For this post, I will be going over a simple method for painting birds. Although they may seem a difficult subject, the general shapes of birds are fairly simple and therefore are a good subject to start with when learning to paint animals and wildlife. As there are many, many varieties of birds, I’ve picked a simple blue bird since their shape and coloring is more straight-forward than other, more complex species. This tutorial will give you a few basics using a more loose or painterly style. As you develop your skills, you can challenge yourself by trying to create more realistic birds, but starting with a less ridged style can help you focus on developing your drawing and layering skills first, building a good foundation before jumping into more complex forms and shapes.

Basic Shapes

The good thing about birds is that they are pretty simple in terms of general shapes. Before jumping into painting, I encourage you to first practice drawing out these shapes and experimenting with different angles. As always, using reference images is super helpful, but below you will find examples illustrating how you can draw birds just by building on a few simple geometric shapes.

bird drawings

As you can see from the image above, you can create easy bird forms just by using mostly circles and triangles. Their bodies are essentially teardrop shaped, and depending on how you angle that shape, you can change the way the bird is positioned. Along with recreating the above examples, see if you can come up with some of your own. This will make the process of painting birds much easier in the long run.

Technique: Blocking in Shapes

As you will see in the below video demonstration, I use a technique called “blocking in,” which is essentially drawing and filling in the whole shape as a base to build on top of. This is a great method for complex subjects, as it helps you focus first on form before diving in to detail. With this method, you work from the general to the specific, saving the finest details for the end.

You can see from the video that I start with a darker brown tone found on the bird’s chest, and a dark blue tone for the blue areas. From there, I build up lighter tones and adjust as needed, and add highlights at the end. I’ve kept the style fairly loose for the purposes of this tutorial, but this method is also useful for creating more realistic representations.

General Tips

If you would like to try out recreating the painting in the video, here is a few tips to keep in mind to make the process easier and get the best results:

  • Keep your paints wet! You’ll be reusing several colors throughout.
  • I kept my background patchy and textured with a soft amount of blending. This makes it really easy to cover up any mistakes since you don’t need to match an exact color. I use the background colors to refine some of the bird shapes towards the end of the video.
  • Remember to thin out your paint to a milky consistency when creating thin lines. Also gradually apply less pressure to taper off lines. This is useful for creating various-sized branches.
  • Depending on the quality and consistency of your paint, you may need to apply a few layers to get in truly opaque. I’d suggest giving your general bird shapes a couple coats. Be sure to let the paint dry completely between layers.
  • I don’t do so in the video, but if you find it easier to sketch out your image first, you may want to do so for this painting. Be sure to do this after painting the background so you don’t have to try going around a bunch of complex shapes. This is also a good way to ensure your painting won’t end up looking transparent and can cut back on how many layers of paint you need.

Tutorial: Painting Birds

bird painting

As I said, this painting is done pretty loosely, and you can definitely change it up. You can position your branches however you want and can put some birds wherever you’d like. If you want to change up the composition significantly, it may be helpful to sketch out on a piece of paper how you would like to arrange things first. This can be a very loose sketch and will help you visualize what it would like on the canvas. For an extra challenge, consider changing up the color scheme.

If you would like to follow along with how I created the painting and use the same colors, you will need: titanium white, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and phthalo blue. The palette is as follows:

Background:

  • Mid tone: 3 scoops white, 1 scoop yellow, 1 scoop burnt sienna
  • Pure white, yellow, and burnt sienna are also loosely brushed in to the wet paint

Branches/Beaks/Eyes:

  • Base tone: 2 scoops burnt umber, 1 scoop blue
  • Highlight: Add small amount of white to dark tone
  • Berries: 1 scoop red, small scoop blue for dark tone; pure red for highlight

Birds:

  • Base chest tone: 2 scoops burnt sienna, small scoop white
  • Base blue tone: 2 scoops blue, small scoop burnt umber
  • Chest tones: Add white to base tone; You can also use pure white and burnt sienna, as well as dark tone for with the base0 branch color in some areas for variety
  • Blue tones: Add white to base tone; Create lighter tone with 1 scoop blue and 1 scoop white; You can add some dark tones with the base branch color and white for highlights

Video Tutorial

Steps

Here are the basic steps to create the painting demonstrated in the video. This is meant a loose guide for creating your own version of this painting, so don’t be afraid to change it up and challenge yourself!

  1. Start with the mid tone for your background and apply loose, patchy brushstrokes throughout your canvas. I did this my twisting my wrist and applying short marks in an X pattern
  2. While the paint is still wet, add in strokes of pure white, yellow, and burnt sienna and adjust until you are happy with the results. This background is meant to be patchy and textured, so look out for over blending.
  3. Add in your branches with the base tone, going from thick to thin as they taper off. Keep your paint wet and apply light pressure for the cleanest lines. Make sure you switch to a smaller brush for the smallest branches.
  4. Add white to your base branch color and add some thin highlights of varying lengths to the top edges of some of your branches
  5. Use base chest tone to block in silhouettes of birds using simple shapes described above. Let dry.
  6. Use base blue tone to block in blue feather areas of birds.
  7. Use base branch tone to fill in beak and indicate feet and eye area
  8. Add white to base chest tone and start to lighten up chest area. Use a small brush and short downward strokes to give a more feathered texture.
  9. Add in various white and brown tones to chest area. (I suggest using a couple reference images to mimic some patterns and coloration along with the painting itself.)
  10. Add white to base blue tone and start to lighten up blue areas. Keep marks smaller around head and use long thin strokes down the wings and tail.
  11. Add in other blue tones as you like. You can use the base branch tone for darkest areas.
  12. Add highlights to eyes, beak, and feet with branch highlight color (base color + white)
  13. Add brightest highlights to chest area and blue feathers using white.
  14. Add small circular shapes for berries in dark berry tone. Try to space randomly and cluster some in twos and threes for variety. Use pure red on some of the berries for a final highlight.

If you are just starting out, you can simplify even further by just doing one bird, but I encourage you to challenge yourself and see what you can come up with. With a little practice, it will become a breeze! Happy painting!

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