The fieldfare is a common bird here in winter, and it’s a delight to paint. In this video I share my entire process for painting a bird with a lot of detail.
How to paint a realistic bird in watercolor
Click on the video to start the tutorial. You can slow down the video (in the Youtube options) to see more details.
I start with a light, but exact graphite sketch (after making several studies beforehand) and layer the watercolor in several washes from light to dark.
I paint in a dark value (eyes and feet) fairly early in the painting process so I can adjust the other values more easily. I don’t always do this, but I often find it helpful to get a feeling for the full tonal range.
The light washes come to life when they are layered on top of each other, and you will get a luminous, rich color over time. It’s important to use transparent, single-pigment paints for this. Applying brush strokes with the texture in mind (feathers, beak, smooth or ruffled) will help to achieve a realistic effect.
You can see me erasing parts of the drawing with a kneaded eraser – these don’t leave bits on the paper and are not harsh on the paper.
I use high quality paper (100% cotton) that can take a lot of mechanical stress – painting several layers and lifting paint repeatedly is not a problem for this paper. Use your inexpensive (cellulose) paper for sketchbook work, for detailed paintings you will need something that can take a lot of water and will work together with your paint.
Materials I used for this painting:
Paints: Schmincke Horadam Neutral Grey (PR255 + PO62 + PB60), Transparent Siena (PR101), Transparent Umber (PR101), Transparent Yellow, Winsor & Newton Davy’s Grey (PG17 + PBk6 + PBk19 + PW5), Daniel Smith Buff Titanium (PW6:1)
Brushes: Leonard size 4/size 2 round brush (synthetic)
Paper: Arches hot-pressed
I love exploring the natural world with watercolor, and I especially love painting birds. I hope you’ve enjoyed this detailed tutorial. If you have any questions or comments or want to see a specific tutorial in the future, please let me know below! Make sure to subscribe to my Youtube channel so you don’t miss out on future videos.
Thank you for reading this blog! It'll always stay free. To keep it going, you can support my work directly through a donation or through my nature sketching classes.
Join my free newsletter and never miss a blog post! You'll get new blog post notifications directly to your inbox. Receive 5 great sketching resources as a welcome gift for joining my newsletter! Here's what's inside:
- How to draw anything (PDF guide)
- Getting started with watercolor (free ebook)
- My favorite tips for creating great sketchbook pages
- My 5-step guide for drawing birds (PDF guide)
- My current watercolor palette layout (PDF guide)
By subscribing, you agree that I may process your information in accordance with my privacy policy
It was nice to watch the painting process. Thanks for writing, here, what you did exactly. That was very helpful.
Thank you very much Paz. 🙂
I’m sorry I missed this video but thank you for the step by step instructing. You have nice detail. Happy painting. Desiree