Sketching Birds in Watercolor (Video Tutorial)

Earlier this year I painted a lot of local birds, and I filmed some of my sketching sessions, as I recently rediscovered. This tutorial has been sitting on my computer for quite a while, but I thought it would be fun to share how I approach sketching birds.

Eurasian blue tits are small, quite acrobatic birds almost as common as the great tits around here. They have a colorful plumage mixed in blue, white, yellow and green, and they’re a joy to watch and paint. I can see a pair of them every day in the garden, and they have inspected a nesting box hanging in a big cherry tree, so I’m hoping to see more of them in spring and summer.

In this video I show how I make loose sketches in my nature journal. Often I do these in preparation for a more detailed illustration, or just for fun.

It’s interesting to see how I painted a year ago – there are some things that I would do differently now, mainly my choice of colors and brush size. I explain a few of these aspects in the video.

Click on the video to start the tutorial. You can slow down the video (in the Youtube options) to see more details – I’ve doubled the speed of my drawing demonstration.

I start by drawing the birds in different postures. I use reference photos for this. Make sure you respect copyrights when you use photos or use your own! I try to keep my pencil lines light and suggestive so I can correct my shapes and proportions where needed. I like to make the eye a bit darker with a softer pencil. I definitely recommend this study stage. If you crank out enough of these loose little sketches, you’ll get better with each one.

I add light color washes to my sketches to get a feel for where the different colors go. This is especially important when you’re painting very colorful birds with a complex plumage, like these blue tits.

I used W&N Cobalt Blue for the blue parts of head, wings and tail, an alternative might be Phthalo Blue. I painted in the dark areas around the eye with Neutral Gray (eye ring and lores), the bill and the eye itself.

Around the neck I used W&N Davy’s Grey, mixed with a bit of Schmincke Olive Green.

I mixed the same olive green with Schmincke Transparent Yellow for the belly feathers.

I love exploring the nature in watercolor, and I especially love painting all kinds of birds. I hope you’ve enjoyed this detailed tutorial!

If you want to learn more about sketching birds, then check out my online class on the subject. I give a detailed overview about bird anatomy, show principles that work for any bird drawing, and show different examples for sketching songbirds.

The class is available on Gumroad (with pay-what-you-want pricing) or through Skillshare.

If you have any questions or comments or want to see a specific tutorial in the future, please let me know!