How To Paint An Owl 🦉 Acrylic painting tutorial

[Music] hi everybody and welcome back to my channel today we're working on an 11x14 canvas it's a black primed canvas and for this painting i'm going to be starting off with a filbert brush this is a number nine i've got titanium white and just a little bit of mars black burnt sierra and yellow ochre okay so if you guys are all ready to get started let's begin i'm gonna get my brush just a little bit wet and i'm gonna start with a little bit of white and a little bit of black and we'll make a light to medium gray tone and i'm going to come in with the lighter areas here first so we've got this swoop that comes down here at the top and then we've got a little bit of a pattern here kind of speckled or spotted on the little feathers so all i'm doing is just kind of roughing this in first just a very rough uh underpainting here first just so we get the basic shape and idea going and then we can come in and add our details after i know that we're going to have little wisps of hair that come out here so we'll just add a little pull and flick like this then there's going to be a little bit of hair on the outer part of the other eye we can leave this area black right in here so this area right here for just a little hint of another eyeball that we can't really see i'll just softly dry brush here just pulling in like this or you can pull out as well just pour the hair in between the eyes and where the beak is and they'll come in with the rest of the shape pretty much just comes down slightly arched straight down but just a little bit of a bow or an arch right there and then out for some feathers so the feathers are super easy especially when you're using a little brush like this and we've got this black under painting because what that does is it gives us that instant contrast shadow and the darker feathers darker patches and right in here we've got a black beak so we can just come in here and outline it's going to start in between the eyes we'll have another eye above here and that eye there and then down to a curve like that we'll round that out and adjust the detail a little bit after so there's the outline now we can come in right here and add the lighter areas for the feathers just little pulls and flicks you can even create a little scoop if you like just a few little wispy hairs right here and we'll just start layering in some more feathers you want to grab a little bit more of the white and then the light gray but still have a little bit of that gray in your brush that way we can start bringing this out and shading and highlighting a little bit more i'm gonna go off the canvas and start to turn my brush slightly diagonally notice i'm leaving darker patches so it's okay to layer in fact you want to that's how you're going to get that nice layered look that's going to make your bird look 3d so we've got that swoop shape that comes down and it goes right in here where we're going to have our eye and then it starts to pull out i'm going to pull just a little bit more of that black right in there and i'm going to just tap my finger here to steady my hand and hold it in place and i'm going to line my brush up and pull and flick out then with a little bit of water not washing my brush off but just picking up a little bit more of that white i'm gonna come in here now i have to go over my beak and make it a little bit darker but i just want to show you the direction we're going to be taking a little fur or feathers here and then almost almost up into a point there for the owl's eye big eye and we'll adjust the size according if we have to and we probably will it's all about doing one little step at a time taking your time and working through the layers up to the finished product however long that takes try to enjoy the process you guys especially when you're working on something that has multi layers like this now this technique all i'm doing is tapping in my light gray with a side the edge of my brush and to create those smaller feathers i'm just tapping like this because there's different sizes so where there's little tiny ones you just tap tap tap and then where they're a bit narrower you can tap and pull and same with up here we're gonna come right above here and then we're going to start to come out this way just with a dry brush and we can come in without washing a brush take a little bit of this black here and we can come in between so i'm just taking a little bit more black and just cutting in i didn't wash my brush off remember there's a little bit of that gray going on there still i'm gonna make the eye bigger so the eye comes in really dark there in the corner and i'm not going to worry about the inside of the eye and all the details that i just want to get the shape first so i'm just going to paint that all in and it's not even solid black you can see it's like a deep gray because i've got a bit of that gray in my brush too and then i'll just add a little hint of black there for that eye while i've got my black here i'm gonna now come in outline this beak a little bit better and make it nice and dark because we're going to have those feathers coming out over top of the beak i'm going to try this technique here by just kind of pulling from the beak and in towards the eye that's going to give us a neat feathery look and help out helps out when we come in with those final feathers and then bring the beak down a little bit lower this is where you can switch over to a smaller brush if you like for getting the outline a little bit better and i'm going to be doing that after i'm just going to come in here with a little bit of the black and i'll add some darker here and there in between and then i'm really excited to get my next brush out to show you guys some great techniques be super easy and save you a lot of time when painting feathers and then just pick up a little bit of white the beak is round and it's going to have a bit of a shine to it so i'm going to place a little bit of white right there and gently pull down let's try that again with a little bit more paint this time gently push pull and then let off okay so now i'm going to show you guys this really cool brush that i absolutely love and i find it really really effective for painting grass hair feathers fences anything that has a lot of lines in it it's really great for painting feathers so i'm gonna get it wet first so you can see i've got a nice medium to light gray color here loaded my brush up and again i'm gonna start right here with the edge pull need some more paint on my brush really start to take it over and flick i'm not worried about going over top of the eye and messing that up because it's not really even uh done yet at all right so it's okay we just knead it there so we know where everything's placed and we can line these feathers up and our brush so see how wispy you can get those little feathers hairs to look go over here look at that just light little feathers and the brush does the work for you it's just such a great brush we're going to bring some feathers off the other side here and then start coming down around here i'm just making the same light gray a little bit of a little bit extra white sometimes then we're going to kind of cut right where the beak is around the outside there what this brush does is it gives those spaces where we need them to be so we can see the other colors underneath see just like that for me this brush technique here really gives you those realistic looking feathers and effortlessly cut right in there get close to that eyeball and just continue with the direction and then we can go from here there's a bit of a pattern you see it's so easy you just turn the brush this way and i'm going to take more black so really load up my brush no water and from here i'm gonna pull and then curve curve and then twist and turn my brush and then wiggle and squiggle again we can make the same types of feathers or shadows just by picking up some black i accidentally picked up a little bit of white there but that looks fine i don't even worry about that owls are one of my favorite birds and favorites to paint i just think they're really beautiful mysterious birds i've been lucky enough uh over the past uh four four and a half years of living here on vancouver island to see them up close we have barred owls here they're an unusual uh breed of owl that actually are not nocturnal so they hunt during the day instead of at night i'm gonna just outline the eye now just using a little bit of white and wherever there's a little bit more dense feathers and hairs together i'll just come in here and whisp make these little wisps so you guys can see i've been demonstrating different brushes that you can use if you don't have the rake fan you can just use a little filbert or a round brush i'm going to go back over to this rake fan just lining it up right as close as i can get to the beak add a little bit more white here for a brighter highlight see as it dries then i can keep coming we can keep adding and building up our highlights line it up push and drag and we'll start working on that again a few more feathers brighter white ones this time i'm gonna take a little bit more white i'm just gonna go right off the canvas just paint these little baby feathers all these small little feathers and then we're going to have tiny little scoops in here so just taking the very tip of my brush that's all we're doing just little scoops and then little lines now i'm going to do a little white dab right there for the light on its eyeball take off some of this paint off my brush and let's see if we can come in here now a little bit a little bit more right here leaving that space outlined black on the end a little bit more white just bring it up a little bit at a time all right so now the next step we're going to start working on the detail the color of the eye and i'm going to start with my yellow ocher you can see i've got burnt sienna here as well look for a full list below the video in the description area just in case you guys miss the colors you're not sure about what i'm using so this is going to be dark in here but i'm just going to do this color first we're going to come close to that white flicker of light or highlight then we're going to come down push get really close to the outline part and then again right close to the edge we'll do another layer here oh yellow ochre is such a good color for its eyes gonna really brighten this up right on the outside of the black and you can pull and flick for little those little hairs that are really going to show up against the beak and just create some more layers so again just add a little bit more white there to make it really bright i'm going to take a bit of yellow ochre with my white and i'm going to place my finger here i'm going to start right here and try to do it in one stroke so i'll demonstrate again white and yellow ocher push gently come around take a little bit of yellow ochre and burnt sienna now for the rest of the color we'll ease into it so first we'll have more yellow ochre than the burnt sienna and we'll start on that side and then have it just meet where it's really bright straight burnt sienna this time taking some black now gently just score this i'm gonna use a fabric brush my number eight and i'm gonna just take a little bit of that burnt sienna yellow ochre that i had for part of the eye and i'm just gonna simply do a light filter over so filtering just means that the black and white the gray is dry and this is transparent what we're adding here okay it's transparent a little bit of water if you need it you can either do a dry brush or a little bit of water and you just want to make sure that black and white underpainting is dry and then we can come in and add little hints you can add less or more than what i'm showing here it's completely up to you and whatever type of painting you're going for if you want something an experiment too it's really fun to experiment you could do a few of these and it'll make you a really good artist it'll make you get skilled really quickly if you paint this a few times and try it out in different colors and black and white is nice as well one i did last year the year before was all black and white and that was really fun to do now i'm going to go and add a little bit of my burnt sienna there's quite a few um owl tutorials out lately art sherpa has a great one um michelle the painter has a great one i like to recommend artists that i admire and i think are putting out some great content out there so have a look at their channel if you haven't they've got some wonderful tutorials out there and they explain things really well step by step and if you want to learn a few different techniques on how to paint owls then it's a good idea to look around and see what other artists have out there to offer we can learn from every artist everyone's got something different and unique to teach us i'm gonna be used my fan rake brush again and i'm going to go into my white i'm going to add the finishing touches just more bright highlights a little bit of water on there but not too much if you use too much water you're just going to thin the paint out and it's going to be too transparent and not show up enough i'll take his brow down a little bit more and fluff up this area i'm going to do something a little different right here i'm just tapping just pushing and tapping like this for some different types of feathers that they have they get a little bit small right here then i'll make some more narrow ones here i've just taken a little bit of yellow ochre water and white whoops i'm gonna cut that right away and we'll add the finishing feathers here and then just push and tap here and i'm gonna quickly come in with a little bit of black a little bit more of that white and the yellow ochre i want to thank you guys so much for joining me i always look forward to painting with you and seeing your versions of my paintings it's a lot of fun to see what you guys come up with be sure to subscribe to my channel for more to stay up to date on all my new tutorials and paintings you can check out the links below have a wonderful day stay happy positive healthy out there guys and keep on painting i'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Joni Young Art

Views: 32,812

Keywords: How to paint an owl, Acrylic painting tutorial, Birds, Art, Black canvas, Paint brushes, Paint, Yellow ochre, Burnt Sienna, Joni young art, Learn to paint, Feathers, Owls

Id: rr2miregswI

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021