Watercolor Layering Tutorial 💜 Painting A Parrot, Macaw Art

In today's video, I will show you how to layer watercolor with learning how to paint this parrot feather. Here, I've drawn a parrot portrait outline on my watercolor paper. I start with covering masking liquid on the edge of the parrot. Because I want to paint a soft background first. Painting background first or last depends on your painting skill, proficiency, as well as painting style. It affects the painting result in some cases. For the question of shall we paint the background first or last, you can check this video on my channel about painting procession tips about background. Here, I want to make a soft and abstract background coordinated. So, using masking liquid will help me easily arrive the goal. The main pigments I use for the background is burnt umber and ultramarine. These two granulation can get a special texture that I'd like to contrast the realistic bird. For the first layer, I'm building up a watery light layer for each color section of the parrot feather. This will create a transparent base tone. I apply yellow limo, aqua blue for the abdomen and back feather. For the neck, I use gray and black as the base color with some splash of yellow, making the color blend each other. The first layer of this area dry completely. I build up second layer using saturated and rich charcoal black, painting each piece of the feather separately. I'm working on the second layer of the abdomen area. I rewet the paper and use wet-on-wet technique to painting the shadow shape of the feather. Please note that you need waiting a while, almost half minute. Let the water absorb into the paper and then make your brush stroke on it. Because this is the best time for making a soft shape shadows. My brush is just damp and I use yellow ochre with a little bit of burnt umber, get a mixture for it. For the shadow that near the wings, I apply more burnt umber. For the right wing shadow, as it reflects some of yellow from its chest and abdomen, the color tone in that area tend to be a little of yellow-red hue. Now, I'm moving on making the second layer of the left wing. This pigment called ultra blue. I paint each piece of feather separately wet-on-wet. This step may make you overwhelming during the painting, but be patient and enjoy it, all the result can become exquisite and beautiful. Now, I'm painting the third layer for the wings. I use my damp brush with more ultramarine and aqua blue mixture to intensify the shadow. Here, I'm making the fourth and fifth layers. By making several layers, the feather looks pretty realistic and good volume now. There is no fixed and standard number of layers to measure the effect of your painting. It depends on your subject's purpose of expression. The more layer, the darker and more saturated color you can achieve. But note at this point, the layer you are working on will become opaque. I use the same way to painting the other area of the feather. When the painting is almost finished, I check the total volume of the painting. I thought the shadow of the abdomen need more darker, so I gave it more layers to reinforce the shape of the bird. Other part of the painting need the same checking and adjustment to do, so that serve the three-dimensional effect. Thank you for watching. Please leave me a like and subscribe my channel if you like my video. Your support will help me bringing you new and free watercolor tutorial like this.