HOW TO PAINT A SWAN! Acrylic Painting Tutorial

[Music] hi guys welcome back to my channel it's joni young here and i'm going to show you step-by-step how to paint this swan in the water very reflective and sparkly looking calm water so you can see i've primed a canvas with black and white to make gray so i didn't just use gray from the tube i used a little bit of black and a little bit of white with a large brush like this one some water and that's why it looks a little bit uh darker and lighter and patchier in some areas so i really recommend doing that that's going to add some extra depth and atmosphere to your paintings and it makes for a really nice blurry background too so let's just go ahead and get started you guys i'm going to show you i've got some titanium white and just some loose uh more of a fluid black paint and i'm going to be using a filbert brush so i'm going to be starting with creating some light in the water i'll just come in with a little bit of white and black more white i'm gonna blend and then flatten my brush to get it really nice and kind of fanned out in that nice filbert shape on the bottom and i'll just start coming in with some lines here and then some little circles for some ripples in the water so just making some interesting patterns here little flat circles they kind of look like lily pads but we're not you could add lily pads to this painting if you wanted that would look quite pretty and then see how my brush has less paint on it now so i'm creating a dry brush effect this helps to make the water look a little more reflective mix those colors up again so i really just wanted to create little wavy lines when i go back and reshape my brush when it starts to lose that nice flat shape so and then when i'm running out of paint i'm going to just take advantage of that and come in scumble pushing lightly and gently rubbing that paint out onto the canvas be sure to go back for a little bit of water when your brush gets too dry it's best to get a little bit of water before you add more paint onto your brush you need they go together the water and the paint need each other to help blend nice and eve evenly and effortlessly so some areas are going to be a little bit wider and patchier and i'm just going to create these little rings here for some subtle ripples soft gentle ripples in the water from our swan in this area here we're going to have a swan so i'll come in with uh define my shadow and the ripples in the water in a little bit i just want to go around the canvas doing this stage first you so losing that flat skinny shape so i'm going to push wiggle to get that nice thin line back again helps to give me more control over the size of the lines that i'm adding so this area here all in here is where we're going to have the most light it's going to be the brightest so i'm going to start to build this up and go over top with a dry brush [Music] of this light a gray bit more water to help blend that out of my brush then we're gonna have some sparkly looking kind of like little diamonds sparkles some glittery looking water down here so i'm just going to start coming in with little bits a little flicks like this of the white just for the tip of my brush sometimes just creating short and quick little tiny scoops like that i'm gonna come in here and be a little bit more generous with my white no water there's going to be a few little ones along here i'm going to turn my brush over here the handle up just because it's easier for me to have control of paint in this area stumble out the remainder of the paint onto where this is a bit darker and then i'm gonna just get that uh grayish tone that i want so it's not completely white it'll just make it look like a nice soft feathery gray okay i'm going to start coming in here now with more white guys no water on my brush i'm just looking at light and shadow thinking about the shapes they look like little flat circles or ovals and then if you want to create a little bit of movement you can kind of have a little look and then curve up on the end of them it's actually really really um relaxing to do paintings like this i find i i get lost in working on patterns so i've had a lot of fun over the years painting elephants i've painted quite a few elephants so if you guys want to see one of them it's in black and white i've got it on my playlist and i'll leave or leave a link below for you guys if you enjoy black and white paintings so i'm going to scumble and then tap there's more of a white area in here you can just do little dabs too and then soften them i'll be coming in with my little liner brush to tweak these a little bit and give them more of a starburst look it's just about getting that light and shadow down right now this is just one stage of the painting i'm going to start on the reflection down here shhh with little pressure you just use the tip of your brush and you can create gentle little lines so so i'm going to soften some of these areas up that are really dark just by coming in with a thin watered-down white but it's not dripping okay you definitely don't want it dripping i'm going to leave skinny dark lines for a contrast and i'm not too worried about if i'm going over those little sparkly star things i just have those placed there for some guidance right now i know that i'm gonna like i said earlier be going over those and making them brighter and have a little bit more sparkle to them so foreign i'm going to make shorter little movements and slide lift up slightly slide create some different patterns in the water here take a little bit of light gray again it's going to look lighter when i first put it on and then it'll darken a little bit as it dries acrylic paint always does that so play around with the shape a little bit more don't forget to go in and layer over if you've already got a pattern you can come right back in and over top and readjust it or add to it i'm just adding a little bit more water to my brush to loosen up that paint and i'm just gonna paint right over this it's very thin and transparent so i'm just gonna have a few different layers and tones of gray in there so you can see i'm leaving this area here so i have room for my spawn [Music] i'm just getting a few more little white shapes in here little blobs so so our swan's going to be right about here tail big big wing and then curve curve up okay just so you can kind of get an idea i really want to come in with some sparkle in here first before we start this one so i'm going to switch over to one of my liner brushes this is a number one i'm gonna get it wet and i'm gonna just load the tip of my brush it's the only part of the brush i wanna be using so we'll just start creating a whole bunch of little stars you can have little little dots and dabs as well i make them different sizes and they don't have to be perfect because they're like kind of out of focus and in the background right you're not going to see everything perfectly so you can be really loose with this stage of the painting this area now what i like to do to make it easier to use a liner brush and i mentioned this if it's dry underneath of course just place your pinky right there and that helps to steady your hand and allow you to have that control because if i was just to try see i start to shake because i'm trying to line it up if i don't have my pinky there so i find it really helps me and i actually learned that from i don't watch car shows but my husband is a car fanatic and a lot of uh pin stripers when they're applying the lines and the paint jobs on the cars that's what they do so i picked that up pick something up by watching one of my husband's shows it's very helpful that's something i don't know if i read anywhere before or if i've ever seen any other artist kind of mention that or talk about it so see i'm making sure that i have some really super messy ones in here and now we're really starting to create a mood aren't we and paint at your own speed guys and your own ability i tell all my students you can paint everything and anything in my classes or just in general but it'll be at your own ability and your own skill level and you'll just get better and better as a painter and your skill level by taking on something that you don't think that you're even ready or comfortable for and i think that is the best advice this is this video is not about art advice by all means it's not one of my um advice videos but i really know from experience that if i just stayed in that comfortable zone with my paintings years ago and i never took on things that i didn't know how to paint and that i thought were going to be too hard for me and they were really hard at first i mean i didn't have any art classes right i was just doing everything on my own had little kids that i was raising and i wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and whatever so i just learned on my own but you know you just have to practice things you'll get better and better at them and you you can't grow and anything in life until you uh move forward and take chances and try things so and this it applies with art and then some of them you can just dab with your little pinky or finger soften right just to create a little bit of a glow but we can go back to that later on and add sort of an afterglow i'm going to come inside these areas here that are going to be really bright and create some little wiggles and squiggles here i don't know if you guys can hear the rain through the the video but i've got a tin roof and i love the sound the rain makes when it's hitting the tin roof it's really relaxing i love painting on rainy days so just pulling in little lines see i've got quite a bit of paint on my brush here and you can if you're really careful i got a bit of paint on my pinky from resting it there so i better take that off come in with some more bright bright white in here so so so okay so i think i'm ready i'm gonna go back and add some more stars later but i want to get started i'm excited to get started on our salon so i'm going to be using a filbert brush again filbert brushes always work well for me i think they're very handy little brushes and i'm gonna take some white a little bit of black make a medium gray here on the light i guess it's more leaning more towards the lighter side it's gonna be lighter than underneath here okay so i'm gonna come across we've already got that line there naturally i wasn't planning on that take a little bit more white right in here this area here is going to be lighter the tail end of our bird and then with a little bit of black come right under just gonna get a little bit of water just sort of sort of outline a bit a little bit more black now so we can have this shadow under here take a bit more white and i'm not even washing my brush in between just layering right over then this wing comes up i'm going to apply black right underneath here make it even darker so scramble out the rest it comes up slightly on an angle right here on the end a little bit of water on my brush so i can create these wiggly looking ripples a little bit more water see so it's nice and runny to work with just come right in over top of some of these here i'm gonna wrap it around here in here a little bit more black come underneath here again slightly up so so so a little bit more in here it's a little bit edgier and wiggly looking a little shadow here and we're gonna have those ripples but i'm gonna come in with more white rather than um the black because it's supposed to be the darkest right in here take a little bit of white kind of wiggle that out wiggle squiggle this i get to my white little bit of that gray scumbling and traveling around with a brush okay now i'm going to come in with my wings here so it's bright white behind the wings so the most of this um swan is in shadow and we've got this light that's going to just be filtering in from behind here so we've got some feathers here we're kind of getting lost in with the the background i'm kind of just going to outlay these and then down kind of across and up and over just think of kind of a backwards two looks like a hook i'll take some more black now it's really in shadow here as we start up at the base it's pretty in shadow i'm going to come in with white to outline it on the top here so it's kind of a little bit of a line like that and then it'll come down darker here i'm going to go over that with black but i just wanted to make that stand out so you guys could see the shape we're going for i'm going to really exaggerate that it goes back and then it almost meets almost meets in with the feathers i'm going to have some bright white hitting the top here from the light coming in you and we'll stumble out some of that white there then i'm going to turn my brush and do a tight little wiggle up then i'll take some more black and start adding the beak that's we know it's not black but just for this photo or this painting and the photo i'm looking at it's in so it's just in silhouette right it will be slightly curving up there and then a little bit later but not much so there's going to be light on the other side it's a little bit bumpy because of the feathers and the texture and then it kind of was like a little ripply looking here like really ripply so i just shake and wiggle [Music] and then flatten it out here and come as close as i can to the neck i'm gonna come down here low bring a little little lump that comes up right there bring this down a little lower and start coming in front we have those filtered ones in the back now we can start layering over guys and then little scoops that are really tight together like this for those other feathers and then cut in with a little bit of white to outline some of them to create that filtered light a little bit more it all depends on how how much light you want you'll have to go over a few times for your real braids that you want the brightest highlights and it's kind of reflecting here casting a glow right there with a little bit of black scoop down from the bottom i want to make sure i don't see those lines in the back the water ripples i'm just gonna add a little bit more white right in here because the light is hitting this area and we'll see where else i need some again that highlight right in there make this a bit brighter and then there are a few little areas here little flicks or flex i should say of the random little dark area to really make this light area pop out i'm going to add a little bit of black right behind it and then gently kind of pull and flick up like that i'm making it a little bumpy because the texture of the little feathers on its neck see how i come right close and then with a little bit of black create those little little tiny ripples that are all wiggly like that just make these a little bit darker stand out a little bit more i'm going to stumble out the rest of that black that i have which isn't a lot so we get that kind of gradation and i'm gonna come back in here make that a little bit darker the top of the beak smooth it out and it curves over a little bit like that so down and then it's darker here remember i said i was going to go over that i just wanted to show you the the shape a little bit more dry brushing with black okay back to some white so scoop and slightly a little scoop up in there and a little highlight very subtle really not really a highlight but just a little bit lighter gray there and we'll start to add some more little ripples and patterns in the water i'm going to just create a lot of little quick dots and dabs here for some more sparkle and then really bright and then behind or around and in between some of the feathers and then just dry brush in here for a lighter gray ripple effect so we have all these different tones going on so it rounds out over here into a bunch of little feathers and then you'll want to soften with either a brush or just use your finger i'm just gonna take a little bit of black here just a little bit of a light gray around the top very thin and a little black dab for an eye that we can't really see in fact i don't know if i'm gonna i don't know if i want to have that there i think it kind of is just more in silhouette there so i think i'll just kind of camouflage that a little bit and bring back this shadow whoops i need a little bit more dark gray and white again on the top stand out line there little light gentle little tab using so much weight in this painting just some more feathers that come up along the side here back there like i said they just get lost they're all just getting lost in here all that light let's create a bunch of little squiggles just pulling and wiggling with my brush really skinny lines close together a little bit more gray in between and around some of these feathers before i come in with more of my white so now i've got more white and this will just make them stand out a little bit better okay now so for some more white i'm going to turn my brush this way and kind of drag it along here like i would use a palette knife so barely touching you can even kind of a little tap and drag tap wiggle and drag that's going to make it look even more natural for the highlights look at all those little flex in the water so a little bit more right in here before i call this one done a bit of black too right in oh right about here you want to add a few little flicks of of some black for some shadow in the ripples and you want it to look a little bit more natural this is a fun little technique super easy i think i'm just gonna come right in here right underneath in between where i have it really ripply from the white i need to match that and there's one more in here and then just a couple like i had earlier but i want to make these a little bit more prominent okay guys well i'm going to call this one all day i'm going to do a couple more stars probably and i just see a little area right here i must have put my my pinky there if you enjoyed watching this video give it a like leave a comment below and a happy painting guys i'll see you all next time really soon bye you

Channel: Joni Young Art

Views: 18,877

Rating: 4.9604831 out of 5

Keywords: How to paint a swan, Acrylic painting tutorial, How to paint birds, How to paint sunlight, Water paintings, Acrylic brushes and techniques, Learn to paint, Grey scale art, Black and white painting, Step by step painting w, Joni young art tutorials

Id: m4GTgK3jycY

Length: 65min 42sec (3942 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021