Watercolor Chickadee Painting for Beginners Easy Bird Painting Tutorial

Good morning, Deb Watson here. In this video you're going to see how to paint this cute chickadee. Chickadees are not only my favorite bird, they're easy to paint. Let's start with some suggested colors. It's always a good idea to test your color selection before you start. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Just use a piece of scrap paper, wet the surface, and for my black I'm using indigo. This is indigo watered down. I want to see how the indigo looks with the cobalt blue and second cerulean blue. Now these colors are both light pretty blues and either one would work well but I personally like the cerulean blue better so I'm going to go with that. Next I'm getting a yellow and burnt sienna because I want to see how they look with the indigo and the indigo and brown will work well for the branches. It doesn't look muddy. The yellow and blue will make a nice green. Doing a quick test of your colors is really worth the time so you know how they'll turn out. Now we're ready to paint. You can download this outline and the reference photo at watsonwatercolor.com. It's in the size for a painting or a card and you can trace it onto your paper or draw the outline. We're going to start with the background. Wet the entire background including the leaves, the branch, everything but the bird. Using a soft wash brush is the best way to wet your paper and to apply washes of color. This is my favorite brush. It's a silver black velvet oval wash brush but any wash brush will work and there's many that aren't very expensive. I apply plenty of water and then tilt the paper so that any extra water can run off. I'm making my background a blue but I like the indigo so I'm mixing indigo with a little cerulean using a big brush to do a loose diagonal area from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. Now be sure to leave the chickadee's head outside the wash area. That's your center of interest. The top right needs something but not as dark as the diagonal area, just a little bit of color. While this wash is still damp you can tweak it. If it spreads too much, if you have a big area of solid color you need to break it up, just lift some up with a paper towel or you can use a smaller brush to add a few small areas of dark color or even spatter. Now did you notice I'm using the side of the brush to just scrub on a few slightly darker areas of different sizes. What you don't want is a lot of spots. Your wash should keep spreading as it dries and as long as it's damp it should be workable. I think I want to add a few suggestions of green so I'm mixing some of the blue and the yellow to make a light green. I add some brown and that's not the color I want at all. When you're mixing colors, if it's getting worse instead of better, don't keep adding stuff. Just wipe it up and try again. Spattering. Spattering can add interest and break up a wash. I'm tapping my brush on my finger to spatter some small drops of light green onto the wet area. There's lots of different ways to spatter but this is an easy technique that you can learn with just a little practice. Spatter does go everywhere so you have to dab it up off your bird and your sky and you may want to protect your table. You know it's hard to quit once you start painting but try to keep your background simple. You want your viewers attention to stay on the bird. You can always change it later also but once you have something you can live with, dry it well. If it dries too light, sometimes watercolor dries a lot lighter than it looks wet and if yours does that, you can re-wet the area and add more color. Next we're going to paint the branch. I'm using a mix of the burnt sienna and my indigo or brown and black. Now the goal for the branch is to have variation in color and value. That means you want some areas light in color and some areas darker, some areas more brown and some more darker brown or black. To create lighter areas just add water or you can dab up some of the paint with a paper towel. I'm painting around the bird's feet but if you're working small you could just add the feet with an ink pen later. The feet aren't that important and you don't want them to stand out too much so don't sweat it. Now these branches get thinner and lighter at the edges. If you have trouble making a thin line with your brush, you can also apply paint with a toothpick or use a special brush called a liner or just use a pencil or ink pen. When the branch dries we can finally paint the chickadee. You want a real dark black for the head area, the eye and under the beak so don't make it too watery. Use fairly thick paint. I want the top of the head to look a little bit lighter like the sun is shining on it so I'm going to add water to mine to lighten the color and then I just use a damp brush to lift some of that color back up because it keeps filling in. The bottom beak is also black. The top of the beak is going to be a gray. Now the tail is gray but it needs to stand out from the sky. If your sky is light you can make the tail darker gray. If your sky is dark you can leave the tail a lighter gray. The wing is darker at the bottom and lighter gray at the top but try for a smooth blend of color between the dark and the light. You don't want it to look stripey. A chickadee's body is a light beige but it needs shading. Now it's easier to do shading on a wet area so wet the body with clean water. Work in some of your gray or you can make a beige with your brown and just a little gray. Now you can do a smooth blend of color or you can add some short strokes to make it look feathery. Play with it as long as you want but try to leave the edges white. The head in the white area is going to get a little bit of shading under the black stripe and eye but leave a little bit of white right under the eye. On a chickadee right beside the wing it has a little hint of color so I'm going to add a touch of burnt sienna and maybe a little darker gray. This area in the background is bothering me. See how the color stops right at the branch? Above the branch is color, below the branch is nothing. That doesn't look natural so I re-wet the area and touch in a bit of color. That's better. This area looks lacking also. Getting your background just right is something you can work on throughout the painting. Now for the leaves. Remember once again the goal of the leaves is not to have perfect green leaves, it's to have variety and have the colors match the picture so don't use a tube green. Generally it's going to stand out and distract from the chickadee. Mix your own green with the yellow and the blue or the yellow and the black and use a little bit of brown. Foliage and landscapes always have more brown than people think and adding it in will make your paintings look more natural. The background leaves, the ones that are the farthest away, will be very light and watery. The ones that are closer can be a mix of your greens or a mix of green plus brown. Try painting part of a leaf with one color and then the rest of it with a different color and just let the colors mix on the paper. Variety is so much more important than carefully painting each leaf the same. Now when you're working so close to your picture it can be difficult to get any variation. Try setting the painting up and stand back about three feet. If you can't see variation from three feet away you need to add more variation. You need to add more darks and lights even if it doesn't look quite right when you've got your nose against the paper. Back to the chickadee I'm going to add a little more color, some feathers under the eye, some in the body and the wings. You can suggest a lot of feathers with just a few subtle lines. Last I'm going to use an opaque white to put a dot in the eye and make some feathery edges on the white areas. This is optional but I think it adds a nice touch. Then it's time to clean up for the next painting. This chickadee is a very simple painting and I hope yours turns out beautifully. Don't hesitate to add your own touches or favorite colors. If you paint the card size for your friends you can experiment and see which one turns out best. Visit Watson Watercolor for the free lesson and lots more. Happy painting!