Sunset hummingbird tutorial by Rachels Rocks

Hey everybody! I've had some requests to do hummingbirds as well as sunsets so I'm going to do a sunset hummingbird today. I'm going to paint an oval of white paint onto a rock. My rock is oval shaped kind of so I'm just going to stick with that shape but I'm not going to cover the whole rock in white. I want a nice oval shape on the rock because what we're going to do is we're going to frame in that oval shape that we painted on. So once you've painted two coats, you make sure that that's really nice and dry before you get started on the sunset. These are the colors I'm going to pick today. You can pick whatever colors you want. If you want to do a more realistic sunset or if you just want to be creative, pick whatever colors your heart desires. You're going to need a blending brush so a brush that's bushy at the end or bristly. One that you feel comfortable blending with. I find my older brushes work really well for that. I'm just going to dab on color wherever I want in this white space that we've created for ourselves and I'm starting with it's called a drift. It's like a light light teal, very beachy so I thought I'd start off with that color. I'm also using satin finished acrylic paints as well as matte finish. It doesn't matter what finish of paint you're using as long as it's acrylic because in the end we're going to put a gloss coat of Mod Podge over top of it anyway. So it's going to be shiny no matter what. Now it's always easier if you've seen any of my other tutorials to make sure that you're blending while the paint is still wet. They don't blend together once it's dry so definitely work quickly while your paint is still wet. I'm adding different shades of blue, green, I'm going to add some yellow, orange, magenta and of course purple will be in there because that's one of my favorites. And just dab that color on wherever your heart desires and if you want to put clouds in once you're done with the sky color you can brush on a couple of little white clouds or if you do like a darker sky more of a night night sky you can put some stars in there but just keep in mind that we're doing a silhouette of a hummingbird so the hummingbird silhouette is going to be done in black. You don't want your sky to be too dark or you won't be able to see your hummingbird. So I'm adding in some yellow and orange. I'm using different brands of paint, folk art, apple barrel, different kinds, it doesn't really matter, deco art, whatever paints you have and whatever colors you love that's all you get to use today. That's where your creativity comes in and even if it looks kind of messy and you're not really happy with it once we put our silhouette on it's going to look beautiful I promise. Now you can look up silhouette pictures or silhouette tattoos on Pinterest or Google images and find if you're not able to draw one you can find images of them and you can try and work off of those. Practice a couple of times before you take the pencil to your rock. That's what I always do. I always practice on some paper first just to make sure I've got what I want and then I draw it onto the rock itself. Always with pencil because you can always go back and fix it after. I'm adding some bright magenta in there. I'm from northern Ontario and we have lots of snow and it's going to be a while before we see flowers and green grass so I wanted to brighten up my day a little bit today and do some bright colors on this sunset. You can even be more creative and add a little sun in there in the background somewhere. More likely in with the yellows and oranges you could put like a little circle of yellow in there it would look like a sun. You don't have to do that just be creative. I'm just trying to throw some ideas out there for anyone who doesn't want to copy my idea or if this one's just simply boring. I want to thank all my new subscribers as well. It's amazing how many of you are following me already and excited about my tutorials and getting out there and painting again after maybe being in a bit of a slump. I hope I can get your creative juices flowing because mine are constantly flowing and I'm so glad I'm able to share it with you. I'm adding some dark indigo in at the bottom there. It's still not going to be so dark that we can't see the silhouette though so keep that in mind. Looks kind of like a strange planet. Definitely haven't seen a sky that color although I do get to see northern lights up here and oh they're beautiful but not like this rock. Now once you're finished that let it dry. Make sure you're happy with it and take some black acrylic paint and line your oval. I'm going to put a nice thick outline of black and I'll show you why afterwards but basically we're putting a frame around our sunset right now and we're going to let that dry so that we can work with it without it smudging anywhere. I still want to show off my natural rock but I want to frame in our sunset. Awesome. So now once it's dry we're going to take the picture of a hummingbird and I'm just going to draw one up here quickly. Sketch one out on a piece of paper just so I can kind of get my idea out but not quite onto the rock yet. And like I said you can use Pinterest or Google Images and try and get your idea from there. It's not safe to always copy it but try and get your ideas from there of how you want your hummingbird to look. And once you're happy with that sketch it on to your rock where you want it to be and once again with the paints that I've used and the erasers that I've used any mistakes I make I can easily erase afterwards anyway. So I always use pencil and eraser. I'm also going to do some flowers. I'm just making these up they're just you know plain easy flowers to do nothing spectacular. I sketch those on paper as well just so that I had that idea in mind. I added on to it a little bit added a bit more flowers so that it looks like the hummingbird's going to get some nectar from them during the sunset. Once you're happy with your design in pencil that's when you take a fine lining brush and some black acrylic paint and I usually cut the bristles on my brushes until they're really fine until I'm happy with them. I go through a lot of lining brushes because they don't last me very long so I'm constantly cutting my paint brushes in order to get the right size. So now I'm filling in the the lines that I was happy with in pencil anything else we can erase afterwards once it's all dry and I'm just going to fill all of it in in black as if we're only seeing the black silhouette of the hummingbird going to get a drink from the flowers and once it's dry you might see that some of it is showing through some of your sunsets coming through the black just go back over it again but you're not going to see those imperfections until you let it dry completely. So I actually use my hairdryer on a cool setting and dry it quickly because I tend to be impatient when I'm doing my tutorials so I use the hairdryer on a cool setting to dry it and make sure that I can see if there's anything that's been missed and then I go back to it afterwards. I'm just filling it all in and you can adjust it once you're done and you step back and take a look at it you can adjust it the way you need to it's just the only problem is you can't erase both that black paint now so make sure you're careful. Any mistakes you make with the black paint like for instance if I made one of those petals with a big bump off the side of it I would have had to enlarge the petal I there's not no way for me to erase the big bump off the side so it's you got to make sure you have the design that you want and that you follow that design carefully with your black paint. It's really hard to go back and fix a sunset around that black paint. There we go and I'm going to add a couple more swirls in you can do like a little dragonfly coming down to check out what the hummingbird's doing um whatever whatever makes you smile. You can see my pencil marks which I'm going to go back over and erase very soon. I'm using a dotting tool and I'm just going to add a dot at the base of the flowers um just to kind of finish them off a bit better just adding that little dot there uh makes it look like it's attached to the stems. There we go definitely let it dry uh go back with your eraser and erase all your marks and then with the finishing touches on the frame I'm going to use dotting tools and go this is why I used a thicker a thicker line on the outside. I'm going to use a big dotting tool you can also use the end of your paintbrush and I'm going to do dots all the way around in that thick line of black. This is the only place we're going to put gold on today unfortunately. Now all this does is just gives it a nice little frame separates the painting from the natural stone and makes it look super fancy and just follow your line all the way around. If you need to grab your lining brush and your black paint and adjust the line because it might be lopsided or uneven you can do that as well right now just don't get it on the front of your hummingbird portrait your hummingbird picture it's starting to look really pretty. You don't have to use gold you can use uh different colors you can use brown if you want so it looks like a picture frame um or wooden or or what have you. I just am a big fan of gold so you'll see a lot of gold on my stuff. Once you let that dry um you have the option of spraying it or or whichever way you like to make it look glossy um today I'm just going to make the the painting the painted part of the rock glossy. I don't want the whole thing to be glossy so I'm going to use Mod Podge and it's really gloss it's the really glossy kind it almost looks like a glass coat over top it does look foggy and um almost like there's a milky a milky look to it it it does dry clear like a glass finish and all I'm doing is painting even over top of the gold dots I'm making sure all of the the rock that's been painted is covered in the gloss and this stuff you can actually put a couple of coats on and it settles nice and even without brush marks as long as you brush it carefully and you don't leave any big thick lines of it anywhere but I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I I hope I hope to see some more hummingbird sunsets out there have an awesome day.