wet brush on a dry
background layer, so wet on dry. We have a lot more control. We're applying more saturated
colors and really focusing on defining one section at a time just like
we did with the body. Let's start with the head, and I'm going to add a little bit of my
base and boost colors. More details on the
tips of the feathers. More saturated color
as I move towards the beak because of the way the head is
illuminated by light. Our source of light
is on the left. If I need to lift some color while this layer is still dry, I'm just going to
use a dry brush. Now, let's move down
to that area around the eye using our boost color. Just a little bit of a shadow around that
cluster of feathers. On the bottom side
of that cluster, let's do the white
section under the beak. We know that our shadow
will be more intense there. Again, the wings are blue. Just a few strokes. Now under the eye, we have four clusters there of white feathers and those are the ones that we're
trying to define. Very carefully, we
don't want to cover the entire area in those
four sections with color, but we do want to create
a sense of the shapes. On the right side and under the beak we can
add a bit more color. Now, let's do the beak. A light wash of our boost color. We'll come back to this section for sure and it's
going to be very, very dark in the end, but I want to create an
opportunity for us to reveal some beautiful
highlights on that black beak, just like we did with the legs. I'm going to start with an underpainting and I'm
going to intensify that blue. Now the eye, I'm not going to do anymore underpainting here, just go in with my purple color. When it comes to the eyes, you want the top part of
the eyeball to be the darkest because of the
way the eyes are shaped, that area is really a sphere. Your shadow will actually
be most intense on top, and that's it for now. Let's leave our bird to dry thoroughly and we'll move
on to our third layer. That's where we're going
to do lots and lots of details and use much
more saturated colors.
9. Step 4(a): Accent Layer (Body): [MUSIC] In this
lesson, we're going to create an accent layer, but before we start, let's make sure our
bird is completely dry, and now I feel
comfortable to remove our masking fluid and reveal
our white highlights. Everything we do from this point on will be without
masking fluid. We're going to paint around our white highlights just
with the tip of the brush. Time to add our accents, and this is where
the real fun starts. Let's do our feathers
on the wings first. I'm using a much darker
indigo right now, and I'm now creating those
patterns on the wings. Here, don't be afraid
to use saturated color, but not the darkest you can do. But here I'll show you how I go about getting
the right value. We have a bit of my indigo
in the palette bowl, I had a little bit of water. I can see, this is why I
like porcelain palettes, I can see how saturated it is in the palette and I just
grab it from there. If I need to add more, I add a little bit more; If I need to add less, I pick it up from the
lighter side of the palette. We still have an opportunity to have some variation in value. You can see that on
the right-hand side, I'm adding a bit more
saturated indigo and I'm just dropping it in
the area that's already wet. Again, according to the
direction of light, I know that the further away I move from
the left-hand side, the darker I can go because our source of
light is on the left. You can see I'm going
quite dark here. I really want to make sure that those long feathers on the
wing are well-defined. As I move up, it gets
a little bit lighter. Now the beautiful pattern
on those long feathers, a couple of tiny strokes
and a long line. That's what I'm
doing essentially step-by-step,
feather by feather. I outline the shape of the
feather from the bottom up, and then add a couple of
details on the feather. Now that cluster of feathers all the way
on the top-right. Further up outlining
the feather, and then adding a couple of
spots, those dark spots. You can use your
reference picture or your pencil marks or both. But the key here is to use your smallest brush and decide on where those dark spots are before you put
the brush down. There's not a lot of opportunity to fix mistakes at this stage. Wet on dry, very small details, so I think I'm happy with
what it looks like now. We're going to come back to
this later and make it even more dark in certain areas. But for now, let's do the tail. This is a bit easier because
the feathers of the tail are a bit larger than the
ones on the wing. I can clearly see
my pencil outlines. I'm just going to fill those in with a very saturated indigo. Again, there's still
an opportunity to have some variation in how
saturated my color is. On the right side
of each feather, on the right side of the tail, I can go a bit darker. This will help us, again create a more
realistic effect because the light
is on the left, so it's not reaching the areas on the
right the same way as it does the
areas on the left. I also want to create a very thin
outline for each feather. It's going to be
more pronounced on the right where the shadow is. Just like that, very carefully, spot after spot, and then a quick outline. I'm also going to outline the feathers all the
way at the bottom. The tips are white, I don't want to add any
color there right now, but I do want to have a nice contrast so
those white spots don't get lost on white paper. If you're painting your blue
jay on a colored background, if you want to add some color
later to the background, you can skip these
outlines and just use your background color to
create a sense of a shape. But I'm painting the bird on white paper and I'm
going to keep it white. That's why it's important to
create a very thin outline. Also, you probably
noticed that I didn't use my darkest indigo there. I kept those outlines quite light just to keep
it more realistic. I just want a little
bit of a line there to create a shape to complete
the shape of each feather. Now I'm going to move on to the left side and do the same thing just
slowly, one by one. Outline those dark
spots, fill them in, and complete the left
side of the tail. Be careful at this
stage not to paint over the white line in the
middle of the feather. We used to have masking fluid
there and it was helpful. But now it's just paper. If you paint over it, you can't erase it. That's why I'm painting
the right side of the feather first and then the left side of the feather, making sure I'm keeping
the white line blank. It's looking good, I'm going to complete the
last two feathers on the right and outline
the white tips. Create a little
bit of a shadow on the white tips very lightly. Again, this is to create
a sense of the shape. There's actually no color
there on the real bird. These are just shadows. Now let's accentuate
the legs of the bird. Our first and second color
layers are completely dry, and you can see when the
watercolor dries out, it's much lighter
than when it's wet. We have an opportunity to
add a lot more definition. I'm doing it mostly on
the right-hand side, which is the shadow side. You can see the leg looks
a lot more defined. Now I'm going to very quickly
come back to the wing. It's completely dry now, and I'm just going to add
a couple of lines there. I see an opportunity to add more shadow and more definition
on the right-hand side. I think it's necessary, and now the feathers on the leg, again, just a few
more strokes there. Now the right leg,
saturated indigo, mostly just on the
right-hand side and under the feathers. Now I'm going to move up the
feathers using indigo still. Being careful not
to paint anything in the middle of the chest, but just around, and a few more
very small details on the top wing feathers, and there we go. Lots of details now, it's looking very close to
where we want to get to. In the next quick lesson, we're going to paint the
head of the bird. [MUSIC]
10. Step 4(b): Accent Layer (Head): [MUSIC] It's time to create some accents on the
head of the bird, and we can really spend
a lot of time here. There's a lot of
opportunity to accentuate our darkest spots and further
outline our highlights. That's why I'm doing this part separately just so you
can see all the details. I'm going to start with the eye. I'm going to outline the
eye with my indigo and then just add a little bit of a shadow on top and
around the highlight. Now I'm going with a very
saturated indigo, tiny strokes. This is a very dark
area and what I'm doing here is very small, careful strokes with a
bit of a jagged edge. I'm just getting into
the white feathers with the tip of my brush. I'm going to come back
really quickly to the eye and add more
saturated color there. I think I went to light. You can see that the four sections of the head where the
white feathers are, the four big blocks, each ends with a very dark tip, and so that's the shape
that I'm following. There's a bit of a dark
feather going into the eyes, so I'm going to outline that, a few dark feathers between
the eye and the beak. I can actually
continue straight from those feathers to the
bottom half of the beak, leaving a small highlight. Now back to those feathers
between the eye and the beak. Very saturated indigo,
very tiny strokes. Not really much room
for mistakes here, so that's why I'm
going very slowly and making sure that
I have full control. I'm going to outline the eye, add a couple of tiny strokes. Again, this is just to create
a realistic feather effect. We don't want a lot
of blending here. Let's move up to the
top of the head. The tips of the feathers, I really want to define those, so I'm going to start, but I'm going to keep
my white highlights, the ones that used to be
covered by masking fluid, I'm going to keep them white. Now a little bit of
color on the beak. The top side of the beak, we want to keep it a bit
lighter than the bottom side, so I'm going to go in
with my blue first, leaving the highlights white. Go back to the top feathers, add a bit more definition, maybe add a little
bit of blue around the eye just so that it's not so harsh with our indigo
against white paper. The blue will help us
soften those edges. Now I'm going to accentuate
the back using a mixture of our base blue and
our highlight blue, just using very
precise short strokes on the areas that are
already quite dark. I'm adding more definition, creating more of a shadow
effect, but no blending. I'm just using the
direction of the feathers and creating some
beautiful textures. You can see my strokes. I'm not going to blend
them into the background. They just mimic the texture of the feathers and
I like it that way. Go back, add a little
bit more under the beak. Now let's do the
top of the beak. I added a few flyaway
feathers there with my indigo and a bit of a shadow on the top
part of the beak. Now it's looking almost ready. One thing I want
to note here is, no matter what you
do with the bird, you want to keep the
head of the bird, especially the eye and the
beak area more defined, so a lot more smaller strokes. The reason for that is
the more detail you add, the more drawn your eye
will be to that area, so we want to keep
the eye in focus. Lots more contrast there, lots more saturated
colors, and small strokes. I added a couple of
more flyaway feathers on the chest and a couple of highlights on the
right side of the tail with my boost color, my phthalo blue or Windsor blue. We're almost done.
You can see it's looking very well-defined,
very vibrant. The only thing that's left
to do is finishing touches.
11. BONUS Lesson: Scarlet Rowan Berries: [MUSIC] Welcome to
the final lesson. In this lesson, I
will show you what I painted around our blue jay. Now for your project, as I mentioned in the beginning, I encourage you to choose a plant or a flower
of your own choice. You can either take
a reference photo in your garden or anywhere outside. But if you want to see how
I painted these berries, you can follow along
and I'll show you step-by-step what
colors I picked for the berries and the leaves of this Scarlet
Japanese Rowan tree. I like the contrast between the blue feathers
of the blue jay and the red of the tree. I thought it was a
really good choice. Let's take it to the table
and start with the leaves. For the first background
layer of the leaves, I created a smooth
transition from green to red and then to purple
all the way on the tips. My color choices are
hookers green, Winsor red. You can use any of your
favorite warmer reds here. The same purple Dioxazine
purple from core, the same one we used
on our blue jay. Using the same pigments here and there helps me tie the whole composition
together visually. I will occasionally
drop a bit of sap green as well on the leaves. You don't have to use
two green pigments here. I just like to have a lot of variation in my
color transitions. Feel free to use one
of your warm greens, but I ended up using two
from Daniel Smith here. When I paint the leaves, I paint one side first
and then the other, leaving a thin line
in the middle. There's no masking fluid here. I'm just using the
tip of my brush. This will help me differentiate between the
two sides of the leaf because each side will be illuminated by the light in
a slightly different way. The darker the leaf, the more saturated
pigment I will use, and more red I will use, as you will see later on. I will continue just like that, starting with my
green transitioning to read and then purple all the way around this branch. On the back of my leaves, I will use more red and
much more saturated red. But on the leaves facing me, I will use lighter pigments and much more green and purple. As I paint, I don't follow
the leaves in order. I paint them switching from
left side to the right. The reason I'm doing this
is because I don't want my colors to bleed too much, so I give each leaf a
couple of seconds to dry. I'm going to use a light
purple wash for the stem. Then I'm going to leave
this layer to dry, paint my berries and come back in about half an hour to
paint the second layer. For the second layer, I just want to
accentuate the shadows. This is a very similar process to what we followed on our bird. I'm just going to
use a violet color. You can use a deeper red, more saturated red,
or violet, or brown. It will give you a bit of a different feel depending
on what pigment you go with. I'm just going to
carefully add a bit of color on the sides of the leaves that are
more in the shade, especially the back
of the leaves. You can see I'm adding more and more pigment
towards the edge, just building more
color and then lifting with the brush if
there's too much pigment. This layer is a bit more saturated than the
one underneath, but it's still quite light. The background wash
with green and red and purple is shining through. When I'm done, again, I'm going to leave the leaves for about half
an hour and let them dry. When I come back, I'm going to add some accents. I'm using my quinacridone coral just to warm it up a little bit and visually tied together with my berries where
I used a lot of coral. What I'm doing is on the
lighter side of the leaf, I paint the veins with
the tip of my brush, and then a darker
side of the leaf. I paint the background
with my coral color, leaving the veins blank. I'm creating a negative
painting effect there. That's about it. We don't
need a lot of details on the leaves because I want the bird to be the center
of our composition. I want to be careful
not to over paint it. It feels like this
step is done and now I'm going to show you how
I painted the berries. First I created a
light background wash and I went with pyrrole
orange from Daniel Smith. It's an in-between, a
warm pink and orange. You can create your own
mixture if you don't have parole orange or use
your favorite warm red. The only thing to
keep in mind here is that I didn't
use masking fluid. I wanted to work fast. I just painted around
my highlights. You can see a couple
of small white dots. This is important to
help us create a sense of shape on each berry. If you're not comfortable
painting around the white, you can use masking fluid and just leave a couple of dots, let them dry, and then
paint this layer. Now that the pigment
is sinking in, the water is drying out, but it's still a bit damp. I'm going to add a few drops of Bordeaux in the areas where
I know there's shadows. Mostly at the bottom
and on the right. I'm going to let this layer
dry out completely and then add a branch with my
Dioxazine purple. I'm going to keep it very light. But a few shades darker than
the berries underneath. At some Perylene violet you could just use
brown if you want. But I like the colorful mixture that this violet and purple
are creating together. Adding purple helps me tie this back visually
with our leaves. That's why I picked
those colors. When the branch is dry, I'm going to add some snow. Usually my preferred
pigment for snow is indigo. You can use a light blue. As you can see, I'm also adding a little bit of purple
Dioxazine purple, and this is to capture
the reflection from warm pink berries
on our white snow. When the snow is dry, I'm going to come back to the berries and create
a second layer. What I'm doing here is using a mixture of my cooler reds, so quinacridone red and
a little bit of magenta. What I'm going to do is paint the second layer inside each
berry around the highlight. I'm going to leave some
space on the edge of the berry to indicate the shape. Each berry is a sphere, and I want to make sure that I capture that shape properly. As the colors are drying out, I'm going to continue adding more and more
pigment wet on wet, especially on the berries
that are closer to us. I want to use more warmer red, the center of each berry and the ones that are further away, I'm going to use cooler red just building
that shape slowly. Again, I don't want to
over paint it too much. The more detail we add, the more the closer the
berries will appear. I want to avoid drawing too much attention
to the berries. I'm going to leave it for now. As a final step, I'm going to add a little
bit of that Perylene violet, mostly on the berries
that are further away so I'm trying to set
them back visually. As the final step, I'm going to use a little bit of my warm red on the branch that I already
painted with purple, and I will also add a few thin branches on
this berry cluster. Overall, I'm quite
happy with the slope. It's a nice contrast
to my blue jay. I hope you enjoyed
this demonstration. Again feel free to use
any plant, any berry, any flower as a background
element for your blue jay. I look forward to
seeing your projects. Up next, a very brief video and my final thoughts.
Thank you. [MUSIC]
12. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations
on finishing the class. Thank you so much for watching. If you have any
questions whatsoever, you can leave them in
the Discussion section of this class on the
Skillshare website. I very much look forward to
seeing your projects both on Skillshare website
and on social media. Let's connect on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. I love sharing my student
work in my Instagram stories. You guys are really inspiring me and blowing me away
with your talent. I also look forward
to your feedback, I'm always very interested in class reviews and things that I can do to improve
my teaching styles, and f you have any ideas
for future subjects, do leave them in the review. Have a lovely day, and I'll see you guys in
the next class. [MUSIC]
Anna Bucciarelli, Professional Illustrator
