Whimsical Watercolor Birds

1. Introduction: Hello friends. My name is Maria. I'm an artist, illustrator and surface pattern designer based out of North Carolina in the United States. Welcome to this class and my studio. In this class today we're going to be making some cute whimsical watercolor. A little birds like these. Aren't they adorable? All you need is some basic watercolor supplies, a pencil, a pen. I miss watercolor paper, and that's it. Now. So you have to make these little birds. So grab your supplies together. We'll get the painting. 2. Supplies: For our whimsical watercolor birds, you'll need some simple supplies. Some watercolor paper. Mine is just so cheap watercolor paper. It's an eight by eight size inches. That is a pencil and appropriate size watercolor paintbrush. And I have my micron to 0.5 ten. Here's my palette, and I use fairly limited number of colors from my palette, but any colors you like for work. And then we will get started in creating these cute whimsical watercolor birds. Shown here is the watercolors that I'm using in this project. 3. Blue and Orange Birds 1 of 2: Alright, we're gonna get started. I have a number six paintbrush here, and that's a good size for my paper that I'm working on. Baristas doesn't matter as long as it matches your paper size. So I like to have a pointed tip and that way I really don't have to change sizes. My paper here is eight by 8 ". It's relatively small intestine inexpensive sheet of paper. Got my mechanical pencil, and I'm going to put into birds. So I'm going to make them different sizes. This one I'm gonna make a little bit of an egg shape, so he's a little bit smaller at the top and a little bit rounder and chunkier at the bottom. Well, it doesn't have to be perfect. I like to just sketch super, super light. I don't end up generally erasing, but I will make a boo-boo here in just a second. So you'll see that. Then I'll put these little feet shape in. Now, you will be able to see these shapes come up when we start to paint. Or if you check in the resources section, I provided you with two papers. And those will give you the shapes of the feet and the different shapes, bodies and eyes. I just marked into little curved shapes for a wing, I got a really big eyeball and then I'm gonna put a smaller eyeball. And then first beak is just a little v. That's all the detail I need to get in on this bird. The next bird I'm going to work on it. He's gonna be kind of like a bowling pin shape, but he's kinda tilted. So it's almost as if he's kinda leaning to the side, put in a nice small head, could look like a squash, that type of thing. Now just work on getting him in. I'm going to make a beak that's gonna kinda come down. It's a V, but towards the side it looks like he's looking at the other bird that left eye balls pretty small. And then I'm going to make a really big kind of eyeball and he only has one wing showing. We'll get the little bitty legs in for identity like little bitty legs and the little feet. So make sure you check out. It's more like a duck foot rather than a true bird foot, but they look so cute. And I'm deciding on that wing here. Okay, I think we're good enough now to start painting. I'm going to get a little bit of water, all my paintbrush. And I'm going to start by putting water just on the area of my bird. Sometimes I like to start off with just clean water. And then that way when I dropped paint in, I can watch it move throughout the entire bird or whatever I'm painting. To be honest with you, I'm making sure that I'm really concentrating around those eyes and getting color all the way around. Now here's my palette. It's just a 48 half pan. Again, it's one of those supplies that is relatively inexpensive for what you get. And I don't want it to move everything ever see you can see it. So I'm starting with a little bit of a bright blue, cerulean blue, I guess it would be. And going in and being really careful along those edges. Now the watercolor paper will start to absorb that water you put on. So it starts to dry out relatively quickly and it doesn't take a lot of pain. So C is already dried out. I had to get some water, but it really doesn't take a lot of paint. Watercolor tends to dry a little bit lighter than it looks when it's wet. Now, I'm going right over that beak area. And it might be something if you're going to use a lighter color, you might want to leave that beak white. I'm just going to travel along somewhere along those lines that the wing I'd sketched in. Not being very particular about it. And then I'll start to move that color back and forth. Wiping off my paintbrush. And I'm gonna go grab a little bit of a purple and make sure that I have diluted it down enough and I'm going to start adding little dots on his bottom side. Now, I don't really know. I don't really know. They haven't really planned out what I was doing. So this is kind of on a whim. And you'll notice that these dots start to spread out. And as they spread out more and more they lighten up. I'm just gonna give them a dotted underbelly. As I start to add some of these dots and I realized that my paper is drying out, so I'm going to wipe my paint brush off and just get a little bit of water. I'm going to let me draw that off. There's too much water. I'm just going to drop a right in the center of some of those to help that pigment just spread throughout. And it kinda makes a fuzzy edge like that. Instead of it being just a hard, just a pure dot. Wanted to give it little, just a little bit more water to help it move. My blue birds done, blue and purple. And we're gonna move on to the teardrop shape. Bowling pin shape has a pigeon, a look to them. Same process. I've rinse my paintbrush off, a wiped it off and make sure that I don't have any extra blue hanging out there. Being careful to go around the eyes. I like to work. There's details in and then just throw in as much water is needed. Now the water doesn't need to pull on the surface, it just needs to wet the surface. The more water you put on your watercolor paper, the more it will tend to warp. Working quick like this, and not taping it down. It's really just best to work as only as what as you need it to be. So I'm using to kinda two different yellows. I got a little bit deeper color on the bottom as opposed the top working right along those edges. And being lighter towards this center gives the illusion of volume. So I'm just adding little bits and little bits. Were wipe off our paint brush, rinse it off each time. I'm just getting a little bit of pure water up there to help move some of this paint around. Deciding what color to use. I think I'll use this peachy color, orange. I didn't have a pre-plan on this. So we're just kinda, kinda go for it. I like that in doing a whimsical design because that way it leaves you free to make decisions on the fly. And I'm filling in very close and very careful around these as taking my time. And I'll just spread this color, working it back towards the inside of the body. Rinsing the paintbrush off, wiping off some of that excess water. So what we're going to move on down to the legs, I've got this Prussian blue and purple color already on my palette. So I'm just gonna get a little bit of water and activate it. Will start to put in some little legs on here. And this is a great thing about having a paintbrush with a point is just a nice light pressure and just the right amount of paint. You can honestly paint this with that one paintbrush starting with a fee. Was this nice little triangular ish pointy toed. Just so stinking, cute. You'll see that on that, on the resources I've provided for you, the exact shape. There we go, zooming in just a little bit. That helps a lot. So I'm just going to make a nice long line, two lines going down and then just a little swoop, getting a little bit of clean water. Just a little bit. And we'll put that in the center and then move that water to the edge to give the illusion of volume. So the paint had already, the pigment I've already absorbed to the outside and lighter in the end side. Join me in the next lesson. We'll, we'll finish painting these two birds. 4. Blue and Orange Birds 2 of 2: Okay, We're on part two of painting this blue and orange, yellow, orange bird. Let's get going. So our bodies are all done with these two birds. We're going to start working on adding some of the other details, not the final details. So I'm going to use a same Prussian blue, purple mix. Maybe grab a little bit more purple. It worked well for the feet, so I think it's going to work well for the eyes. And I'm putting in an iris for this little guy. Just working my way around the eye, being very careful. In this same on this, I got a bigger eye. We're just going to really accentuate that decided, that little highlight. I'm going to go ahead and just map it in first and then work around it as almost freedom, right? I'd miss that. And we don't want to miss those cute little details. You can always come in with a paint pen or a gel pen or white one and add that over it. But I just went ahead and left it out. So rinsed off my paintbrush and wiped it off. And I'm trying to decide what we're going to do with his feathers on top. He needs to have a little bit of height there. Again, mixing up a little bit of that bright blue that we did as body and a little bit of a darker blue. And I'm making these just off centered wonky real quick loops. This is in real time. It's not sped up, not really thinking about it too much. I'm gonna get a little bit more paint and start adding it in. Because that watercolor paper is Thursday, I'm going to have to go back over. It's not spreading around. Not like it was when we worked on his body. So just going to deepen up some of those colors just a little bit and basically trace over it one more time. They start to really get fun in a little bit when we start to do those details. So just going over those edges again and again. I'm wiping off that paint brush. I think I want to get a little bit of color variation. Tilting my paper here to try to get some of that blue to move down towards the ends. To get it to move a little bit because I'm really liking the idea of putting them some purple really close to the head. So just dropping in a little bit of that deep purple and hoping it spreads into the blue. Again, tilting my paper. Not wanting to overwork this and overthink it. And I think it looks pretty good. Maybe take out a little bit of color towards the edges. Guinness at back-and-forth of visit enough. Is it too much? Is it dark enough? It's light enough. And I think we're yeah, maybe just add a little bit more water and see if I can get it to move. And tilting the paper again, trying to force that pigment to spread out. And we're done. We're gonna move on over to our orange bird. So I wanted to go ahead and we need to highlight that weighing a little bit. I'm gonna get that same color we use before, that peachy color. And maybe a little bit of a deeper orange. We have a little bit of a contrast there. Not too much. I'm going to run a nice little line right down that edge to the paper's dry, it's leaving real crisp edge. I'm just manipulating that pigment, wiping off my paintbrush, grabbing freshwater. And then I want to feather it off so it looks like it's fading off into the background and move that pigment around just a little bit. I don't want it to be too harsh lines. One a harsh line and one faded offline. Just to give a little idea that the wing is still attached to the body. It doesn't look like something that was just kind of attached on later. Wipe off the paint brush, rinse it off. That keeps my water clean. If I wipe off my paintbrush before I rinse it. I know many artists who keep one water cup for warm toned pay pigments and one for cool tones so you don't mix and get muddy. But I use one in the same. We're going to do those same feat, but I decided we're gonna go with fred. We'll see if we can get this same effect to happen with the feet where we're going to drop in just a little bit of red. I didn't let it dry off quick enough, so I'm going to dry my paint brush off and absorbs some of that pigment. And then I'll give that same effect, the effect of volume there. So it'll be darker on the outsides and lighter towards the n side. Using that small amount of paint, we're going to go ahead and get one more little leg in here. One more foot. Wipe off the paintbrush, get a little bit of water, and see if we can get that same process to work where it's lighter and it worked a little bit better. So we'll just leave that and we've got some beaks to do. I've got to be careful because my bird is still wet and I'm painting over it. And we're just going to use that read the same that we used on his feet. It kinda gives us the two characters, the two birds and opportunity to share something. It a little bit of water and I'm pulling that pigment up just a little bit. Not too far. Not a lot of back-and-forth with the paintbrush. And that's it. We're just going to leave that little beak. And so deciding on what color to do his beak. Again, I think that purple impression blue works. Maybe a little bit more purple. Dilute that down just a little bit. I'm going to do something different with this. I'm gonna give him a big old purple eyeball. Might look like he has a black guy, but it'll work out fine. It's gonna be fun. We're all fine. Everything's going to be fun. I'm going to leave a little white on the center and I just give them like these big bags, these dark, dark circle around is he's going to turn out so cute. And give them a little dot for pupil. And that's it. Wipe out the paint brush, rinse it off a little bit. Getting mixed up a little bit more of that color. I used all that purple, I had a little bit more and we'll just work on this smaller. I I'm just gonna give him a single solitary pupil and I think that works just fine. Gives them so much character. And debating. What to do, what to do. I've been painting with my paintbrush on the other side, with my paper towels on the other side of my palette. And I've been crossing over my painting, which is kinda dangerous if they're drops that to happen. We're going to start to work on the tail and I think he's gonna get a teardrop tail. These birds are very big on this piece of paper, but small in general. I waited on the tail because it didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. Again, just painting these on a whim, getting that deeper orange color like this in the wing, mixing up a little bit of that color. And I'm going to a lot of fluid in that paintbrush because I'm gonna be working quick and that's all dry. So as opposed to that, the Bluebird that I put just Clearwater, this one's going to have pigment is pigment and a lot of water and that paintbrush. So I'm going to start up a little bit and we're just going to draw in a little teardrop shape. Again, I have to work pretty quickly because that pigment will start to settle. And I don't want a harsh edges except for on the outside which gives that outline look. And keeps everything nice and crisp. Grab a little bit of that red. And I'm just going to start at the top and drag some color down, drag some of that red down. And we'll just feather that off a little bit. And I think that might be good. That gives the same kind of illusion of volume. Let's put a little mark up on his wing in that same red. So the wing and the tail share the same colors. And just drawing in a few streaks. I think he's starting to look pretty darn good. Getting that read. Those two red colors are mixed together before we're going to make his little beak. Is that sideways V, being really careful, wiping off my paintbrush, rinsing it off, making sure it's nice and clean because I want to manipulate and move that pigment around. So I'll start by getting a little bit of water just away from that red and then moving that pigment up slightly. So it kind of fades off. Taking a little bit of that water out. Don't want it to take over too much. And I think I like them the way they are. Yeah, I think we're good with these, so let's let these guys hanging out here and dry. And when we add details, it'll all start to come to life. Looking good job. Maybe in the next video we'll be doing our trio of birds. 5. Bird Trio 1 of 2: We're back and we're getting ready to start on our trio of birds. I think I'm gonna do two larger on the outside and on smaller on the inside. Again, I haven't planned this out as I started, I just had my mind. I'm going to make these shapes and just using composition. I think let's go ahead and just start with a guy in the center. And so that way we know how much room we have for the birds and the side. I'm just starting with the center kinda makes sense to me. So he's just a little teardrop fellow. Nothing very special about his shape. And then we'll work on his little friend. Kind of like that same pigeonhole kind of shape. The teardrop that's rounded at the top, a little bit fatter at the bottom. And this guy is going to be a lot larger. He's gonna be a tall bird. And lightly we're just going to, again as all, all these I'm bursts and have that same kind of smaller head and bigger body like a typical bird does. And just working on that sloped back, the rounded head, maybe a little bit skinnier and the neck. And let's give him a big belly that swoops down and comes back up. I'll just refine some of those little details. Adding a big upside-down teardrop for a tail on this guy. And let's just fix his head just a little bit. It was a little wonky, a little bit flat and his belly was a little flat. So we've got him mapped out fairly quickly and will start left to right. I'm right handed. So instead of me crossing that paintbrush over and over again, forgot those eyeballs. So let's get some teardrop eyes on this guy. One's gonna be a little bit bigger than the other. This teardrop one is going to have a bigger and a smaller one more circular shape. And this are little fellow will be closed. I were gonna give them a little beak and I think he's gonna be singing. So let's make a beak that's open. Again, in the resources section, you'll see some illustrations, some sketches that you can follow along with. And I'm thinking maybe he'll have some feathers up on the top. I'm not sure. Let's round that head out just a little bit more. Good. Here's a little flat. He needed to go good as hair done. So we'll work on this gum and left throwing a little while. Now a little bit ease along, bake little bitty beak. So we all have beaks, we all have as and we'll work on those legs later. Time to get painting. I have just clear water and I'm going to fill in this bird being careful around those eyes. That watercolor paper is thirsty. So by the time I work around, it might have already started to draw on the other side, we'll just have to see how quickly we can work making sure every bit of it has water. And tilting my head to the side, I can see if it's shiny and that way I know that there's enough water on the paper to allow me to get this paint to move and flow. We're going to go with a little bit of red. Going right along that edge and look at it spread out. Isn't that gorgeous? It's kind of a pinky red instead of a tomato red. And it continues to move and flow almost as if it's alive. I'm gonna drop in a lot of pigment right here. We'll look at that. That is just so much fun. And this will continue to happen. Even for even after you quit working on it. It'll continue to move. Making sure I've got enough color, enough pigment in there. That might be all that we're going to do with him. Might just get a little bit more color. We'll give them a little bit on that left side. Again, trying not to overwork these. It's easy to do. I tilting my paintbrush again to make sure that I can get that paint to manipulate the way I want to. Wiping off my paintbrush. I'll just grab a little bit of that pigment up. I didn't want that much on there rinsing off, wiping off that back-and-forth, back-and-forth between one and the other. I think he needs to have a little bit more color and the crown of his head since I got that red and move down so much. Just going to add a little bit of purple up here at the top and see if it will move around. Just like that red had done. And hopefully it'll kinda just work its way down. Again. You have to wait and see how it goes. That some of the fun with the watercolor will move on over to our next little guy. Tiny teardrop shape. And I'll start with that blue this time I'm gonna get a little bit of pigment and a lot of water. And instead of working with clean water, I'm going to fork ride in and have a little bit of pigment. You have to work quick to keep those hard edges from appearing. So continuing to move the water across, which draws the pigment down and around, grabbing a touch more pigment. Careful around those as careful around those. Grabbing that pigment and just kinda moving it with my paint, getting a little bit more. That's a little bit of a deeper color, giving them a little bit more personality, a little bit more water to move that color around. Grabbing some freshwater. Didn't rinse off my paintbrush, but just grabbed that freshwater. And so that helps me get that pigment shifted all around the shape. Wiping the paintbrush off, rinsing it off. I think I'm gonna get a little bit of bright green. And I will add a little bit of that green just by dropping and dots and letting it blend, letting it move across the surface. Blue and green are side-by-side on the color wheel, so they will work well and moving around together. I didn't mix blend a little bit of the paint together. And so that helped that blue and green come together. And otherwise I'm just dropping in one drop at a time. This little teardrop is a lot more consistent than the red pink bird. He's kinda faded down. But I liked the way he looks here and we're going to leave them at that. Rinsing my paintbrush off, making sure I got clean water. And the same process we've done before. So each time we do this, we're working super quick. Lots of paint to start or excuse me, lots of water to start off with just filling in the shape. And then we'll start to getting to dropping in some paint here. In a moment. We start this process over again on this little guy. We're going to fill him in with that clean water, same as we've done before. I'm going to grab a little bit of yellow. It's fairly bright yellow, not starting at the head. And I'm going to just manipulate that pigment and move it around the bird, adding more color as I need, I'm getting a little bit of a brighter yellow to run right down his back. And then it'll be just like the sunlight's hitting, it's a subtle change. Then taking that deeper color and going across the belly, moving that pigment up towards the head and getting just a little bit more pigment. Making his head nice and saturated with color. Wiping the paintbrush off, rinsing it off. I am going to grab a little bit of orange. It's kind of a yellowy orange, finding a little spot off the camera. So I can mix those colors together. And it's just a little bit deeper. And we'll go ahead and add that big, huge proud tail feather. And that little bit deeper color. I'm going to grab a little bit of orange starting at the base of the tail. And I'm just going to draw marks up, just kinda moving that pigment, allowing it to flow from the base, that tail all the way out to the end. So it's darker where it hits his body and lighter at the end. Using that same color. I'm going to come in and start on a beak. So he's got his little open beak. I'll put the pigment further away from where I know there's wet paint. And I'll draw right back to it, almost touching until the very last second. So getting it super, super close. And then I'll let those connect here in just a second. There we go. And that will allow them to blend. The next video we'll be finishing off this beautiful trio. 6. Bird Trio 2 of 2: We're going to jump right back into those birds. So rinsed off my paintbrush, wiped it off. I'm just checking to see if that red bird is dry enough to start putting in little curved shapes. For wings. Want to use a little bit of a purple and a little bit of a blue color. And just working with that color just a little bit. I think I've got too much. I think it's too saturated, so we've got a little bit of water. And order's going to put it into little swishes of feathers in taking another stroke down the edge. And we're going to blend that in, wiping off the paintbrush, getting that water out. And so that'll allow it to just kind of move and fade off into the edge. Coming right along the edge, we'll get a little bit deeper color, almost as if it's an outline. But when we do that, when the paint is still wet, it'll start to move back towards the rest of the body or the rest of the wing. And let's just go ahead and add some stripes. It seems to work well, wipe the paint brush off. I think that I'm at top is bright. And so I think we need to go ahead and get those feathers in and start using the color that's still wet up there and start to move that around. You'll see here in a second, I'm just doing little strokes up, giving him a little tuft of hair at the top, which is adorable. There's still a lot of pigment there. So I'm going to wipe off my paint brush and dry it off a little bit and I'm going to absorb some of that color with my paintbrush. Just lightening that up ever so slightly. It was little bit too dark. And there I think he's gonna be perfect just like that. Maybe get a little clean water and soften those edges and allow that purple to move around just a little bit. Marking from left to right. I had a little bit of paint on my arm from leaning over my palette. I got them on the base of my bird. But I'm just going to ignore that. We're just going to let it go. There's no need to worry about anything like that. Moving on to our little teardrop, he'll kinda looks like the Earth. That with that blue and green. The green speckled in on the blue. Kinda like him working with mixing up a little bit of blue with a lighter and darker together, putting in a wing. And then another wing. Kind of like we did with our red one. Wiping the paintbrush for rinsing it off, getting a little bit of that excess water out. And then just working that pigment back and absorbing any extra pigment. I don't need any extra water. So we're back to mixing up a little bit of that blue color again, I'm not really specific. We're going to give some legs, so just some nice thin little legs. And I'm going to give him a short little chicken feet. At least that's what they're going to look like right now and give him some kneecaps. Why not give them some ovalis shapes on his legs? Keep that personality and character. Cute. He's kinda got a little chunky legs taking a little bit of that pigment out, wiping off my paintbrush, drying it off so it will absorb some of that water and pigment. It's time to move on. I'm using a little bit of that purple that's still left on my palette. I'm going to give our little earthbound teardrop water baby a big purple. I gonna go ahead and mark out the center of the eyes. So he's going to have a little purple surround, really big white spot. And I'm going to leave a little bitty highlight of white in that center of the smaller wipe off my paintbrush. I'm going to drop in just a couple of little drops of more concentrated pigment. Look like that color was a little bit too light. So just dropping in just a little bit more pigment will move on to our yellow bird. Have that purple in there. I think we'll go ahead and start with our legs on this guy. Deciding on what I wanna do. I think we need to have as little one little leg kick out to the front. He's a happy little bird. So instead of standing on both legs, he's going to stand on just one. Maybe he's Davidson. Maybe he's walking on the white that paint brush off, rinse it off, and get a little bit of clean water to the center. And that didn't work as well as it has in the past. So wipe off the paintbrush, dry it off so it can absorb a little bit of that pigment that's in the center, given it that illusion of volume. And that works really good right there. Means looking good, wiping my paintbrush and rinsing it off again. I'm going to get a little bit of the orange color we had used before for the accent on the tail. A little bit of that yellow and a little bit of that orange, making sure not getting that blue in there, then I wanted to just put a little bit of color. Yeah, that's not the right color. So let's wipe that off and let's try again, dry off that paintbrush. We're going to try one more time. Let's just get a little bit of that orange, a little bit deeper. It wasn't quite the right color. You don't know that sometimes until you put it on. So we're just gonna go right underneath that where we drew that i now that paint there was that water that was left there. So it's going to blend a little bit, which is perfect. I didn't plan on it, but that's a Okey-dokey. So wipe off that paintbrush. I'm just going to help it blend a little bit further. Wipe it off and draw the paintbrush. Time to move on and making decision about what color legs are little earth guys gonna get? We already have some purple. I'm keeping all bright colors. So we'll get some of that purple. And start with our little legs here. Again. Those skinny little legs two lines down. We're gonna give him some kneecaps to his his little legs are tiny, tiny, smaller little kneecaps. And those duck feet. We're going to square those off and make them a little triangle. Let's get a little bit of water on the paintbrush and see if we can. So very small area. So we'll see if we can give them a little bit of volume by letting, taking out some of that paint from the inside and letting it go to the edges. And it just didn't work. So let's bring down those little points. Let's give him a little point in there. So the triangle wasn't quite the look I needed. A course, didn't know that till I did it. And those little guys are looking good. Time to move on and debating on colors as far as what color we should put into the eyes of our red bird. So I think he made it blue. Just some bright blue kind of teardrop shape is a very small area. Again. These birds are pretty compact in here. Filling that area in and I want to, I have a little bit too much pigment. Wipe off the paint brush, rinse it off and dry it off. And I'm just going to take out some pigment out of the top of the eyes. So you'll have the bottom edge a little bit more saturated in color. I'm taking my time here, getting it just the look I want. And I think that works good. Moving on to our little earth guy, trying to decide what color he needs for his little tuft of feathers on the top. Because right now he didn't look really bird-like. So I'm going to take that bright green, maybe a little bit deeper green, wiping off my hand and make sure I don't get paint. And there's going to be making some loops on the top for him. Super quick, super fun. And we'll grab a little bit of blue. I think I took all three colors. Mine as well. Why not? I'll just put a little dot right there and there and there and there. Let's see. Yeah, That should be good. Just figuring out where the color needs to go. We're almost done with this guy. Yeah, I think we're done. Don't miss the next video. We've got two more birds are a little bit different than the other ones we've worked on. So hop on over to that next video and we'll be creating a nature and very vibrant pink and purple bird. 7. Nature & Pink Birds 1 of 2: Alright, welcome back to our last set of birds. Were going to make two birds in this one. So we're going to lift up this bar to his own, those circular shaped. And so the egg shape, He's almost really round and we're gonna give them U-shape that. So he's going to have some chunky thousand, some really skinny legs. And that same foot I have been creating. We're going to go ahead and do the same thing there. I like to have two off sized as they're pretty big. And since as beak. And I'll just go ahead and draw on those irises real quick. So quick and simple. This bird, He's going to be taller. Kind of a chicken E shape I think. I'm seeing I'm thinking of a really deep belly on him as so let's just go ahead and try it. So we're going to make the tail up to the head and then round off that big fat belly. Just sketching him out, getting him a little beak that sideways, it's gonna be a close beak. So I want to add top feathers. So skinny on the ends, big loops, little teardrop loops on the end. And he needs some fun tails. So let's do the same thing on the tail. Real quick sketches. And then put his little leg in. I think it will sketch out a little bit of a U-shaped wing. He's going to also be a little standing on 1 ft. He is definitely a fancy bird. He is our fancy as bird right now as of yet. So the little ligand, the same triangle feet. I won't get to starting to paint here in just a second. Getting clean water on my paintbrush, making sure I don't have any excess color there. We're going to start I start left to right. Again, take making sure I will check my wrist and my hand and make sure I don't have any wet paint there. And just drawing it, I'm drawing the water around the eyes. Leave it up to me to end up painting myself with the watercolor. Just going around those as being real careful. Getting water all over the place, remembering that that dry paper is thirsty. And let's go ahead and get some water into those little chicken, chicken thighs. Some big chunky U-shaped thighs. We're gonna go with that green color we mixed up previously. That's not exactly as bright as I want, so we're just going to leave that there and then we're gonna go ahead and add that bright, bright lime green. He's gonna be a green bird. There are Greenberg's in nature, right? Sure. Of course I'm not basing these birds off any reality whatsoever. Being careful to work around those eyes. Wiping off my paintbrush is needed. Grabbing more paint as needed, grabbing more water as needed. Because I'm just working super quick. There is no worries about doing anything really right or wrong. I'm gonna get it a little bit more of that green and work it around. Let's get some color into those thighs. To having in just a little bit here and there. And watching it spread as I paint. Deciding how much pigment I want to have. I noticed there are some dry areas that have no water. I'm gonna get a little bit of water and fill those areas. And you might be able to see them real here. Just a little dry there and right there. So I want that pigment to be able to move into those areas. Again, a little bit more paint, a little bit more paint, and a little bit more water and spread it around and wipe off my paintbrush. And I think we're gonna be good for now. Now, let's go ahead and add a little bit of drop of water and see if we can move that pigment around, creating little blooms is what they're called. We've taken a lot of time with this little green guy. Maybe add a little bit more of the rest of that color that's left on my palette, dropping in little drops and little drops and coming in really close to that i with it. And I think it will be, Let's get a little bit more, a few more drops, and then we're done. In the next lesson, we'll move on and paint his friend. Join me there. 8. Nature & Pink Birds 2 of 2: Alright, welcome back. I'm using an eyedropper and just adding a little bit more water to my palette. I like to do that sometimes as opposed to using my paintbrush, seems to be quicker sometimes, especially when I don't know what color I'm gonna be using next, I'm using a little bit of water again, clean water and just running along the outline of my bird. The same process we have done before. I'm going to grab just a little bit of pink. And I want to go ahead and get as much light color all over this bird real quickly, speeding up that video just a little bit. And then we are going to start getting in to just dropping in some color. I'm seeing that we're going to have a little bit of a darker belly on this bird. So making sure that we've got enough pigment down on that belly side. And then manipulating that pigment and moving it around. Working careful along those edges. Moving that pigment down. And then moving it out and up. Going back in. I like those little dots that were happening. So let's add a couple more and make him just very fancy. I'm going right on the underside of that sketch of the wing I created. Working in a lot more pigment. Spending a lot of time on this bird. I should have probably started off with pink and a lot of water. So let's grab or rinsing off our paintbrush. I think that's good on him. Right? So rinsing off paintbrush, making decisions as to where I'm gonna go next. I think we're going to start working with the, the top feathers. I'm just going to fill in those little teardrop shapes at the top. And then we'll work on getting the connecting color here in a moment. Just going in and out, lining and filling in those teardrops. Looking so cute and my bird still wet. So I'm being careful, I'm drawing from those top down to the top of the head and the bird is wet. So when I mix that other pigment is going to blend. Look at that, look how great that looks. Drawing a little bit more of that pigment down to the head and letting it all blend in together, not worrying about it. And so we're gonna go with that tail. And I think we're gonna go with purple, bluish, purple, purple, bluish purple. What do we do? What do we do? The debate goes on. Yeah, We're going purple. Just some of that pure, deep purple filling in those teardrop shapes. The pigments to strong there. So I've got a little bit of water and I'm going to borrow some of that pigment from the first one. And let's borrow a little bit more pigment and move those around. Finalizing the shapes as we do that. Because I just roughly dropped in some paint. Realizing pretty quick that pigment was a little bit dark. And drawing back down towards the tail. Now the tail is not going to react the same way because it is almost drive, not completely dry. So it's not going to really absorb that other, that purple pigment into the pink. I like the fact that these colors will be a little bit different. I'm going to rinse off my paintbrush, dry it off, and then we'll start working on our Greenberg. So let's grab a little bit of orange and we're going to drop in his irises with just pure orange, fill that thing all the way in. We've got the bigger one and the smaller one. And we're just putting in pigment there and we'll let that dry. I think he's almost done. So we're going to have to work on a whole bunch of different little things. This work on some legs. So getting that blue green or blue purple color, that Prussian blue ish, we're gonna go ahead and let's get him on his feet. And I'm going to draw in the feet first. This guy that'll allow that pigment to dry just a little bit, getting a little bit of paint in the center. And that's too much. Those first few worked out really good. Oh my goodness. Let's wipe off the paintbrush and will dry it off. We're gonna go into those little feet and let's zoom in. We're going to absorb some of that paint dried off. Absorb some of that. There we go, That's starting to look good. And C Now that gives us the volume that we need. And we can work on maybe taking a little bit of clear water and dropping in the center. And that will spread that paint to the pigment, to the edges. And we'll work on his legs. So I'm drawing from top from bottom to top this time because it sounds like a good thing to do. And a little bit of that blue pigment is starting to hit into the thighs and spreading up, which is really cute. Those eyeballs are super wet. And let's go ahead and add in a beak. So he's kind of a diamond shape. And he has so much personality. I love it, I love him. You gotta love them. These are your babies. I'm checking to make sure my pink guy is dry enough to work on and not too wet, but dry enough. So we have him set up and debating on whether what to do here. I think we'll just go ahead and dive in to getting a beak. I'm rinsing off my paintbrush. And we're going to grab a little bit of red and do a nice bold red clothes. Be again, painting right up to the edge. And then letting it touch. And that bird is still wet up there so that red is going to bleed back into the blue. And let's just take that color and do those feet. Why not read feet? He's a fancy bird. Will draw his little legs down. Let's see if I can get these feet right. This term, a little bit of water and manipulate that around. Just a little bit Same here. And I think we're going to have to absorb some of that pigment out. I'm just not batting 1,000 with *** feet. First ones turned out great. These maybe not so much. You can just watch me work here for a second. Okay, So we've finished the birds. Now, it's time to go ahead at least painting bird. Now it's time to go ahead and grab those pins, markers, anything that you want to use, colored pencils even. And we'll dive into getting into some of those details. See you in the next video. 9. Details--the Fun Stuff: All right, This is our final video. We've grabbed are all var supplies. We're going to start working on maybe some outlining some details. I've got my micron 0.25 pin that I'll be working with. You can use any pen that you want to. You need to make sure that your paint is super dry. If you're going to use a pen that is water-soluble, otherwise that pen will bleed into any water. So if your pin is not water-soluble, you can paint as it or you can mark over it as it's still wet. This guy's pretty dry. I'm gonna circle is as about three times. Not really wanting to keep directly in those same lines. Outline the beak just a little bit down at the bottom. I'm going to start by putting in a few marks here and there around his body, especially on the areas where it's a little bit lighter, kind of following those same lines as the paint, making decisions as I go. So maybe outlining these wings. I think that's cute. And I've decided now to give this guy a little butterfly. So just putting a little body and a little antenna. A couple of wings with a few tiny, tiny little dots and lines that are going through those wings. Nothing too detailed, but definitely cute and whimsical. And we'll work on around the body, maybe down the legs. Maybe not necessarily outlining every portion of him, just giving some areas that are highlighted. I'm going up and I'm just going to do some loops in and around my watercolor. So it gives a little bit more movement to the birds and especially not following exactly along the line. Yeah, just throw one out here kinda randomly. So there's no color there, but it worked well. I'm gonna go and outline a little bit around that iris. And making decisions might go back and forth between the birds. Going couple of circles around the left die outlining the beak. And then I'll run a few lines around this guy, this orange is bird. And I've put a few little tufts of feathers, and I've decided now, let's just go ahead and loop around him a couple of times. Why not making those decisions just really quick. And knowing that I really can't make a mistake on any of these marks, outlining or giving a little bit of something to the legs. And then I'm going to just sit here and think what to do, what to do. Let's go back up to this. I and let's give him a couple of little circles. Kinda gives him a droopy eye. Like he's tired. A few little toughs of feathers up at the top Justin pen. And he is precious. And I want to put some circles. I'm going to put a series of dots running up the inside of that tail feather. I'm going to speed up this video here and you can just watch me work for a little bit on this guy. Now I decided his senses little friend had a butterfly, he needed a heart and some stars and some squiggly little feathers. And don't overwork these. Maybe put a few marks, maybe come back in and look at it after a few minutes. Now I've decided to come in here underneath those little drops of purple and add little U-shapes to give a little bit more definition to some of those areas. Again, taking a look at it from a distance and I think we're good on this one. Moving on to the next, the trio of birds having my micron, 0.25 Penn course, you can use any pen that you want, any colored pencil, crayons, anything that you want. And then just taking a few moments to look at my birds and decide what I want to do. So it started with a yellow bird. I'm just going to outline his beak a little bit. No real rhyme or reason as to why I chose to start with a yellow bird. And I stop there and I'm just going to start outlining the tail. It's one of those things. It was easier. I knew I wanted to do it. And so we'll just get that tail in nice and big. And we'll work on the rest of his body. Looping around connecting points, maybe put a little dashes. And he's gotta get as little wing outlined. So I'm going to put a few little dashes to make it look like he's got multiple feathers and all go up to his eye. He's got a closed eye. So we're just going to put in a couple of little eyelashes because what little fancy bird doesn't need eyelashes. And at the top, I'm going to add a few of these little curly cues, right? He is so fancy and he's, he's singing. So let's go ahead and give him his voice and some music notes. You've gotta have your sheet music there. And we've got to really see that he's singing in a couple of little swirls. Moving along to our little Earth looking bird we outlined did little lines on the inside. I'm going to loop around him a couple of times, outlining the wings. Going carefully around those eyes and putting him a little bitty pupil in. Oh my gosh. Just perfect. Little bitty pupil. He is great. Feel a little dashes zooming in. I'm going to put little stars up his wing. Again, if you're not just using a black pen, if you're using any other colors, you could add those in there. And let's get him some little eyebrows. He's got one, he looks like he's gotten angry or they're going to confuse now giving him as other eyebrow. Oh, yes, cute and confused. Just give them a little beak. I didn't add color to his beak like I did in some of the other birds. But he's got enough personality right there. And let's get our little pinkish red bird. We're going to go around him a few times, circle around his kneecaps. And let's draw in the feet like we did with the others. Instead of gate keeping him at his little chicken legs. We're going to go ahead and draw in and around. There we go outlining the wings, giving him a little heart right there on his chest. We're going to work on his eyes. Going around those eyes, adding irises, excuse me, pupils at the very top. He is definitely a funky little bird, giving him a nice long beak. Let's add a couple of little stripes. So he's got stripy little beak. Look at that. We're going to move on to our next birds. Our final are Duvall here, green and pink. And we'll go ahead and go around the bird a few times just to give him his fun and fancy. Going around those big chicken legs a few times. Big thighs. And I've decided he's a little nature, he's all green, so I'm going to put like little bitty leaves kinda coming around him. Leaves and leaves and leaves all the way around. Now that we've got his leaves done, we're going to circle around his eyes and go ahead and outline his feet, his beak. I think he's gonna be done. Oh, let's see. Maybe give them too little bitty eyebrows, right? We give one on arteriosum eyebrows so he needed some two. Don't want them to feel left out. Some of my tail feathers are still a little bit wet. Again, I've worked on this in all one big time. So deciding where I'm going to put that wing and just putting in a little bit of a wing, I'm going to start putting in circles on this guy. Not really outlining those dots. But I just kinda felt like he needed to have a little bit of detail up in this head. Working my way around this bird. Adding little dots and little dots, little circles, not really dots, little circles just around. I'll start my little outline. Outline the beak. He's got a closed eye. So again, need eyelashes, right? Cute little eyelashes. And he's gonna get a little star right on the outside of his eye. Now if you had a different pen, I'm putting dots down on his legs. I need to add some switches to give him movement. A few dots up and around. And then I'll spend a little bit of time outlining those tail feathers and top feathers. He needs a few little lines for wings because he's so light right there. And I think he's done. So the next thing or the last thing you need to do is sign your painting. You're painting is done. I hope you enjoyed it. So be sure to oh, yeah, those eyes are really wet. I might come back and add a few details later, but we're going to let them be now. We got one more video, so be sure to hop on over and see that video. I've got a few things in that video for you. 10. Wrap Up : Hi friends. I hope you had a good time creating our whimsical watercolor birds. I knew I did. I mean, come on, look, he's got a little leaves. How adorable is he? And it was all just on a whim. You can create anything if you just let go and just have fun. I hope you take this lesson and apply it to many other things. Maybe you want to make a whimsical sea creatures, right? You can always do that. So if you're gonna go and post this on social media, please, please be sure to tag me Maria, vague Campania, that's going to pop up here in a minute along with my website. You can go visit me at www dot cotton and wood designs over there. You can sign up for my newsletter. I send out tips and tricks and just let you know the general chaos, my artistic world through that website and my newsletter. So that all will pop up here in just a moment. Be sure to do that thing you're supposed to do here and write a review from my class. Alright, let me know if there's anything else that you would like to see whether it's watercolor, procreate surface pattern design, illustrator, InDesign. I do a little bit of Photoshop too. There are plenty of classes on that. So let me know if there's anything else you'd like for me. Okay. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I had a great time. Have a great day.