Blue Bird on Flower Branch: Loose Watercolor Tutorial

Hi everyone, this is Nia, and today I'm going to paint this simple blue bird on a flower branch. I'm not really sure what type of bird this is, from what I've searched it's called a blue tit, but please correct me if I'm wrong. But anyway, I'm going to start by sketching it out, and here's the reference image that I used. You can simplify the bird by separating the head and the body, but since the pose isn't complex, I just tried to follow the shape of the silhouette to create a rough outline of the bird. I made mine a bit chubbier, but once I've established the silhouette, I'm going to try to separate the different sections for the face, so it's a bit easier for me to visualize when I paint later. This might sound counterintuitive, but I want to just let the paint flow into each other as I paint, so I'm actually going to erase the guidelines after sketching it. When I sketched it before, I just kind of used it as practice to divide up the space. Of course, I understand this might be a bit confusing for some of you to do, so if you're more comfortable with a light outline, feel free to leave it there. Next, I'm going to draw out the branches so it can connect to the bird's claws, and I think I'm also going to add more branches in the background, but loosely. As for the flowers, I feel comfortable painting them freehand, but you can also draw it out or trace it. I'll have the outline in my coffee shop, and I'll include the main flowers that I've painted for this demonstration. Once I'm done, I'm just going to tap the outline with my eraser to make sure that the lines are light enough. Then next, I'm going to go over the colors. Firstly, I'm going to use Quin Red by Daniel Smith, Vermilion by Holbein, Chinese White by Holbein, Permanent Yellow Deep by Holbein, Indigo by Schmincke, Cerulean Blue by Holbein, and I'll also be using Bleak Proof White by Dr. Ph. Martens. I'm going to first tackle the flowers, but instead of yellow, I feel like pink flowers would look really nice against the blue bird, so I'm going to use a mix of Chinese White with Vermilion as the first color mixture, but on the side here, I have some Quin Red as well to make the pink look a bit more rosy. I'm going to roughly follow the same shape of the flowers in the reference image, though I'm not going to paint it too accurately. I can see that the flowers have four petals, and it's a little bit darker at the center, so that's what I'm trying to replicate here. For some of the flowers which are facing towards us, the four petals would be quite clear, and I like to leave a bit of space at the center so the petals are not too close together, whereas other flowers, if they're facing sideways, I would be able to see two dominant petals in front, and this is going to cover most of the back petals, and when I do this, I try to separate those two layers so you can still see which petals are in front and which ones are at the back. The back petals I will paint a little bit darker with a slightly thicker consistency, and I will also add the same mixture without the Chinese White at the bottom while the surface is still damp so there will be a slight gradation. It's normal for small petals to puddle up because you're painting such a small section with quite a bit of water, and if this happens, you can always control it by cleaning your brush and then drying it off on tissue, then with your dry brush, you can pick up the excess puddle, letting your dry bristles suck all the excess moisture or the excess water or paint out, then dab it off on tissue. This way, you will be left with a softer, lighter petal that is no longer puddling. Since the bird is the focal point of this painting, I'm going to paint most of the flowers near or under the bird. This will help direct our eyes towards the focal point. I feel like I have enough here for now, and since the surface should more or less be dry, I'm going to increase the darker tones by using just a mixture of Quin Red and Vermilion without the Chinese White, and adding it to the center of some of these flowers, as well as to separate some of the front petals and the back petals. I'm fairly happy with how they look now, so next I'm going to paint the bird. I'm going to start from the head, and I'm going to lightly dampen the whole head, except for the eyes, then I'm going to paint on the damp surface, trying to separate the little sections. Because the surface is damp, this will create softer edges. I first used Cerulean Blue for the top, and you can see that there's a slight gradation from the back of the head, with a slightly darker tone, which I've added some Indigo into it. So those are the two colors that I'm going to be using, and mixing with each other, playing with the ratio in order to paint the little blue sections on this bird. I'm going to be a bit more careful around the eyes, since there's a really fine white line in between. So I'm just going to use a light blue first, and a really light brush load, so my paint is much more controllable. Then once I'm happy with the position, I'm going to go over it again with a darker tone. Once I'm done, I'm going to use a slightly damp brush to soften some of the edges. Now moving on to the wings, I want to connect it to the blue at the back of its neck, so I'm going to use a damp brush to pull it downward slightly, and on the stamped surface, I'm going to use some Permanent Yellow Deep. I'm just going to try to eyeball the area where the yellow stops, then I'm going to start adding some Cerulean Blue from the bottom upwards. You can see that the yellow is a bit greenish, the yellow feathers are intertwined with the blue feathers, so this is the color that I'm trying to replicate. And then around the sides as well as the bottom, I'm going to continue it down with a mix of Cerulean Blue and Indigo. Before I add the details in the feather, I'm just going to pull using the blue that I've already placed down. So just like the head before, I'm using this to somewhat sketch out the placement of those feathers. Then once I'm happy with the placement, I'm going to increase the saturation and the value slowly. It's fairly wet, so I'm just going to leave it for now and let it dry so I can paint on top of it later on on the dry surface. Meanwhile, I'm going to move on to the tail, starting with a lighter blue with just the Cerulean Blue, and at the bottom you can see the tail has a darker blue, so I'm going to connect it to the Indigo. I'm going to leave everything to dry and move on to the tummy this time, again starting by lightly dampening the surface. Then you can see that the color is a very light yellow, so I started with a medium consistency of Permanent Yellow Deep, and I pulled the rest downwards so the color can be very nice and light. Then at the bottom you can see that there's a slight gray tone from the shadow, so I've decided to take a little bit of the blue mixture at the and the red that I've already premixed on my palette, just a tiny bit until I create a murky grayish tone. After this, I'm going to work on the next layer. You want to make sure that the previous layer is completely dry. You can use a hairdryer if there are still any damp areas. For the head, I'm just using the same color, but this time because the surface is completely dry, the colors are much more concentrated. I'm using the base that I've painted as a guide, so I can place more detail or increase the vibrancy of colors. Here I'm going to add some shadows under the wings to separate it from the tummy. I'm just using Indigo, and I'm going to use the same color to start painting on the details for the wings. The feathers are coming from both the left side and the right side, so you want to make sure to separate those two sections. It doesn't have to be overly accurate, but you do want to make this distinction. I'm just sketching it out very roughly with my brush, then once I've indicated the bottom areas, I can extend and direct the lines upwards. Now that we have some details going on, I'm going to separate those two sides further by using a thicker consistency of Indigo. I couldn't really see too much detail on the tummy, but I've decided to add a little bit of texture here. However, those lines were a bit too thick, so I decided to soften it slightly by using a damp brush. For the tip of the tail, I decided to use some Indigo, but I wanted to extend some lines upwards for extra texture. However, I felt like my brush was a bit too frayed, so I switched to a smaller brush. Next, I'm going to color the dark parts of the bird, which are the eyes, the beak, and the feet. For this, I'm using a mix of Indigo and Vermilion. I'm going to start with a lighter consistency first, especially for the beak, since I'm painting on a very small area, and I use a dry brush to take some of the excess off between the top and the bottom beak, since there's a light area there. Then, for the feet, I'm just going to use a light consistency of the same color for the base. If the paint is a little bit puddly, you can dry it off first or take off the excess using a dry brush, but I'm just going to work on this damp surface and add a thicker consistency of the color to add a little bit of a three-dimensional form, and I'm also going to darken the eyes as well as the beak. I feel like there's a larger white spot on the forehead, so I'm going over it with Bleed Proof White, and I'm also going to use Bleed Proof White for the highlight of the eye. And that's it for the bird. Now, I'm going to go back to the surrounding area. I'm going to add some leaves. This is from a mix of Cerulean Blue with a bit of Indigo and a lot of Permanent Yellow Deep. You can adjust the ratio depending on the tone of green that you're looking for. Here, I'd like to play with the consistency as well, so there are some darker and lighter leaves. Don't be scared to place some leaves in between some of the flowers to make the composition look a bit more natural. I'm going to add details to the center of the flower. I'm just painting on lines using a very thick consistency of Vermilion with a little bit of Indigo. Once I'm done, I'm going to add little dots on top of these lines using the same color. Next, I'm going to paint the branch. I'm going to use a mix of Vermilion with Permanent Yellow Deep and a little bit of Indigo. I'm using a lot of Vermilion in the ratio, so the brown is a little bit brighter and more of a reddish brown. Then, for the shadows underneath, I added more Indigo in the ratio. Once I've added the other elements, now I feel like the flowers look a bit flat, so I'm going to add some shadows to the flowers as well. Here, I've added a lot of Vermilion into the previous mixture, which creates this muted red. I'd like to place it on the flowers that is a little bit far back, and I'm also going to add more in the background to make it look more dense, but I'm painting it more loosely so there's not much definition. I'm going to take off the reference image since I'm just going to add my own background now. I'm going to add more flowers, but in order to turn this into a background, I want to make sure that the flowers are painted more loosely with less definition so our eyes can separate the background and the foreground. I started by dampening the surface very lightly. I even took the excess water off in case there are any puddles with tissue. Then, as I'm painting the flowers, I'm painting more quickly with less accuracy and not caring too much about color variations or even layers. Instead, I'm going to go straight into painting the leaves in between these flowers as well as the branches. I can see though that my surface is drying up already, so I'm going to manually smudge some areas, especially closer to the corners of the page. Here, I'm just adding a little bit of depth to the flowers using a similar mixture to the brown of the branches, but again, I just want it to be smudged and not have too much definition. For the rest of the space, I decided to paint again on the damp surface. This time, I decided to use an even lighter consistency so the flowers look more blurry and this will create depth. Again, because we have less focus, this will separate the bird and the main branch to the branch that is directly behind the bird, with this last set of flowers being the furthest back. I feel like some edges of the bird looks a bit too stiff, so I decided to smudge some parts while adding details to others. This is with bleed proof white. I can see some white details from the reference, but I also made up some areas as well. This is just a final adjustment depending on how you've painted yours and how you'd like to finish off your paintings. As I'm smudging parts of the bird, I've picked up a little bit of blue and I like how it looks right next to the flowers, so I decided to smudge it and create a really light blue background as well. Here, I'm adding some splatters. I feel like this makes the painting a bit more dynamic with a little bit more movement and I'm going to use both pink and blue. I'm going to add more detail to the center of the flowers by dotting it with bleed proof white and I'm also going to fix up some shadows on the branch, but that's basically it for this painting. I had so so much fun with this one. I love the color combination as well as the looseness of it. I'm going to try to continue to learn how to paint loosely and I hope you found this one useful. If you enjoyed this tutorial, please consider subscribing for more if you haven't already. Like usual, the list of tools as well as my social media links will be in the description box. Thank you so much for watching till the end and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!