Watercolors for Beginners: Colorful, Cute, Simple Little Birdies on a Branch 🐦

Hello friends. I am painting these cute little birds today. This is a little tree. I'm going to do that as well in a different tutorial, but look how cute they are. And you guys are not going to believe how easy they are. When I show you, you're going to be painting birds everywhere. I promise you. So I, my supplies I'm using, I'm just using 140 pound cold press. These are both artisto. You know, I love my artisto. Um, that was a plein air the other day, but I'm hoping to get out and paint again. This is a little pond by our house. Um, but it's been so hot. Oh my gosh. But anyways, stay tuned for that. So I'm using the artisto. These are these little artisto pads. Where is the cover? There you go. This is fall 2025. And I just keep them all in my bookshelf here. And I refer back to them during the seasons. I'll be using my eight round. You can absolutely, this is my brush, but you can absolutely use the velvet touch, which is this one here. So soft. It's got that nice short handle, same as mine. And those snappy brushes, which I think are just easier for beginners because they kind of snap back into place. And hold on one second cause I'm going to turn on my overhead light here. I feel like this is a little dark. One second. There we go. That's better. It's a little cloudy here today. We're in the eighties, but it's raining. So crazy weather, California. Um, and then I've got this little four round, uh, which I will link below cause you can also get the one from, um, uh, velvet touch Princeton. And look at that. I even have a birdie brush holder. Okay. The paints I'm going to be using. Definitely. This is the Paul Rubin set, but very similar to the Paul Rubin's My Lange series. So use what you have. This is the, like I said, Paul Rubin set. Um, but you can absolutely use your My Lange set. Uh, very similar. The Paul Rubin's professional set just has, um, higher light fastness and we're just going to start painting these beautiful little birdies. And then in another tutorial, I'm going to share this little tree here. Okay. So let's get started again. You're not going to believe how easy this is. Um, let's do this landscape. I love painting landscape. I just think it's so cool. All right. And I'm just going to stagger my little birds and then we'll draw a branch going through the whole thing. Like a bunch of birds are kind of hanging out together, right? All right. So I wet my brush and then I'm going to go into, um, let me move my palette over and see if we can get these paints in here. I'm going to raise up a bit. There we go. Okay. So I've got my little, My Lange palette here. Um, or Paul Rubin's palette here and then my Medan ceramic dish. So I'm going to put some of that cad yellow in there cause that's kind of the base color of a lot of my little birdies here. And this is definitely wet and wet. So I've got about 50% water, 50% paint in here. And I'm just going to tap off a little bit of that and let's paint our first birdie. So pushing my brush kind of in a clockwork like a counterclockwise. And then on top of there, as you can see a really light wash. And then on top of that, I'm going to go in with either my red or maybe even some of that pink. That we all love. And I will make that a 50 50 a mix as well. And you saw me tapping off some of that extra and then just tapping in and I'm going to let that spread on its own. Now I'll go into maybe another little birdie here and we'll do that one. Let's do that one in purple. So I'm grabbing some of that purple and let's see, where is my purple here? One second. This is in that same palette. There we go. I think that's the deep purple and I'm going to make that down here. There we go. So I'm just doing almost kind of like an egg shape, I guess. And maybe we'll add in some of that rose pink to that. Ooh, look how pretty that is. And there you go. Now while those are drying, I'm really letting them blend together. Look at that beautiful blend you get. This is where I'm going to take my little four brush and I don't typically use black. I use a Payne's gray because I just find it more interesting than the straight black. It has a bit of blue in it. So tapping that off and I'm going to go in and draw just a tiny little head. So, and I even, I, I let it touch into the body there. I might just darken that up a bit and then it's got a little beak and that's all I'm really doing. I'm keeping that pretty simple. But what I will do is add really light touch. This is where brushstrokes are handy to like practice these little brushstrokes here. And then let's go in again and maybe add some little feathers coming out. Really light touch here like that. And there's our first little birdie. Let's do this one and we'll maybe make him like he's looking up. At his friend up there. There we go. And his little feathers, maybe we make his feathers like this. Don't get too nitpicky here. And so they're both maybe checking something out over there. Then I'm going to do another birdie here. So I'll go back to my eight brush, making sure it's nice and clean and let's do another yellow birdie. Top, top, top. And we'll make him right here and he'll just be hanging out looking forward. But look how pretty all those beautiful blends are. And if you wanted to lift some of that, you could just do this. Rinse your brush, tap it off on a paper towel and lift a little bit off. So in here I'll go in with maybe some orange. Like that. And then I'm going to let that just blend and bleed and grab my small brush, go into our black or pardon me, this is the Payne's gray or you could use Prussian blue. And this is about 80 20. So 80% paint, 20% water. And let's make his little head forward and give him some little feathers. And his little feet make his little feet right here. And we'll draw or paint rather a, um, tiny branch going through all of these. Now what I'll do a lot of times is I will go in to those towel feathers and just darken those up just so you have some different values. There you go. Maybe darken his head a bit. And this one, since he's looking forward, I think what I'll do is just make a little triangle for his beak and that'll just look like he's looking forward there. Okay. Let's go on to another little birdie. We'll do this one. Start with that yellow again and maybe he's over here. Let's make him kind of diving down. Like he just leaped off the branch and he's going to come down. Maybe he's going to catch something yummy to eat. I don't know. Put a tiny bit of pink in there and let that blend because when you let them blend, look at the beautiful colors that we get. Aren't those pretty? So we'll let that blend. Maybe tap in a tiny bit more orange or yellow. And let's see. How about if we do another one right next to him? Maybe while he's diving down. So I think I'll do another little one right here. Let's go in with our purple. There we go. And then we'll tap in maybe with some Prussian blue. So let's go in our turquoise blue rather. There we go. And just tap that in and now let it blend just like the others. And this one, I'm going to put his head down here because he's, like I said, kind of diving outwards. Get a little bit more of my paint on my brush. Now that's pretty thick. That's not even moving. So I want to add more water to that. Till it's kind of moves, but not too much. And I can tap off my brush and then let's do his little beak. Like it's coming downwards. So I'm going to add in his head and his little beak. Really simple guys. Don't get, you don't have to get too crazy with the details. And then how about this little guy? I'm going to redo his little beak too is how about if he's looking downwards, like what is everybody doing? So I'll put his beak down there and then we'll do his little wings, give him some little fluffies. He's kind of a chubby little guy. And there you go. Let's see if that one's dry. We'll go back in and do that little triangle for his beak. And if it's too little, you can always use a pen, not a big deal, kind of color in his head. And there we go. That's a little guy. Isn't it? Let's do another, maybe out here. So I'm going to go back into that yellow 50 50 and put him maybe out here, rinse my brush, tap it off, get a little bit of that pink. And I like using the pink versus the orange because the pink and the yellow is going to be like a red and a yellow, but a very cool version of red. And it's going to turn an orangish color anyway. So look how cute they all are. Let's do a little branch in here. And then we'll come back to this guy. Here's my Van Dyke brown. I think that has a little bit of black mixed in it. And we'll start drawing these stems that they're all standing on like that. And I'm just making some little branches come out just for interest. And then this little guy, maybe he's, let's see, how can we connect a branch over there? There we go. And we'll do his little head. So we go into our dark blue and he's looking at everybody. Hey guys, what are you doing? What are you all doing? Get his little beak. Maybe his feathers are on the side too. And then we need to add their little tail feathers. So we'll make this little guys, let's make his go up and his kind of coming out down here. This little guy and this one, I'm just flicking like that. Aren't they cute? Now wait till we add those green leaves and such. I'm going to just darken up his little head a bit and we'll give him some little feathers and such too. A little bit more water. Cause we want it to move. That's you typically, unless you're doing a really dark value, you want your paint to move easily like that. So let's just give him some little feathers coming out here. Some little feet, give him some little feet. There we go. I have painted birds before and you guys were like, Hey, where's the feet? Um, let's go into our green and I'm using my little brush. So see how much that moves. That's 50% water, 50% paint. And then I tap off some of the extra paint and I'm kind of pulling my brush to the side. So I get a little bigger, larger brush stroke and then just go with how you feel. Like where does it feel like you need some green? That's typically what I will do. I'll create little bunches. There we go. Oh, so cute. Don't they just look all playful. And then we can do some, maybe little pink blooms. So we'll create some little flowers here just with three little brushstrokes. One, two, three little clusters of flowers like that. Oh, so pretty. I mean, this looks like a scene from my park. So since I can't get out right now for plein air, hopefully this will do it for you guys. And there we go. I'm pretty much done. So I hope you enjoyed that and this inspired you to give them a try. I mean, look how simple and cute they are and come up with your own little combinations of colors, but let them blend. So when I put it down, notice how as it dries, it just keeps kind of changing colors and blending, you know, more and more as you let it sit there. I was going to grab some of that olive green and maybe just add in a couple darker ones just for some interest. Look at those blended together. Isn't that pretty? Yeah, there you go. All right, everybody have fun. Um, I will be right here reminding you, you are an artist and I'm loving everyone's work on Patreon, sharing their pictures over there. You guys are awesome. I get so excited to wake up and see your comments in the morning, see what you're doing and stay tuned because I am also going to share this fun little painting. I've really been into kind of the rainbow type things, um, lately and using the colors of the rainbow in my paintings. I see I dripped here. Um, so stay tuned cause I'm, I'm hoping to have some more things like that and have fun. Most of all. All right. I will see you all soon. Happy painting, friends.