How to Paint WINTER BIRDHOUSE CARDINALS with Acrylic - Paint and Sip at Home - Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today we're going to be painting winter birdhouse cardinals and i'm going to be sipping on some spike seltzer and if you enjoy this video i do hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you'll find additional painting perks so let's get painting and let's get sipping alright so for my materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and prime 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'll be using i'm going to be using acrylic paint today my colors are burnt umber which i'll call brown titanium white mars black deep yellow and fire red and of course you can switch up those colors if you'd like but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have a standard number two pencil and then i have three brushes here i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush a number nine round brush and a number three round brush and i will refer to these as small medium and large as we go through the painting process of course you can switch those up too if you'd like you're painting along with me you'll probably want to have a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying them and down below this video i do have a couple of additional resources for you that can help you through your painting process one of them is a link where you could purchase the same exact paint kit that i'm using from the brushes to the paint to the large canvas and all that good stuff so that's down there for you there's also a link where you can download a free image of the final painting so you can print that and use it as visual reference as you go through the painting process and there's also written step-by-step instructions down there for you as well that's all we're going to need today all right so what we're going to do for the first step is we are drawing an outline of our birdhouse so i'm going to be using my pencil and i'm going to be giving you a couple of markers we're just going to draw some lines and then some shapes and then maybe by the time we're done we'll have a double decker cool rustic shape for our birdhouse so i'm going to use my pencil again i'm going to give you a couple of markers and then we'll just connect those lines so what i'm going to do first is i'm going to do my bottom ledge of my birdhouse and we're going to build everything from that in in proportion so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come down about a quarter of the way up or three quarters of the way down my canvas and in order to figure out how far that is you can kind of visually pick a halfway point and then go about halfway between there and the bottom of your canvas just somewhere in here and i'm going to come in a couple of inches and make myself a little bit of a marker then what i'm going to do is i'm going to make another mark and you can actually use like your paintbrush as a measuring tool so you can get these kind of in the same height so i'm going to pick or get the height with just using my my brush and my finger and then i'm going to come over just past my halfway mark so if this is about halfway maybe i'll come over maybe another inch and i'm going to make myself another marker at the same height and then i'm just going to connect these two it does not have to be a super straight line this is going to be a rickety old birdhouse that has been weathered so it doesn't have to be a perfectly straight line then what i'm going to do is i'm going to come up about two inches from this left corner and i'm going to come in just a little bit maybe about a half of an inch or so make myself a mark then i'm going to do the same thing over here about two inches up come in about a half of an inch or so maybe a little bit further than this one make yourself a mark and again you could use your brush as a measuring tool to get it about the same height and then you're just going to connect those two with a horizontal line something like that then what i'm going to do is i'm going to travel over to the right hand side of my canvas from this marker go all the way over about two inches shy of the edge of your canvas and then come up about a half of an inch to an inch make yourself a dot you're going to connect that to here so this is going to be a slightly diagonal line it's not going to look super diagonal but just a little bit diagonal something like that and then what we're going to do is you're going to go just make sure you can see that corner i just want you to have a visual where that corner is so you're going to come about halfway between here and here so just kind of pick about a halfway spot somewhere around there it could be a little bit to the right or a little bit you know off center a little bit i think i'm going to go just a touch to the right and then what you're going to do is you're going to travel up until you're about at the halfway height of your canvas so again about half the distance here and then just travel up make yourself a little bit of a marker somewhere in through there now you're going to connect this dot to here something like this so you're going to have an angled line and then i'm going to make another angled line it's going to come off a little bit in a similar angle to this only a little bit steeper i want it to stop before it gets to the width of here so if you come from this go up a little bit and to the left a little bit you want it higher than here and a little bit to the left of here make yourself a dot right in through there so higher than here and a little bit to the left of here make yourself a dot and then you can connect these two something like that so now we're going to make two vertical lines in through here so i want you to find this corner here and then you're just going to make a vertical line until it hits the edge of that front roof something like that and then what you're going to do from here is you're going to come up maybe about a half of an inch almost to the same height as this or just about the same height as that and then make another vertical line going down something like that like that and then what we're going to do is we're going to make ourself a another diagonal line that's going to come up about half the height of this roof line here so what i can do is i can just come about in through here and then just travel over to the left somewhere around here i'm going to be making a diagonal line that's at a similar angle to that so something like this i want to close off this area in through here so i'm going to just come in from this corner maybe about an inch make myself another vertical line something like that i want to give myself a little bit of a back back ledge here and in through here so i just making those two little lines like that now what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a horizontal line from here to about i would say just left of this corner here so wherever this corner is come to the left just a little bit maybe about a half of an inch an inch and travel straight up until you're at about the same height as that and then make yourself a horizontal line now what we're going to do is we're going to put the top uh our second part of our birdhouse on so i am going to make myself a little bit of a vertical line somewhere in through here that's maybe about an inch and a half tall something like that i'm going to come over to the left i would say about maybe about two inches away from here so maybe about an inch and a half to two inches wide something like that and bring this down to about this angle here just go horizontally here something like that and then i'm going to go straight up from here in through there i'm going to create a horizontal line and through here but i'm going to overhang it a little bit like this i need to do a peak to my to this top portion so i'm going to go almost about halfway between here and travel up maybe a little bit to the right somewhere enter here and they don't have to be exactly the same proportion something like this i want to have a little overhang oh i want to do that line there i'm going to do this i've got a little bit of an overhang here maybe i bring this line a little bit to the right here so that way i have a little bit of an overhang that's similar to this one something like that i need to give myself the edge of the the front edge of this part so i'm going to come up like this at a similar angle as here and it needs to go to the same height as here so i just bring this over like this and then i just need to finish off my roof up here so i can do a similar angle as this one has and then a horizontal line like this and the only thing that i have left to do is put a pole on my birdhouse which is going to be just somewhere below it so i'm just going to make three vertical lines i think i'm going to have it you want you don't want it too far over to the left or too far over to the right you want it kind of centered so i think i'm going to come down straight from this edge of this the top one and that'll be my first line and then my second line maybe about halfway in this one something like this and i want mine to look square so i'm going to do another separating kind of line somewhere in here and that's all i'm going to do for my outline i am going to be using my large brush for the next step so once you have your birdhouse outline you can put your pencil away take a little bit of a break and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are painting our sky so i'm going to be using my large brush the colors i'm using are black brown and white and i'm going to be applying this in a circular motion my goal here is to make it kind of like an out of focus wintry snowy sky kind of day and whenever i look at references for those they always seem like they're cloudy and kind of on the darker side and it because it's out of focus it's just going to be really soft in nature so that's why i'm going to be using the circular type brush stroke so i want this to be dark enough so when i put my snow on my roofs that snow really pops out and we're going with kind of a gray scale type bird house too so just know we want it a little bit contrasting in colors so i'm starting with a little bit of white black and brown more white than black and brown but definitely all three colors and then i'm just going to start applying it in this circular type motion and every time i go to pick up paint i can use those three colors but maybe one time i pick up a little bit more brown next time maybe i pick up a little bit more black next time i pick up maybe a little bit more white you can certainly continue to tweak the intensity of those colors and then when i get right next to the bird house i know that i can't really do a circular motion and get it all the way there so i will probably end up just doing a brush stroke but then i finish it with the circular motion so i kind of brush it right up next to it like this and then i'll finish it with a circular and then that way it won't end up looking like i'm painting around that particular object and you might find that while you're doing this you might say oh well i think i you know i want it softer looking or i'm not digging the the swirly brush strokes in order to eliminate that type of look you can do a second coat on the sky so you could get done doing one coat and then let it dry for a minute and then just come back in and do another coat so whatever whatever visual effect is most appealing to you if you want it on the softer side definitely a second coat would help you out you could even do one solid color and then come back in and add little bits of lightness or darkness on top of it you can see how i am utilizing all three colors and i just kind of keep alternating the intensity of the lightness or the or the darkness on there and when i go up next to my birdhouse i'm okay if i bump into it because i know that when i when i go to paint the actual birdhouse itself i'm going to be able to clean up all of those edges so i'm not really concerned about that at this point that's why i'm doing the sky first so if i do bump into it i will have that opportunity later to just go back and kind of make those modif modifications and corrections along the edges and i'm just going to kind of continue throughout the entire sky i'm adding a little bit more brown over in this area you can certainly like i said make it as light or as dark as you want as just knowing that when you do go to do the um birdhouse itself you're going to want to have a good contrast between those those two be it on the lighter side or on the darker side so whatever intensity you want is totally fine by me but you can see i'm just kind of cruising along here just making sure that i get right up to my building and if i have little spots that i need to correct or modify later that's totally fine i am using a good amount of paint at this point um if you find that using a lot of paint what might happen is you might end up blending the whole thing and it's a and it ends up being one solid color if that happens again you can just do a second coat and allow for during that second coat you can have you can add the lighter spots or the darker spots if you want it to look like it's kind of out of focus like there's you know maybe some i don't know maybe some little trees off in the distance or something that have you know given these light spots and dark spots with the with the sun coming through or something but definitely or clouds you know whatever whatever you can visually imagine will totally work out on this and then i'm just kind of kind of finished this bottom step and this bottom section and again i'm bringing it right up to the edge of my of my house and if i bump up to the edge of the birdhouse that's okay i'm going to be able to correct that when i go to paint the birdhouse in later and again i'm trying to make it not look like i'm just painting outlines around the house so that's why i am also doing that circular motion right up close to the house so that will make it look more complete sometimes you can actually just do the hole on a something like this when you have that that big object in the middle we could have gotten away with painting the entire sky the whole canvas with the whole with the entire sky and then put the birdhouse on top of it so that's an all an option too if you don't want to have the run the risk of making it look like you're painting around the object you can always do that full coat underneath it first and then put the object on top of it and what i'm doing right now is i'm just kind of going while the paint is still wet i'm using the tip of my brush and just smoothing it out as much as i want to and then we are going to be switching to our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your sky all nice and painted in here you can put this large brush away wherever you'd like to take out your medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are painting the wood siding of our and the post of the birdhouse so i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors i'm using are black brown and white and i'm going to do this in kind of a striping type fashion i want it to look like the wood grain is going vertically not horizontally so i will be using an up and down type brush stroke my trick here is i'm going to be on the fly i add my shadows which are going to be underneath the little roof ledge or edges and underneath here and then i need to have the corners of the buildings very evident or have contrast on these two sides so i can tell the difference between them so for me i'm thinking my light source is somewhere over on the right so i'm going to have these three sides of the building a little bit lighter so i'm going to start on just one section so you can kind of see how i do this i have black and brown on my brush right now what i in essence do is i'm gonna put wet paint at the top wet black and brown paint at the top of each section and then while it's still wet i kind of pull it down with my my brush and this is going to create the shadowy part up at the top of each section so once i have that on there then without washing my brush i'm just going to pick up white and i'm going to create these stripes going down that particular section we are going to be putting a little ledge on here in a minute but don't worry about making that super perfect so i'm just going to keep picking up some white paint and i will also pick up brown in a minute too just to get this whole section to look nice and wood like i just picked up a little bit of brown but what i'm trying to do is keep that top area where it meets the roof line the darkest and then i have the lighter area down below so you can really make this as light or as dark as you want but if you can if you can allow for it to show that darkness up at the top where it's meeting that next section that'll make it look nice and natural so i'm going to do the same thing i did not wash my brush i just loaded it with black and brown and i'm going to do the same thing in this section so we're going to put the um the borders or the edges on our um building our our birdhouse in a little bit too so don't worry about the the almost like the molding type part we'll do that in a little bit too so black and brown i didn't wash my brush so i have some remnants of the with the white on there i do want this corner right here to stick out a lot so i put white on this side and black and brown on the left side of that so you can see the difference between those two and then again it's just stripes throughout the whole thing i'm adding some more white and really you can kind of alternate the white and the brown and the black too but you're just really trying for a lighter bottom to the um section and a darker top and i just kind of keep doing this these vertical stripes until i get the entire area covered i'm trying not to blend it too much because i want it to have the appearance of a wood type grain so that's why i'm really not trying to over blend it but i still want that darkness up at the top and then i'm going to go ahead and do this section down here i think i want a little bit more brown over here i just added a little bit more brown on my brush you can tweak it as much as you want to it's totally up to you it is your your building you make it whatever intensity you want but i'm going to go down here with some black and brown and this area underneath here can really be much darker because it is in the shadow of the actual birdhouse so you can really have this section down here super dark if you want to and you can if you need to at any time wash your brush in between these sections feel free to do so i'm a real lazy brush washer so you'll find i don't wash my brush very often um but i like the way that my colors blend i guess so you can certainly utilize the water whenever you feel that you need to but again i'm doing this left side gonna do it much darker than the right side of this post just again in order to give the illusion that the light is over on the right and this is going to be kind of in the shadow of the actual birdhouse itself but you can you can play with your intensity all you want and then i have the two little sections up on the top of the roof just making sure so if your sky is very similar in color to your bird house which we run the risk of doing that because we are using the same colors that we did in the sky you just want to make sure that you have some kind of contrast so if i need to i just added more white to my brush and i made it lighter next to my sky so that's going to be your trick you need to have it the contrast in the colors need to be evident so if it's too similar in color you definitely want to add lightness or darkness to one of those sections and then i have up here i just wiped my brush off on my paper towel to make sure i didn't have too much white on it but i'm going to go ahead and do this same exercise to make sure that i have that darkness up at the top while it's still wet i just kind of pull it down a little bit like that and then i'm adding some white to my brush to get this bottom area and i'm just making sure that blends in with that top area as well and i'm just going to keep loading my brush with white and brown to finish up the section and again you can have yours as brown or as white as you want it again as long as there's some contrast in the color to the other things that we're doing i'm going to darken this little corner here on this side so when i do the front you'll be able to see the difference so something like that wiping my brush off of my paper towel picking up black and brown to get the top edge up here where i'm going to pull it down for the shadowy part something like that i don't think it's dark enough at the top so i'm adding a touch more black i must have had more brown on my brush than black while i was doing that so i'm just going up top like this i'm going to pick up some white for the bottom section again and i'm not washing my brush so you can totally see that i still have the remnants of the other colors on my brush and i'm using white and brown to finish up this section just with these vertical stripes and then we are going to be using the same brush for the next step so you can just kind of keep tweaking yours until you have the illusion of some old rustic wood on your on your beautiful little bird house and then you can just wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're putting the main coat on our roofs and this little ledge so i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm just going to do brown and white i don't need any fancy anything for this particular coat i just want to have a nice base coat for when i put my snow on later so i'm really just using brown and white on my brush i don't even care what direction my brush stroke goes in because i am going to be covering it with snow later i just want a nice base coat something that is going to give my snow some structure and i also want to give some form to the little ledge down below so just brown and white it can be as light or as dark as you want the roofs can be any color they can be any intensity and again i don't need a full perfect coat it doesn't really matter what direction my brush is going in i mean i guess if you weren't going to have a snowy roof then it would matter what direction and how perfectly executed it was but because we are going to be having a snowy roof i'm not concerned what it looks like at all i just want a nice base coat underneath here and then i've got the two roofs and i'm going to give my ledge a little bit of form here so i've got the makings of the corner here i do want it to have a little bit of um depth to it so i'm just kind of adding maybe about a quarter of an inch of a width in through here again we're going to have some snow and stuff to cover it you've got the edge coming out over here it needs to wrap around the back a little bit but again this is only for form right now because we are going to have this whole thing covered with snow so i just want to give myself the visual of what you know of a little bit of a ledge in through here something like that so i'm utilizing the width of my bristles on my brush or the width you know um left to right to give me just maybe about a quarter of an inch of a ledge in through here making sure it kind of meets in the corner again it doesn't have to be perfect and then we have we're going to use the same brush for the next step so once you've got your form for your ledge and you've got your roof color on you can wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're putting the edges on the roofs and the little ledge i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm using black brown and white and i want this to be pretty darn dark but i don't necessarily need it to be black which is why i'm going to use black brown and white on my brush at the same time and i'm really just going to do a horizontal line here i'm going right along the edge of my roofs for that peak i need to have it coming out a little bit here we will be using black in this little under part there when you know before this step is over so just know that you'll probably have a little weird spot here and here but we'll be covering that um and we don't need an back edge on the lid the ledge part here because that's going to be covered with snow anyways so i'm going to put black brown and a touch of white all on my brush at the same time black brown white and what i'm going to do i don't need a back edge i don't need a back edge we're just doing bottom and front so i have all three colors on my brush at the same time i have a shaky hand so i'm going to stabilize myself by resting my hand on my canvas and i'm just going to give myself a visual edge i think i want a little more white on my brush and of course you can certainly modify this into whatever intensity you want you just want to be able to see it and i like the multiple colors there we go i got my multiple colors that i like i'm really utilizing this to clean up my edges of my building so and because i'm using you know the the three colors at the same time what's gonna happen is i'm going to have some light spots and some dark spots and it's going to make it look really nice and natural so i'm going to go ahead and do this little edge over here i'm going to add just a touch more white and brown on this edge just so you can see it a little bit more something like that i'll hit that little spot in there with some black in a minute i'm going to go ahead and do this edge over here so i'm just really riding it along the bottom edge of my roof line reloading my brush i reload my brush often so that way i have a good amount of paint on it and i can get a nice kind of clean look to it but you could certainly you know utilize whatever quantity of paint that you want but that's the way that i like to do it so i can have some nice um clean edges to it so something like this and i want to be able to see it so if i need to add more black or more white whatever i need to do so i can visually see it that's what i'm going to do and you'll be able to see a lot better when you put the snow on top of it too that's going to give it a nice crisp look to it because it'll have a lot of contrast next to it so just keep tweaking adding little bits of lightness or darkness whatever works for you gonna go ahead and do this bottom edge over here so this again is gonna just really help me to clean up any edges it gives me it's giving me the appearance of now i've got a three-dimensional kind of ledge going on as opposed to just a line that was uh at the bottom of the of the house so something like this and if your corners aren't perfect again don't worry because we're gonna have that um the snow that will help to hide anything that we want it to and if you can you know make sure that you've got some sort of little i don't want to call necessarily a point at this corner but if you can get the illusion of a point that's great you can always just take a little bit of black and put it on this left side that'll give the visual of that corner kind of being evident and then i'm just going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel to put that little black area underneath this overhang right in through here so i'm just coming out from the edge it should be just a little triangle section right in through here that you'll want to just color in black that's going to give the appearance of that roof edge sticking out and it's going to give you a nice three-dimensional look on that on that edge and then we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got your your birdhouse roofs and edges and everything all with a nice coat on them you can wash and dry that medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are painting our um birdhouse openings and we're also going to do branches so i'm going to use my medium brush and i'm going to use black and brown paint so i'm going to start with my bird holes or openings and this is kind of tipped at an angle so you don't necessarily have to have a circle circle a perfect circle it can be like an oval type shape and it also can look like broken around the edges because birds when they go into these nests can pick atom and stuff so don't worry about it looking totally perfect so i'm just going to go directly below where my peak is and put the the opening somewhere in through there and again i'm not i'm actually going to make it look a little broken i'm not concerned about it looking perfect just something that a bird can fit into if you if you'd like to so something like that and then i'm going to go ahead i just have black on my brush right now so this one i'm going to have maybe a little bit smaller but not too small i still want i still want the birds to be able to fit in there so something like this and again it can be a little on the oval side if you want it to look like it's at an angle a little bit so something like that then i'm going to pick up black and brown on my brush to put branches all along my my edges i want it more heavily weighted down in the bottom then i'm just going to have just a couple at the top i am using a lot of paint on my brush at this um for this step and i'm getting these branches to be pretty wiggly these are um like a winter berry that we're attempting to paint here so they it really can be sturdy looking these berries they they seem to live in some really brutal weather so they must have very sturdy um branches but i'm just kind of using black and brown to get them on here i'm just kind of doing it in a carefree kind of loose fashion as for the direction that i want i think i'm gonna want some kind of coming up the side over here so just think of like long pieces of grass that have a little bit of movement in them they don't have to be individual they can certainly cross over one another they can you know occupy each other's space maybe i'll have one or two coming from up over above because i think that these branches these berries can be high too so you can certainly put them wherever you'd like them to be and then we are going to be let's see what are we going to do for the next step we are going to be using um let's use this same brush for the next step so once you've got your berry branches on and your bird holes painted you can wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the first layer on our berries we're going to use our medium brush and i am using red and brown paint and i will be using both of those colors and i just keep alternating on my brush and the reason why i'm going to be using both these colors is because i want there to be some dark berries and some bright berries later so i like using these multiple colors at the same time especially on a first layer because that's going to give me some great dimension later without much effort so i have red and brown on my brush these berries are very systematic or similar in size throughout the entire plant or the foliage it's all they're pretty similar in size so i'm going to be doing these circular motions and i'm going to try and keep them consistent with one another they don't all have to be in necessarily a clump even though these berries do kind of grow in clumps but when i'm doing my circles i'm trying to consciously keep them in a similar size so i'm i wiggle my brush similarly every time i go to make a berry and again i'm just using red and brown and i am when i go to pick up new paint one time maybe i'll pick up red next time maybe i'll pick up brown and these berries again they they can grow in these little clumps so you can almost do you know sections for the the berries themselves but try not to make it too systematic like don't put 10 berries in each bunch you know maybe put 16 and one and four in another or spread them out like maybe you have a rogue one here and there that is just all by itself and i did put some in front of my little bird house the posts you can certainly put them wherever you want them to be you can make them you know a whole big huge section of them but again you want to just kind of keep the the motion of your brush pretty similar if you can when you're making the actual little berry itself and i'm having mine overlap each other so they're not all just next to each other but when i do that brush stroke my little circle that i'm creating i'm trying to keep it pretty similar with the motion of my hand and you can of course have some over on the sides we're going to have snow later as well on top of these berries so that will help to give a more three-dimensional type allusion to them but again you have fun with this make as many little berry clusters as you want make that rogue one that pops out every now and again and we are going to actually be utilizing our large brush for the next step so once you've got your little berry clusters i'm going to do some coming off the top of my my canvas too as if there's a more branches up top up above you can still you know keep some of your branches showing too so you don't have to hide all of those maybe we're going to have a couple over here and again i'm trying to keep my brush consistent i know i'm not doing it a hundred percent perfect but that's okay mother nature is not totally perfect in her own right so every now and again there will be a large or a small berry all right so i'm going to use my i think that looks good i'm going to use my large brush for the next step so you can take it out and get ready all right so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm putting snow on my birdhouse i'm going to be using my large bristle brush and i'm going to be using white and black so most of it's going to be with white but i do want there to look like there's a little bit of dimension so i'm going to have little clumps of snow coming out of the um like piled up in front of the openings so i want a little bit of dimension with some gray so i'll show you how i'm going to do that first i'm just going to put white on my brush and i want it to look like there's a really some fluffy snow on these birdhouses so i'm almost going to i'm dotting it but i'm going to give it like a smooth almost curved kind of look on the on the top and on the side maybe as if it's piled up just a little bit so you can certainly you know make yours into whatever kind of pile of snow you want but i i want mine to look like there's some dimension and and have some fun with it so i'm definitely gonna gonna play with the the shape of the exterior and where it's all piled up and stuff when you get to the edges you can certainly have some you know coming falling down the side if you want to but i want to keep my my moldings or those edges that i originally had i still want those to be pretty visible so i'm not going to do too much to cover those up i do want to have some snow over on the the right edge of that roof too so you might find as you're doing this with this bristle brush maybe the bristle brush isn't the right brush for your particular hand or technique but i like it because it's gonna provide me with some soft edges and i'm just utilizing the tip of my brush and i also will at times take my brush and squish it on the side of my palette that's gonna bring my bristles kind of into into a controlled manner so i can um so i can put the snow exactly where i want i want some snow coming out of this little area in through here and this is a great time where you can hide some areas that maybe didn't work out exactly as you wanted them to on the whole side of the roof over here again i'm just going to kind of pile it up where i want it to be i'm going to bring it right to that edge and giving it this little bit of a curve so it's almost like it looks like it's piled up a little bit and then when i get down towards the edge just making sure i don't go too over my molding because i i put that there so you could see it so i don't want to cover it all up with snow but if you want to you're more than welcome to and then i'm going to just put some comment just reloading my brush here i want to put some all throughout this area in through here i'll put the my dimensional shadowy area on in a minute but i'm just right now putting the snow on where i want it to be because we do have that brown base underneath it is naturally going to provide us with a little bit of a dimensional element anyways because the paint the white paint will be a little bit translucent so you'll be able to see some of that darker tones underneath anyways in a nice natural way because the white is a little bit translucent but i'm going to add some additional um dimensional elements in a minute i'm just going ahead and putting my snow over here on the other side of my roof something like this like that i'm gonna put some on my ledge and coming out of this opening in through here so something like this and again i don't necessarily want to cover up everything here but i want my ledge to look like it's got some snow on it and maybe it's even piled up a little bit on the edge of the the the front edge of the building something like that building i guess a birdhouse would be considered a building right it's a tiny building it's a tiny building for birds but you can yeah i mean they call it a house so that is considered a building so it's just a tiny little building but anyways so i'm putting it resting on my ledge in through here maybe it kind of goes up the edge a little bit into the side of the bird building and then i'm gonna just tap i'm going slow because i i don't want to overdo it i want my snow to be where i want it to be i don't want it to overpower i'm going to put a little bit here maybe this is even kind of falling off the edge a little bit maybe this is piled up so much here it's it's just falling off the edge maybe i've got a couple little pieces falling off here and i definitely need a little bit over in through here maybe it's even piled up over on this edge it's gonna fall over there and then so for my dimensional pieces i think i've got the snow everywhere where i want it to be what i'm going to do now is put without washing my brush i'm just picking up a tiny bit of black paint and i want there to look like there's a little bit of a shadow at the bottom of this piece coming that's kind of built up in front of the opening and same thing here maybe right along there and then i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel while it's still wet i'm just going to start kind of working it in to the surrounding areas you can also pick up some additional white i just picked up a little bit of white just to kind of work it in a little bit more and you might take you a few minutes just to kind of play with this and get that element to look like it's a shadow as opposed to just a black dot that you put there so if you have to you know just kind of play with it a little bit get those you know little piles to be as high as you want and if you wanted a little shadow on the top like where it meets the building just wipe your brush off on your paper towel you can pick up a teeny bit of black and or brown or both and then just wipe it on your paper towel and then you can sit here and almost just put a little bit of a shadow above that snow and it makes it almost appear as though that that snow is casting a shadow on the actual building so that's another thing that you can really play with and have a lot of fun with giving that element to the building that you wouldn't naturally you wouldn't normally think of you can you know again put a little bit at the top of the snow in through here and maybe you utilize your smaller brush if the bigger brush isn't working for you can just kind of pop in a little bit of a shadow something like that or if you feel like you've tried it and you've gone too far well just pick up some white paint and build that snow up just a little bit more and that will help to make it less of an area and then again just kind of keep playing with this make it whatever you want it to be and we are going to switch brushes to our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your snow on your on your house you can wash and dry your medium brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the first layer of our birds i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors that i'm using are red brown yellow and white and i do want to forewarn you that before you start this step that you definitely want to make sure the roofs and the sky but the sky should definitely be dry but your roofs are dry by this point so you know you can either take an extra long break if you want to or you can blow on it which might take you a while if your snow is really thick or you can certainly just take out a blow dryer and blow dry it so whatever way that you need to go about getting it dry is is what you'll want to do um so i am going to be using this brush the male bird is going to have a base coat of red and then the female bird is going to have a base coat of pre-mixed gold color that i'm going to make so i have i've already kind of pre-mixed mine here so you can see where i'm headed but how i got to there was i added yellow brown and white and i just started spinning it together so you may end up having to add a little more yellow or a little more brown it doesn't have to be an exact color match to mine you just want it somewhere in the vicinity of like a light tannish yellow color so that's where i'm headed with mine and how i'm gonna do this when i teach birds i always teach that the they are made up of two distinct sections the body being a egg with the pointy part of the egg being where the tail comes out and then the head is a circle so it could be a swan or a hawk or a pigeon or a penguin they all kind of are constructed the same way only they have longer necks or different beaks or longer tail feathers or their wings are different but they all have those two basic shapes to them so i'm gonna construct my female first because that gold color is on my brush right now and i don't feel like washing my brush so i'm gonna have her sitting on the top um portion of the birdhouse she's gonna be facing the right hand side and we're going to see most of her back maybe a little bit of her chest so i'm going to have her tail coming down in this vicinity so my pointy part of my egg is where my tail is going to go so i'm going to put my tail starting here i'm going to have the chest is going to be she's going to be pretty um healthy and have a nice a nice big body to her so i'm gonna make this egg probably about two inches wide i've got the front of her chest almost about the same you know um width over to the right as the point of my um front of my building and then i'm just kind of manipulating this into the shape of the egg that i want so something like this and maybe your egg is a little bit rounder than mine or a little bit more pointy than mine it all ends up working out in the long run so that's kind of where i'm going with that just gonna manipulate this just a little bit more to get it exactly where i want and then i'm going to go ahead and put her circle head on here so the um the cardinals that we're going for their heads are pretty um they're not far away from their their body so they sit pretty much right on their shoulder type area so that's where my circle is going to be somewhere right in through here but i don't want it to look like it's got a really narrow neck so what i'm going to do is this is going to be the back part of the neck i'm really just going to kind of connect the back of the head to the back of the body something like that and then her head i'm i'm pretty i'm pretty good with the separation between the neck and um the chest but what i'm going to do is i think i want to just widen it just a little bit where that neck goes just so it's not like too skinny and then i'm going to give her a tiny bit of a beak part of her beak is going to be in her face so i don't want this to protrude too much it's about halfway down the face it gives a little bit of a curve at the top and i'm just using this as a base coat again i know that there's going to be fur and all kinds of stuff on top of it as well then what i'm going to do is i'm going to give her a crown so if the crown was laying down it would kind of lay down on the back of the head so you don't want these pieces to go shooting out in that direction you don't want them to be super duper tall you want them to kind of just come out of the forehead and curve back a little bit and they kind of get shorter as they go towards the head so i have my gold color on my brush i'm going to start kind of on the at the forehead and then just kind of do these little flicks like this and they get shorter as they go towards the um towards the back of the head then i'm going to give her a tail the tail is about the same length as the body so that tells me that the tail should come down a little bit past my um my edge of my building and their tails get a little bit wider as they go towards the end and they've got they don't have too many tail feathers there's you know maybe a small handful on there but i'm just going to kind of get it to go just a little bit past the edge of my roof something like that and then i think she's going to have a little bit of a wing over on this left side so i'm just going to bring a little bit of paint in that direction as well now i'm going to wash and dry my brush for my male cardinal so i just washed and dried my brush and i'm going to use just red paint for him his tail is going to be coming in through here he's going to be kind of looking almost up in her direction so if the tail is going to be here i'm going to put my pointy part of my egg somewhere about there because that's where my tail is going to go and then i'm going to have him really in kind of a seated position so i'm going to have my egg coming something like this just making sure that i've got it round enough give them some good a good proud chest in through there something like that and you of course you can keep reshaping as much as you need to or want to i tend to go a little bit slower when i'm doing these shapes just because i i want it to look nice and and realistic to these particular birds these birds are very special to a lot of people they bring deep spiritual meaning to a lot of people so i want to make sure that i've got a good representation for those of you who are looking to do this for sentimental reasons so just making sure i've got my good egg shape on here and then once i think that's pretty good once i've got my my shape that i'm comfortable with i'm going to go ahead and do my circle so i'm going to have my circle coming somewhere in this direction so i don't want it to go too too big but i definitely want to make sure that it looks like it belongs to this correct bird so that's going to be my circle i want to get rid of this dip in the back so i'm going to just kind of take it from the back of the head and bring it down like this and still leave some of that bump on the back and if you need to you can certainly poof it out a little bit i'm going to give the a little bit of a beak again i want him kind of looking up at her but i don't need it to be you know sticking straight up so i just want the head to look like it's a little bit angled and again part of this beak will be in the face so you don't need much of it coming out of the face so i'm just gonna have a little kind of curved curved line coming out about halfway down the head and then something like this and if you needed a smaller brush to put the the beak in place you can certainly do that then i'm going to go ahead and put my crown so again i don't need it too too high it's going to come out of like that forehead area and if it was to lay down it would lay down on the back of the um on the back of the head so these get a little shorter and shorter as they go towards that the top of the head and then i'm just going to go ahead and put as many on here as i want then i got to go and put a little tail on and again my tail is going to come down here it's going to be about the length of that body so somewhere like this so mine will come just past the um the edge of my roof and i'm gonna have it just sticking out a little bit so we're maybe just gonna see a little bit of the underside maybe actually maybe it comes over the edge of the house a little bit you can make yours do whatever you want to and then we are going to be utilizing this same brush for the next step so once you've got your first coat on your beautiful birds you can wash and dry this medium brush oh actually i want a little a little flip out for his wing back here you can wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing our berries i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm going to be using red yellow and black i suppose you could use a little bit of white too but i think i'm going to be able to get away with red yellow and black so i am going to be in essence putting a second layer on most of my berries i am going to be leaving some of them not all of them but i will leave some of them the dark brown but i will be putting red and yellow as highlight colors on a lot of them i want to keep some of them dark so it looks like we're seeing maybe the underside of some of them or the inside and it just gives it more dimension and then once i put that second coat on then i'm going to pick up a little bit of black and put a little messy spot in the center of these berries because they have this little like um almost like a blueberry where it has that little opening at the top these little berries have a little opening at the top of them so we'll we'll do that with a quick little black squiggly line so i'm gonna start with just red paint on my brush and really what i'm doing is i'm just putting more paint a second layer on a lot of these berries if i want them to be really on the brighter side i'll utilize red and yellow at the same time on my brush and that's going to give me a more vibrant look to them the brown underneath is going to provide a real nice shadowy type area i do know that the red and the yellow are translucent or at least the ones that i'm using are translucent so they are going to take on the color that is underneath so they're going to be more vibrant when they're wet than when they're dry so as you're doing this just know that if they're a little bit bright to start that they will get a little bit darker as they dry but as i go through this i don't need to go over every single one of them if i see one that's like a nice darker color or even here i'm using more yellow on on some of these ones i've got a dark area in through there i think i'm going to keep that maybe i'll just highlight a few of these in through here but you don't have to do all of them leaving a few of the darker ones is really going to help make it look more realistic and showing some of those branches still through there is going to help make it look more realistic as well so again red and yellow are my dominant colors right now and i am not painting all of these berries a second coat i'm doing a lot of them but not all of them i'm going to leave some darker areas in between so it looks like there's little pockets of um aries that we can that we're just seeing between the berries maybe and i'm going to just kind of go through i don't every time pick up both red and yellow sometimes i most of the time i'm just picking up red every now and again i'm picking up a little bit of yellow as well especially when i find some of the original berries that are really red red and the yellow is going to help to give me that little bit of a highlight to them and then once i've got as many berries painted with the second coat that i want and of course you could sit here and do you know many more layers of this if you wanted to but you'll notice as they dry the color is going to turn a little bit and you might want to keep tweaking it but i think i've got them pretty good the way that i want them so what i'm going to do now is i'm just going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and i'm going to pick up a touch of black paint and i'm going to add these little just kind of messy spots in the middle of some of them i don't want to do all of them because i want this to appear like we're seeing the side of some of these berries or we're seeing the back of them so i'm just almost i don't want to call it polka dotting the center it's almost like you put a polka dot and then you can pull out a couple of the little um little pieces to it but i'm just doing it messy because i don't want i want it to look like they're all at different angles that we are seeing it from a different way so you can certainly you could even just put a little polka dot in the middle of some of them so whatever you feel is going to bring it to as realistic as you want it to be but again i'm not doing all of them because i don't want it to look like we're seeing the front of all of them maybe that one wants one or you just put them wherever you feel like it wants one so like this one i think wants one that one too maybe this one and this one and you just have fun and put them at in as many places as you want again they don't have to be right in the center center you can put them along the side you can put them you know anywhere really but you only want one little area per berry so you don't want to have two black areas on one particular berry and then once we get done with this step we are going to be switching to our small brush so you can put all these little fin final touches on these berries and then you can put this medium brush you need to reload here away in your water cup you can take out your small brush yeah that's looking good and get ready for your next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the faces on our cardinals i'm going to use my small brush and the colors i'm using are black white yellow and red so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to in essence kind of put the mask on first which will separate our beak and it'll give us um the structure for the face then we'll paint our little beak and then our eye and we'll magically be done by that so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my small brush i i want to be in control at all times so what i like to do is i'm going to put a little bit of water in a small amount of my black almost so it's like an ink consistency i can always add more but i like having the thin consistency of the paint so that way i can ensure that i have smaller lines i'm not going to press hard i like to spin my brush on the side of my palette which makes it nice and pointy and then when i go to do this i'm not going to press my brush hard so i'm just going to have a little tiny line so on these beaks what i'm going to do first i'm going to separate the beak from the face so i already have the starting point for the beak so what i'm going to do at the bottom where the beak meets the neck i'm just going to underline it a little bit into the face so maybe something like that then at the top where the top of the beak meets the forehead i'm going to connect that to the end with like a curved line so something like that now i have separated that beak from my from my head so i'm going to put my mask on now so the mask is made up of little feathers so i'm going to just take my brush and i'm going to put little feathers coming out the neck they're going to come and i i'm i say feathers so that tells my my brush to be loose and sketchy as i'm doing this i'm going to bring it into the neck a little bit towards that left something like that i'm going to travel up the the side of the beak a little bit and then i'm going to bring it out over here to the left this is going to be where your eye where the eye will sit it will sit inside the mask and then i'm going to bring a little bit in above the the beak area in through here so something like that and of course they all have different kind of shapes on their masks so you can certainly modify this to whatever you feel is appropriate for your little beautiful cardinal and then i'm going to go ahead and do the same thing on the other bird so i'm going to at the bottom of the beak i'm going to bring it into the face a little bit trying to keep my hand out of the way here something like that i'm going to take from the top of the beak connect this with a curved line something like that then i'm going to give myself some little feathers coming out that neck this would be great great place for some little snow to sit if you are having a snowy cardinal experience so then i'm going to bring a little bit into the neck but he's had a little bit different of a position than she is so i'm not going to go too far into the neck that way and i'm going to come up the side of the beak i think my beak is too long too so i think i'm going to close this off just a little bit yeah that looks cute something like this just making sure i've got a good shape here it's almost almost want this to look like a round cheek and through here and then i'm going to put the side of the where the eye is going to sit in a little bit right in through here and again i'm just really using like a sketching type motion to my to my brush so i don't have it over powering in any area so now that i've got that on there you can even bring this back a little bit if you wanted to now that i've got that on there i am going to wash my brush so wash and dry my brush i'm going to put my beak on so these beaks can be anywhere from a vibrant red to an almost a yellowy color so they can follow in a kind of a wide spectrum of anywhere from red to yellow so i want mine to be pretty vibrant so i'm going to kind of pre-mix myself a little bit of an orange color with red yellow and just a touch of white this will act as a nice contrast against what's already on each one of them so just a little bit of a orangey color red yellow and white and i'm going to do a thin coat on each beak and because we have a different base coat base on both of them they might they're going to end up looking a little bit different which is great and now you this is a time where you could certainly reshape them if you needed to his is a little bit more prominent which is totally fine by me i need so i just did the base coat i want a nice bright highlight on the top so i didn't wash my brush i just put a little bit of white paint on it so i can add this nice white or bright highlight i'm going to tweak it in a second so i just totally stopped talking there so i just wanted that bright highlight on there i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and now you can pick up any combination of red yellow whatever you want to do i want to in essence kind of just get that that highlight to blend into the beak but i still want it to be the brightest at the top of the beak and this is one of those steps where you know you might find yourself fiddling with it for ever just to get it into that area that you really it really reads as being highlighted on the edge and then that that reddish yellowy kind of color in the rest of the beak i just added some more red and yellow to my brush just to get this one to be nice and i don't want that white line to just look like a white line and then you also should have some sort of opening to the beak too so you can use a tiny bit of your black paint to just pull in the essence of a of a mouth or an opening but i would not go too too crazy with the with the opening these birds are pretty darn far away you wouldn't the the detail of them you know it all depends on how how extreme you want yours realistic you want yours to be but you could certainly you know just go subtle on those tiny details like that and then you just keep tweaking it with the the reds and the yellows until you you've got it exactly as you want um and then for the eye i just wiped my brush off on my paper towel and i'm picking up black and white at the same time the eye what i'm going to do is a dot and a crescent so i'm going to do a dot for the sparkle of the eye and a crescent is going to just tell the viewer the shape of the eye so i'm going to pick a spot somewhere in the in the um mask part and again you know you just want to the quantity of paint is uh the most important part so a dot and a crescent something like that and then same thing the dot is um oh towards the back of the head and the crescent is towards the beak so a dot and i'm going i'm just going gingerly here and a crescent and if you want it more vibrant make it more vibrant you want it more subtle make it more subtle and then we are going to use the same brush for the next step so once you've got your cute faces on here you can wash and dry your small brush get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are adding our shadowy and dark areas for each bird so i'm going to be using my small brush and i'm going to be using red brown and probably some of my gold color as well so for me on the male bird my dark areas are going to be underneath the belly underneath the wing and underneath the tail and it might have a little bit on the back of the head too my light source i'm thinking is you know high up in the air here and then for the female she's a little more complicated because she also has red in some of her wings so i'm gonna and it's and it's in the darker areas so i'm going to be using on her i'm going to be putting her darker areas underneath her wings she's got she's going to have you know a big wing here maybe a little sliver over here then she's going to have some darker areas in between her feathers on her tail she might have a little darker area back here and then she's going to have some red and some darker stuff up on her head as well so i'm going to start with the male because he's going to be the easier one so i've got my small brush i'm going to put black red and brown on my brush at the same time because i know black is going to be very overpowering and with the red and the brown on there as well it gives me a little bit more control over the intensity so i am going to first just kind of put a couple of streaks down that tail something like this and i and i don't need much just something that kind of puts the the feathers into motion if you feel like you have a lot of black on your brush next time you go to pick up paint just pick up red and then that black will start to work its way off i know that there's going to be some shadow underneath his belly so i'm just going to take those colors and all the while i'm thinking feathers feathers feathers so i don't want to do any solid line i just really want to have a feathery type brushstroke to what i'm doing and this might be a little bit more feathered or darker under this belly area like that maybe a little bit coming up that side of the the belly as well and then i've got a wing in through here so again red black and brown on my brush my wing is right here let me just make sure i have enough paint on my brush and i want the wing to come about mid body range so about halfway between the shoulder and the chest somewhere about here and it ends up going to here and you want to curve it like kind of the belly so somewhere around here and again just light sketchy lines nothing nothing too um straight or powerful so something like that he might have a little bit of shadow on the back of him but i don't want it black so i just put red and brown just to get a couple of maybe darker feathers over on that back side of the body something like that and we're going to be putting highlights and and the lighter stuff on in a little bit same thing back of the head maybe a little bit of red and brown gives me a little bit of that shadow on that back side of the head and then i'm going red black and brown for a couple of little shadowy pieces in this crown and you don't need to add more pieces of crown you can just really utilize what you already have unless you need to but um and i'm just doing a couple of little darker streaks in through there so that it will add dimension when we go to um put the lighter colors on there and then that's really all i'm going to do for him i'm going to move over to her i'm going to wash and dry my brush just so i have a clean thought as i'm coming into her and in order for me to kind of form it properly i want to kind of really know where those wings are going to be so i'm going to put some of that gold color and brown on my brush just to almost give myself a little bit of a road map to start so i'm gonna have this side wing coming somewhere in through here and then the tail feather will be underneath there and then she's got a little bit of a feather over on that side as well so that just kind of broke up my my rhythm to understand where the pieces are going i have black or brown and gold on my brush right now i'm going to add a touch of black not much just to give myself a couple of little shadowy pieces in this tail something like that i'm also going to with this color combination give her a little bit of a shadowy area back here it looks like i might have had a little bit of red still left on my brush but that's okay so i'm really very little bit of paint on my brush just kind of rubbing in a little bit of contour shadows in the back of her neck in through there and same thing back here just a little bit in through there maybe a little bit on the wing too so i want to add now some of that red that i see in her so i'm not washing my brush i'm just going to pick up red with a touch of brown on my brush and i'm going to add some some of those redder streaks and the females can have a lot of red in them i they you know they have they can have no red in them i've seen them both ways so whatever way you want to depict it is fine by me i'm putting a little bit in a wing that might be over here on the other side i'm going to put some in her front wing which i'm going to have about halfway into her face and again it's got to have a nice curve to it this is where i'm going to start to use my sketchy feathery wing stroke something like this and i have a little bit coming down in through here and i'm going to have some of that red in her crown so again just red and black brown on my brush is what i've just loaded and i'm going to put a little bit in her crown just to tell the story that she's got some of those vibrant colors i know she doesn't need to because she doesn't need to impress impress the males i think they're the more vibrant red the male is the more the female is attracted to them so but she doesn't need to be fancy colored i don't think i think the males like any of the females doesn't matter what colors they are so i'm gonna do that and then i'm gonna she has a little red on her forehead and again you can kind of have fun with these darker tones on her because she can have a lot more color to her modification i think that's all i'm going to do for her maybe maybe a little bit more of the goldy and the brown in this wing back here just to tell people that it's in the shadows but it'll be um more prominent when we go to do the highlights and the final layer to it so what we're going to do for the next step is we are going to utilize this same brush so once you've got your shadows and your darker areas on your on your birds you can wash and dry this small brush get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are adding our highlights and the lighter feathers to our birds so i'm going to use my small brush and the dominant colors are going to be red yellow and white but for her i will probably also utilize that gold color as i go through the process and for him i might also utilize brown if i need to but i'll let you know as i go i'm going to start with the male bird because it's again the easier of the two and i want his chest to have the light area the wing to have a light area along the edge his cheek his head the front side of it and then maybe a little bit on the tail so i caution you that you don't want to just use red and white because that will make pink and i don't want a pink cardinal i want a red cardinal that just looks like it has highlights on it or lighter feathers so the yellow will help to counteract any uh pink hue that you might have so you could pre-mix uh like a orange to have that as a highlight color like what we did on the beak or you can just kind of manipulate them and kind of blend them on the canvas itself so i am going to pick up red yellow and a touch of white i'm going to start with the chest and i'm going to make a lighter area every time i do a paint stroke i'm thinking feather so i don't really want a a straight line i want to make sure that i've got almost a curve to each each paint stroke that i make and by utilizing multiple colors on my brush at the same time that allows me to just kind of naturally have these almost like glistening little highlights throughout the bird and if you every now and again pick up white and put white on top of some wet paint that will give you these extra little special bright pops of feathers that are just kind of being illuminated by the glow of the sun so i just i'm going over to the to the wing and i'm doing the same thing so i'm just kind of utilizing the paint on my brush i'm using this small brush because it helps me to not get out of control it helps me to just use a little bit of paint at a time and be able to put the paint where i want it and i might start skipping around um as i am painting i see another area and i'm like oh i think i want a little bit more there like i'm doing right now so if i skip around a little bit i apologize but i um definitely kind of just go through through the area and make sure that my brightest brights are where i want them to be which is on the chest on the tip of the wing on the tip of the tail i'm reloading with red yellow and white right now i want just a little couple little pops of highlight on here just so the eye really gets drawn to that area and you'll you'll notice i don't really do much with each section but because i'm in control of the the paint that's on my brush i don't need to do much so i can i i can say okay i just want a little bit in through there and i know that that little bit really visually goes a far away so just know that that can happen you know that you can do that as well and let's say you go and you're like oh i added too much in through there just come back and put a little bit more red on top of it and that will dull it down but you'll still be able to see it so it'll be it'll probably work out well for you so i'm going to add a little bit onto this cheek and through here that looks a little too pink for me so i'm going to add a little bit more yellow to it just so i can bring it more into the you know color scheme that i want as opposed to pink because i don't want to have pink in my i can have little bits of pink but i don't need a lot and then i want to put some highlights up in that crown so red yellow and white and again i want my brightest area to be over there on the left hand side and i'm just kind of adding these curved little feather slash highlights in through here maybe a little bit back here and again if you feel like you've gone too far you can always just bring back some of that red like i feel like that was a bit too much so just brought back a little bit of that red i think i want a little bit more brightness on these top pieces so i'm going to bring in a touch more white and again this is one of those things that you can really just go to town and you know make it as vibrant as you want have it really saying this is a beautiful winter day and these two are just enjoying each other's company and you know you can just enjoy your painting experience and it will show through on the cardinals experience in their in their little beautiful you know country birdhouse place all right so i'm digging his appearance here maybe a touch more red up in this this little crown so i'm gonna switch to her right now and for her i'm gonna tackle it pretty much the same way with where's my highlights and adding those lighter colors in through there and then just kind of tweaking it until i'm comfortable so i know that her highlight the brightest part is going to be on her chest and kind of up in this crown i do want to lighten the feathers in the back of the head too so i'm going to start with yellow and white on my brush and quite a bit of it i want this front area to be the brightest so i'm just making sure that i'm elevating this as bright as i want it to be i might have to come back and add some more colors to it but right now just kind of getting this layer of lightness on here and you can see it's already taking shape here and then i'm just gonna once i've got my my light area established now i just i'm saying to myself okay where else do i i want that that highlight or the lightest area to go i definitely want an area back in through here so yellow and white is going to help me to you to accomplish that and then i'm going to put some of that up in the in the crown something like this all the while making sure that i use that curved kind of brush stroke i think i need to be a little bit more head on here to make sure i get it in the right direction and again i'm just kind of adding these bits of streaks of lightness i think i want to put maybe a little bit on her forehead and through here but making sure that i don't um take away from the other details that i've put in through there i definitely need some feathers in through here as well so i want to make sure that i've got something that's represented in through here so just i'm really just using the remnants of my on my brush right now to get some of that color in there maybe i think i'm going to use some of my brown and my gold color also just to get some feathers back here to make sure it looks like i've got some stuff back there so on her right now i've really got everything in place i just am adding just tweaking it right now just making sure that everywhere looks like it's got some feathers i want some little feathers on her on her cheek area in through here so i'm just utilizing my gold my yellow my white to make sure that on this second layer for her she's got little bits of of highlights here and there to give dimension to the feathers you want to make sure that they all kind of go in the direction that they'd be growing out of her of her from so i'm gonna just kind of make sure that every time i put a little feather on here it's going in the in the direction that i feel that it would be coming out of the of the body so something like this making sure that you can see everything i want you to see so i want you to be able to see that there's a little wing in through here i feel like the tail needs a little bit of a highlight on it too so i'm adding some yellow and white just to make that pop a little bit maybe something i need this area oh she needs a little shadow underneath her we missed we missed putting a little shadow underneath here too so i just picked up a little bit of brown i'm gonna put a touch of a shadow underneath there maybe i know i didn't say i was going to use black but maybe a little bit of black to show the difference between these wings i feel like i've kind of lost the definition of these wings a little bit so i just put a teeny bit of black on my brush and then yeah that looks better that makes you that makes you be able to see them a little bit more and then i'm just going to kind of make my little modifications as i see fit and then let's see what do we have we have one more kind of um fun step to go i'm just going to kind of keep tweaking this a little bit let me just see here we've got some other little things to go and you know just just keep having fun with it and we're gonna use our let's see what are we going to use for the next step we're actually going to use our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this step all nice and done you can yeah there's some nice highlight there nice highlight here sorry this is one of those steps that's really tough for me to to stop doing um but we're gonna use our uh what i say medium brush for the next step so whenever you're ready you can get that ready and get ready for the next step all right so i know that i said that we had one last step and it was going to be with the medium brush but i'm sorry we have two more and i want you to use the small brush for the next step so i forgot about the feet and the little shadow underneath so we're going to go ahead and do that so i'm going to use my small brush and i'm going to be using black and white paint so you might not even have your birds in a position where you can really detect their little feet i hardly do but i do know that you know we want to do something if you can detect it so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start with just black paint on my small brush and i'm going to i'm just going to see one little claw in through here so i'm going to take my small brush and i'm really just doing a couple little claws coming over the edge like that like you can't even really see it i'm going to put maybe a little bit more shadow underneath here i think this needs to be a little bit more shadowed in through there and then i'm going to go ahead and do the same thing with her up here where i think i might see maybe a little bit of a of a little tiny leg in through here and maybe a teeny little claw something like that but again you can totally determine on your own if you feel like you're gonna want one on yours and then without washing my brush i just pick up a tiny bit of white paint and i put a little tiny highlight on top of the um the toe the the toe claws on the toe claws or the leg something like that so just a little tiny white and it's such a teeny tiny detail you know some people may see it some people may not you know whatever whatever works for you and then i do want a little shadow underneath her body over here so i'm gonna put a little bit of white and black on my brush and then wipe it off on my paper towel you don't need much at all and you can even use it with a little bit of water on your brush and i just want there to appear to be a little shadow underneath her on the snow and i wanted to get a little bit darker as it reaches her body so right now i'm just kind of with a a little bit of water on my brush getting the shadow on here and then i'll add a little bit of a of black right where it meets her and her body but right now i'm just kind of getting that shadow on something like that and now i'm going to put a tiny bit of black paint on my brush just to give it that real deep kind of shadow as if it's really nice and close to her and again if you if you need to just add a tiny bit of water to your brush and that helps you to move it around a little bit maybe a little shadow underneath here too you put the shadow wherever you feel it needs to go but i think a little shadow under here might oh yeah that's going to work on the building you put it where you feel it needs it to go and then we are going to use that medium brush for the next step so once you've got your feet and your shadow on here maybe maybe a little maybe a little under here too i like putting shadows it makes it bring it brings it into more of a realistic place oh yeah that's a nice shadow okay all right now now i'm ready for my next step medium brush all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're putting snow on our berries so i'm going to be using my medium brush and white paint you can you know you can use gray paint or white paint i'm using i'm using white paint because i want mine to be nice and bright my trick here is i don't just want them at the top of every cluster i actually want them at the top of some of my berries within the cluster and i don't want to keep i don't want it to be too consistent i want there to be some carefreeness to it so i'm definitely going to just have some fun with this and put little clumps of snow on some of the berries but not all of the berries maybe there's a little pile here and there maybe we've got some coming down this little branch maybe there's some on this branch maybe there's some on this branch that would help to break it up a little i suppose you could also use your bigger brush if you wanted it to look fluffy like this but i i want to be a little bit more in control of where it's going because i do want to put it on top of some of these berries and i feel that i might lose a little bit of control if i'm using the bigger brush but you know your control better than i do so if you want to use the big brush feel free to do so this one might not have it i don't know might might not who knows snow can sit anywhere right and maybe i'll put some on the top of here something like that have fun with it i'm looking for some clean white on my pal it's hard to come by right now so maybe i've got some in through here and i'm just putting little little clumps of snow here and there maybe little speckles here and there just have some fun with it this is it's snow if you were snow where would you sit right you know it could be little mounds of snow if you made a berry that you don't like hide it with snow you know it's you can just have fun maybe there's some snow that's kind of in between these berries maybe we've got some coming up here maybe there's a little over here just again put put it wherever you want i'm gonna put a little bit in these berries up into here i'm just kind of tapping my my brush so that way it looks a little messy maybe there's some coming down there maybe there's some in through here and again you can put it anywhere snow sits anywhere you know it it just has to make a little bit of sense that it would sit at at the top of things as opposed to you know just a flat layer somewhere you could put some up in through here if you wanted to but i like having it in the middle of the berry cluster because that tells you know you can that tells people the the shape and that it's three dimensional you can even round one so it looks like it's you know just sitting right on top of that particular berry and then maybe some coming up in through here and the messier it is the more it's going to look natural and then we just have that final step to go with the tiny brush so once you've got your snow on your berries you can put the medium brush away take out your tiny brush and get ready for the final step alright so we are on to the final step this is the final step of any painting which is to sign it so i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right corner i'm going to be using my small brush i'm going to be using black paint but you could certainly use any color that you'd like i think i'm going to sign mine right in this little spot right here i do my initials but you could certainly do your first name or the date or a symbol whatever you want is totally fine and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself some perfectly proportioned cardinal couple and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music] [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 149,054

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, lesson, beginner, simple, easy, artist, painter, sip and paint, class, step by step, tips, learn to, how to, paint, sky, landscape, realistic, best, yellow, sun, clouds, top, black, looking, red, head, sitting, eyes, animal, male, wooden, standing, ontop, morning, farm, bird, country, feathers, tail, beak, crown, cardinal, cardinals, female, two, birdhouse, snow, snowy, berries, winterberry, branch, two story, house, at, eachother, couple, gold, beautiful, stunning, most, winter, holly, on

Id: zD1dwBIpjVU

Length: 102min 25sec (6145 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020