How to Paint a Bird Nest in Acrylic Spring | Easter Painting Tutorial

Hi everybody, it's Joy Young here. Welcome back for another painting tutorial. So I've got a larger canvas today, but you can paint yours on a smaller one if you like. I'm using a 16 by 20 canvas. It's stretched and the colors that we've got today and the brushes are all here. I'll have a full list of those below this video in the description box. Okay, so the first color we're going to start with is black. I'm going to add a little bit of black and I'm just going to just add it around here and there. We're going to create light and dark areas this way. I'm going to take some green with my black. Let's take a little bit of yellow. This is how I accidentally just picked some of that up. So I've got all three colors and we can just start pushing and wiggling this way and that way for some leaves. These will sort of be our blurry kind of background leaves. Let's take those three colors again. Take a little bit of that luminous green as well. This is what my brush looks like, just if you're wondering. And I'm going to come in with my angle brush, my number 10 angle brush here, and I'm going to start adding a little bit of white to my greens. And I'm going to start like this with a pointy end of the brush. Push, wiggle, let off. Change the position, push, wiggle, let off. Like all the little details and all those fine lines. I'm going to take a little bit more black and I'm going to take a little bit of my burnt sienna. And I'm going to start coming around and kind of wiggling a little bit. I'm kind of just using it like a liner brush. That's another reason why I really like using angle brushes. Okay, now I'm going to take some white with those same colors and just start doing the same thing, these little choppy ones here. I think this is the first bird nest tutorial I've done. This was inspired by a bird nest that I discovered out in our plum tree. Light around here, bigger pieces, and then a little bit of a shadow in here. I have a few more little straightaways here and there. Go over to my black. I'm just going to thin it out with a little bit of water. I'm going to choose a few spots where I'm going to just come really close to some of these and this is going to make them a little more 3D. I'm just going to focus on adding a little bit more of a shadow right in here. A little bit of water, a little bit more of that thinned out black, just thinning it out with water. Take a little bit of burnt sienna, a little tiny bit of white in there will make kind of a dark gray. A little of this one here, a little bit of water. I don't want to thin it out too much. Otherwise, it's not going to show up. It'll just dry, sort of see-through. I'm going to add just a few little little bits of green in here, a little bit of green, yellow, and white. Thin that out, twist and roll. And I'm going to have a few little little stems and lines and whatnot. Use a little bit more sap green here and there. And have a few of these stems. Take a little bit of black and green and I'm going to get in and around adding some more shadows right on the outside of this nest because the nest is nestled, right? It's nestled in here. So it's going to be casting a shadow on some of these leaves. This will give us the depth. Some of the leaves will have above and and then some of them are going to be off to the side and just kind of in shadow. So just by adding a little bit like that, that sets this down lower. You feel like it's down lower, right? In there. Nestled in there. Okay, time for our eggs. I'm going to start the eggs with a little bit of this compost blue, just a little bit on the end of my brush like this. And I'm going to add one here, just to overshape a little bit like that. And then we'll have another one going this way. Layer over. And we'll add another one right here. And then maybe one right here. Mix that up. And we're going to go around the outside of the egg. I think we need a little bit more black. Create little shadows. Make the egg look more like round and 3D. It might be easier to do this if you dry the existing layers off first, if they're still wet. Okay, I'm going to wipe the excess off. Made them a little bit bumpy looking. So you could use this brush for painting flower petals, too. I'm going to add a little leaf that comes out over top. And then just twist. And we're going to go right over that with all these beautiful shades of green. Warm, cool, dark, and light. I'm going to use my number three round brush, and I'm going to take some neon pink, red, and white. A little ball of each. And I'm going to start by just adding some little dabs. Push, go around. Little bud. Don't worry if you happen to pick up a little bit of green from your leaves, like I did. That's fine. Quite oftentimes the little buds have a little bit of green on them anyways. Use a little bit more white. Add just a little bit of yellow inside that one there. I hope that you guys enjoyed this one, and I want to thank you so much for taking the time to watch. If you haven't already, I'm going to ask you to please subscribe to my channel. It really helps whenever I get subscribers, where you leave comments, or like and share my videos. It helps put them in the algorithm so more and more people like yourselves can find my channel and enjoy learning to paint. Well, I wish you guys all the best. Happy spring, happy painting, and I'll see you soon in my next video. Bye!