Colorful Butterfly Watercolor Tutorial for Beginners - Peacock Butterfly Painting

In today's tutorial we are going to paint this beautiful peacock butterfly. I can't wait to show you how we get here. This contour the outline is available in my store so you can find the link for that down below along with several other butterfly outline that we've done in tutorials but that will be linked down below and I am going to start by actually lightening everything. So I wanted you to kind of see what I was working with and then we're going to lighten it with this kneaded eraser. I just did this in a regular pencil it's actually the pencil my kid does his homework with. So not the best drawing pencil probably 2B. So very soft so I definitely want to pick some of this up with just a kneaded eraser and I'm just rolling it along. You can see how it's picking up that excess lead and to kind of reset it I'm just going to pull it and then I'm going to roll along this second side. This will also help to get rid of kind of any excess oils that might be on the page from my hand. It's not a bad idea to do overall. So I can still see it. I realize on from the camera it's very difficult to see but it's pretty easy for me to see and to see kind of like some of the details that I've mapped out that you'll find in the template if you choose to use it. All right let's talk about palette. So I just kind of played around a little bit and I wanted to share with you the colors that I'm going to be using. Now if you have taken any of my if you've followed any of my butterfly tutorials in the past some of these will be review. We will be using white as well as hematite genuine which is kind of my favorite go-to black. It's a little bit warmer. It's a Daniel Smith color very pigmented. It does granulate but I actually like that for my butterflies. This is kind of a mix I'm playing around with how I'm going to eventually mix the brown that is so prevalent in the peacock butterfly. I also have transparent yellow very similar to lemon yellow as well as I'm going to be using scarlet lake for the ruddy red orange color and a good alternative would be cadmium red. For the blue bits I believe I'm going to be using cerulean though a good alternative would be Windsor blue. In addition to the pigments that I have listed I will also be testing out this fine line masking fluid pen. I've used masking fluid many times in the past but I actually and I was going to use this for a different tutorial but my masking fluid that I've been using for years which is this with Windsor and Newton it's great there's just what I have but it is done as you can see there's no more fluid left to my masking fluid so we are going to switch directions a little bit and test out this beauty. Let's get started. All right before I add in the masking fluid I'm taking just a little bit of our transparent yellow and I'm really going to water this down so see how pigmented it is here. I really want it watered down. I'm going to add a very light very subtle underpainting so just so you can see this is where the body is and the wings come out and I'm going to add it before we add in our masking fluid just to make sure that that yellow tone is underneath for just kind of the speckles that we have coming throughout it. That will mean that when I take off the masking fluid the yellow has been preserved at least that's the goal right? Again this is going to be very light I can always go back in and add more pigment later but it's very hard to pick it up so what I'm going to do is I'm going to very gently add some of this pigment in here. I'm going to keep it looks like it's most concentrated here and I'm going to let it kind of now I'm cleaning my brush off just it's just a little damp and I'm going to kind of pull it down a little bit and that will help it to kind of fade gracefully. That way it's not necessarily changing like this section here above we've got like kind of the eye and then this dark section it's kind of a creamy tone not necessarily yellow so I'm keeping the bulk of the yellow close to the body of the butterfly and I'm allowing the rest of it to kind of fade out. Even here where it eventually leads into kind of our orangey tone I'm even going to bring it in here just pulling it over we're kind of painting what's underneath right now we're not really painting what you can see as readily because there are these beautiful stripes over here and then this section with the white dots here so we want to keep those clean and clear but still have our beautiful fade out and then here kind of at the top of the wing I'm going to add a little bit of our scarlet lake or cadmium red depending on what you have in your stash or what is readily available to you because I see at the just at the tip base here it kind of fades in so I'm cleaning off my brush that's more than enough pigment and I'm going to with just a damp brush kind of tap that where I want it to go that's just the slightest hint so I still want to capture it I just want to be very delicate with how I do it all right so my left side is still drying a little bit but I'm going to work on my right side and just get this started again I'm using this fine line masking fluid that I'll have linked down below and you can see exactly what I'm using but I am twisting off the cap and we've got this cute little squeezy tube I've never used this before so before I go too crazy I'm going to just take a little bit of bath tissue and kind of test it out on here so I can see what this looks like without it oh glad I used it on the bath tissue first okay hopefully user error nope still coming out that one side what's going on so I took the pen apart and it looks like so there's this pin that goes inside it looks like there might be some I don't know it seems pretty soft all right I'm not sure exactly what happened but apparently whatever was clogging it is now stuck to my body because it I noticed it's working fine so we're gonna try it it might be a bad idea we're gonna try it anyway okay I'm gonna start with creating kind of these little that is a little thicker than I was hoping it would be zigzags here so that we keep the integrity of that yellow tone I'll keep a rag handy because it gets clogged even while it's flowing whoo not my favorite tool guys not gonna lie oh my goodness all right let's do the little dots that come out it's clogged again so pushing it out onto the tissue oh and just making little dots I'm not even pushing at the moment I'm just tapping so the great thing is when those two dry we can just take those off and no harm no foul trying to not keep the big ones all like clustered in the same place I'm trying to have them kind of spread out um just so it doesn't look weird uh and so it looks kind of intentional oh man what a stink it's clogged again I keep um getting a hunk out maybe maybe it is clogging so fast it's kind of blowing my mind how quickly it's clogging well I don't know if you can see but it exploded all over me so I don't know what happened we'll figure it out hopefully all right so what I'm gonna do instead is I'm taking the tip and I'm dipping it into the bottle and using this to kind of make our dots and I'm not even going to keep expanding on this side I'm just going to try and save as much as I can of this side so that they're kind of even all right I'm gonna go wash my hands all right you can kind of see where we are headed with this project now I I tried to record this earlier but my kids were around and it was getting kind of noisy so I'm just going to talk over what I did um since you since we cut out a little bit and I started to work on this side just to kind of figure some stuff out so the first thing I did was I added another wash of the yellow I wanted that to be a little bit brighter especially up here on the top wing I really felt like it needed to have a little bit more of a pop so we added that in really quickly it won't show up underneath the masking fluid that we have here because we've already placed that down so I might need to brighten that up in post but for now it's going to be fine I also went through and I added the blue underneath because almost every time you see the blue it's surrounded by black or a deeper color and so I think it's okay to start with the blue and allow the other colors to layer over on top of it that way you kind of I had a little bit of muddiness up here in this on this right hand side and so that way we can avoid that by placing the blue first because it's a little bit lighter and so so it's not as likely to make that those colors as muddy as it was making the blue for my first round so for this half we're starting with the blue first and then we're going to start adding the other colors so we've added the blue we have our yellow a little bit deeper we're ready to start jumping into some of these other colors so I'm going to start here and I'm allowing the color to kind of fade a little bit over here wiping my brush off so I've got a damp brush and I'm just going to scoop up some of this pigment that will eventually blend in with the brown like we see over here but I don't want that to happen I don't want to have to be covering up pigment when I go in with the brown I want that to be kind of ready primed and ready to go see we've got this black section here and kind of come up you can see I already wet this area just a little bit so that it's bleeding nicely it should kind of create a nice blend for us being careful around our blue section and the nice thing about this if you find that you're having trouble following the lines for like these blue eyes or these different sections is that nature is imperfect and so just like not everybody's freckles are in the same exact place not every butterfly's spots are going to be exactly the same even within the same species so don't stress too much about getting things exactly the way you think that they're supposed to be or exactly the way they appear obviously being as close as possible will get you the best result but with things that are natural don't stress about it too much all right and then we have some red some of the same red up here looking at my reference image it goes right down and kind of touches this blue section I'm going to clean off my brush so it's damp and clean I'm just going to kind of run that along the edge to get just a little bit of feather and I'm pulling it out here just a little bit so it's kind of blending cleaning it off wiping it down it's going to blend in nicely and this just gives it a slightly softer appearance there are some more crisp lines in here but this section isn't one of them so we just want to keep that where it's supposed to be all right I'm going to move on to the black now so we're using our my hematite genuine any black that you like will do I have some lamp black and what's the other one called whatever it is so that's a little wet I want it to be a little thicker so a little more pigment and a little less water so that I don't have to do quite as many layers because this is a pretty rich deep value okay so we have this masking fluid on it but I just feel like it's a little thicker than it needs to be so I might I might not follow it exactly you'll see definitely towards the tip here but we'll see how it goes we have to go in after we take the masking fluid off and kind of remove some of those kind of some of the leftover sections now I'm looking at my reference image and this section kind of comes down in like a stripe an extra stripe so I want to kind of include that and then I'm just dabbing in some more of this black pigment to make sure that it's nice and saturated that we're not going to lose any of that as it dries all right picking up some more pigment go into this it's kind of like a see it's a polygon pointing in this direction I made that a little bit big but that's okay again one of those things that it's not going to be as noticeable to somebody who is just looking at it but because I know the reference image a little bit more I'm looking at it and this particular butterfly some of his quirks and stuff it's going to be more obvious to me all right we're making some good headway it's starting to come together kind of come to life here so I'm going to start pulling in we've got the black section that goes here and then section here and then I'm going to rinse off my brush dab it so that it's still damp and it's not I would say it's a dirty brush still I'm just going to pull this along the edge just like we've been doing just to soften everything repeat dipping it into the water wiping it off on a paper towel or my rag I'm just pulling some of the excess to soften the edge definitely going to do the same thing here this is definitely a softer area I'm going to need to do another layer of that red so maybe should have waited to add the black in so if you are watching through before you paint maybe take note of that finish the red part get it as deep and saturated as you want and then follow through with the black we got a little we got a little anxious over here okay so washing everything off cleaning it off we're dipping into our scarlet lake again mixed with the transparent yellow and just adding another quick wash now how you do this without reactivating the paint is that there's not a ton of pigment and there's not a ton of water on your brush so you're not kind of picking things up and you're not constantly going over the same area so if you're not you're not rubbing like this along the paper like I just did to kind of reactivate that you're just placing it down moving it into place adjusting and then you're leaving I'm just adding another layer of paint down to keep things just a little bit deeper I am still I was hoping that adding that other layer would the other layer of the yellow wash on here would kind of be enough to have this be quite as bright as I want it to be but it's not so I'm just going to add that in here being careful not to activate the black cause problems there and then a little bit brighter here there's a little stripe of red here next to a touch of the black look for these little quirks with your butterfly look for details that might easily be missed and see if you should add them in not everything is necessarily a definitely added in some things are some things and they just aren't and that's okay all right before I get too carried away we're going to mix our brown real quick and then we'll start adding that in I think that's what will really bring everything all together so I'm going to start with I'm just actually going to use this yellow with our scarlet lake that's right here I know I would like the brown to be nice and warm now we're already using cerulean so I am going to pull that one in though I don't think it'll be deep enough to get the color where I want it to be but we'll see I don't I mean we're getting pretty close but I do want to be able to have some richness in there and all of these colors are fairly light on the value scale obviously yellow is so while that is very close I am going to add a little bit of black in here that we're already using just to keep everything consistent now the black is very granular a very granular color so it will kind of separate out and that I think is what we're going to go with all right I don't know if you can see what I was talking about with the separation but I'm going to have to be very careful as I'm placing this down I don't want my paint to be too watery or else it'll start to separate you can see that a little bit on this side but I don't hate the overall effect and I'll show you how you can fix that problem if you have that problem with your painting so we're going to just start applying it to the edges our brown that we've mixed really using every pigment that we've had thus far in our palette and keep tapping that in and just bring it down I want it to be concentrated on the perimeter because that's what it is in my reference image so I'm placing it down with the of my brush tapping it in as needed whoops sorry it's focused on my hand there we go and then I'm pushing my brush down and kind of dragging it this way I will leave less pigment behind I might pick some of it up but I can always kind of tap some of it back in and rinse my brush off tap it off so I have a dirty brush and I'm just pulling that down kind of slowly blending things together now if I was really on my game which I'm not right now I'd have this side blended out as well so kind of like how we had the red fade here try and do something similar here but I really felt like this was more important than this section to have that be blended out nicely so by working in small thin layers instead of having this whole section be too wet all at once I'm avoiding some of that separation of the paint and hopefully it will reward us with a very beautiful gradient it is the next day because babies wake up when they want so I am just getting ready to add in a little bit more blue so I've kind of taken a step back and I'm looking at some of these details and I want to add a little bit more blue in here just to kind of give that a little bit of an oomph and since everything is nice and dry we won't have any problems with kind of immediate bleeding I'm going to be very careful not to reactivate some of this red I'm really just adding the glaze so it's not very wet and there's not too much pigment on here so we're just going to kind of softly add this in on some of these edges and we're just going to deepen this just a little bit same thing down here and we might add a little bit more later on but I'm pretty happy with how this is going okay now it's time to move down south a little bit I think we will eventually add a little bit more of the brown here but I think I want to get this section taken care of while the baby is occupied basically so I'm going to dip into our scarlet lake with our transparent yellow so remember we've warmed it up just a touch the under painting will help to warm it up some as well but I just want to make sure it is exactly as dark as I want it to be so I'm going to add a little more water so that we have some good flow and I'm going to bring it up here and I'm going to work quickly we're going to jump right into our brown here rinsing off my brush pulling this brown so we're mixing this brown back together and we're going to start adding it in so that it has a nice bleed I don't want it to be too watery but I want to see how when those two colors touch we have a good bleed that's what we're going for okay I'm going to pull in a little bit more of this brown and I'm just making sure we get this first layer in quickly it'll probably need another layer to get it as opaque as I want it to be eventually but probably shouldn't have come up here but my brush to stay dirty as the pigment starts to fade I'm going to add a little more water dab it off and then just again kind of with a dirty brush we're going to just kind of bring this around so that we have a nice gradient pick some of this up the section is black so I don't need to be too careful about the edge which is nice it's nice to have some areas like that once in a while and then we're going to kind of fade this so again kind of with the just kind of scrubbing this in and for areas like this that are very light and you're just kind of putting a quick layer on the key is to have a very dry brush pretty dry so I am constantly going anytime I'm moving my paintbrush whatever this thing is called off of the screen this way I'm either getting water over here but I'm most likely dabbing it off on the paper towel or on the rag that's over here just to get off any of this excess all right let me look at my reference again really study it for a moment see I want to bring more of this brown in here get nice and dark up here and then we'll start adding the brown in on this section but because this has this bleed in here I want to make sure that we get it started the way that we want okay cleaning my brush off wiping it off so it's just a damp brush I'm just kind of running that over the edge I'm going to go in with our scarlet lay and transparent yellow mixture so it's kind of a orange if you have cadmium orange or yellow or red orange that would be a good alternative dirty brush dirty damp brush just going in to make sure our gradient is nice and smooth I didn't like how it dried so and then a little bit more of the brown tapped right up here so we don't have any overwhelm with that red paint that should fade nicely all right um before we well let's add this brown here so I'm actually going to just jump in here because it's nice and dark here and then it starts to fade so we shall get this nice and pigmented now I'm going to add some water dab it off on my paper or on my rag or paper towel I keep saying paper towel because I used to use paper towel but now I just use old rags I've been an adult long enough to have yucky towels so that's what I use instead I'm having a little bit of trouble depositing enough of the pigment but I don't want to add too much water I'll get kind of a bloom so I am going to just tap that in here and because it's wet it should spread and fade and keep dabbing it in you can see how it flows so now I'm getting into kind of some drier areas you can see how it left more pigment behind so I'm going to wash my brush off wipe it off on the paper towel so it's just damp and then pull that down a little bit more all right that's fading nicely and I'm going to pull see how my brush is pushed down against the paper I'm using that action to pull and that will help to blend the pigment more all right now let's move on to the black so I'm grabbing some of our hematite genuine and I'm going to start with the eyebrow shape which is a little irregular which is good and something's meant to be a little quirky you don't have to be as specific all right and then we're going to pull this down here my brush is see how I'm like it split a little bit so I'm getting kind of some little bumps so I'm just going to go to my pal I'll show you down here I'm going to place my brush down and I'm going to twist it and that will give me a nice point so I won't have that anymore you can see it's drying a little lighter than we want so I'm going to go on just pulling a little more pigment making sure it's being placed down and then we'll go back and soften some of these edges in just a moment all right clean brush that has been wiped off so it's just a little damp not a new brush and I'm just pulling along the edge wiping it off and then going back with our black to just deepen up any areas that we've lost a little too much all right cleaning my brush off this is probably too wet oh you guys I'm so rusty it's okay proof that anybody can do this I am so rusty right now from not painting after baby boy number four was born so which is fine that's just part of getting back into it but it doesn't it's not as natural sometimes it just happens by itself but I really have to be very focused right now all right I'm going to let this dry I will have to go back in and add a little bit more black to that which is fine I am going to start in on the body now so I'm going to pull some brown onto my brush there's not a ton left so I'm probably gonna have to mix more while we're here let's just get these antennae all right so I've got some more brown mix it probably you might need a little more yellow but we're going to stick with what we've got now and I'm going to start with another yellow glaze so we're going to go in with our transparent yellow just on this upper section here it just looks like it could use a little bit of warmth here and then again kind of at the base so that's plenty of pigment I'm going to now go in with a apparently very wet brush a cleaned brush and I'm going to just spread that out so it's not too harsh keeping it on the body I'm not going to add it to the head because the head doesn't look like it really has any of that all right pretty happy with that going to go in with our brown and double checking our reference start tapping that in so this is very very fuzzy little body so I'm trying to kind of be true to that and do a little bit more wet to wet just kind of a damp dirty brush here overlaying on the yellow and this will take a couple of layers to get where we want it to be and then get into the tip it kind of fades at the tip but because I have that yellow there I am going to do a little bit pick this up do just a little bit of brown so it's not too saturated and then so this is a slightly damp brush but I've cleaned it off and I've dried it off on my rag here and I'm just going to pick up and that should give us a nice fade without being too being too obnoxious and pick up a little bit here too so we'll layer over that but that way we have kind of this evidence of what's going on here so washing my brush off and then I'm going to kind of pick up some of the pigment here in the middle that's just a simple trick to help show that this is a like this is rounded and it's a body by having the shadows fall on either side doing the same thing a little bit here and I'm just fussing it with it this is definitely where you can kind of fall into the danger of over painting so I am just going to do a couple more strokes a couple things that I want to touch on grab this section again and now I'm going to take a step back I'm going to look at my reference image I'm going to look back at the painting that we have and I'm pretty happy with where it is right now I'm focusing mostly on the left hand side I am going to deepen the blue in here just like we did up top so I'm going to clean off my brush go into our blue mixture and just deepen it it's a little bit it's a little deeper in person than it's looking through the lens so just in case I'm not sure we'll see how this edits but I'm not adding I'm not putting a ton down you might not notice a big difference but it's definitely blue from from my angle it's definitely blue I just want a little bit more of that punch I'm gonna clean my brushes off and I'm going to grab my eraser so we can remove this masking fluid so I'm using a mono zero eraser I'll have it linked down below it's just a pencil eraser you could also use a large white eraser I've just found that things seem to go better be very careful for me this paint is still wet so you can do it like this with your hands I have found that sometimes paint will smear so just be very careful it's just faster with your fingers hey that doesn't look half bad I was not sure how this section would turn out because it was so much bigger than I thought but I'm pretty happy with it all right let's get this side very carefully I don't know if you can see it but there is a little smudge there from me moving my finger the oils on your finger can reactivate the paint which is not ideal so I am trying an eraser on here I'll probably grab an exacto knife I think it'll be okay overall all right to warm up this section a little bit more just because remember we added another layer of the yellow wash I'm going to just add our same yellow very lightly not very much we just want a very delicate glaze and I'm just going to push this over here just to kind of take the stark white edge off of okay now that this black section has dried I'm going to go in a little far and fix the area around it and then add a little bit more black to this section just so it's as deep as I want it to be on this side now if I wanted to and I think I will a little bit I'm going to add in just a couple more stripy details in here just so it's as fine and delicate as my reference image shows it should be I don't I mean I think you get the idea here without it being exact and it doesn't bother me that it's not exact I actually am very very happy with how that turned out and I thought I would hate it so that is definitely a win all right and there is our finished butterfly sorry I see the light is moving in let's scoot you over a bit so here is our beautiful peacock butterfly I'm super excited with how it turned out and I did include both sides just so that you can see and hopefully be encouraged if you are just starting off with painting and you're just frustrated and struggling with it I have been painting for over a decade now no about a decade now and just taking a six month break after having a baby I was painting the day before he was born this is my first side attempt and it's you can just see that it's not quite as sophisticated or as high in the craftsmanship as the left hand side so we've got kind of my first time and my second time so if you are really struggling with this and you feel like your first half is just looks uncomfortable you're not super happy with it or how it turned out try it again see how you can improve on it I'm sure that it will be much more comfortable and it would just come much more naturally your second time around and I am speaking obviously from experience so I am very excited with how this turned out I hope that you enjoyed making this with me and until next time happy painting