Learn How to Paint MOM AND BABY SWAN with Acrylic - Paint and Sip at Home - Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire payton sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today i'm going to be painting mom and baby swan and i'm going to be sipping on some green tea today and if you enjoy this process i do hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you're going to find additional painting perks so let's get painting and let's get sipping all right 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 titanium white mars black green oxide deep yellow chrome orange and burnt umber which i will refer to as brown and of course you can certainly switch up those colors if you'd like to 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 i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a quarter inch wide flat bristle brush and then i have a number one round synthetic brush and i will refer to these as small medium and large as we go through the painting process and again you can certainly switch those up if you'd like to and then if 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 your brushes and down below this video i will be providing you with a couple of additional resources that can help you through your painting process one of them is a link where you can purchase the same exact paint kit that i'm using from the large canvas to the same paint and the brushes and all that good stuff so that's 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 and that's all we're going to need today all right so what we're going to do for the first step is we're doing an outline of our swans so i'm going to be using my pencil and i'm going to guide you through some basic shapes and we're going to connect some dots and hopefully by the time we're done we'll have a shape of a mama and a baby swan that we'll be able to color in with some base colors so we're not going for any real fine detail on this we're just going to do some outlines of some basic shapes so we're going to draw the baby swan first i'm going to be using my pencil and my baby swan is going to be pretty much in the middle of my canvas i'm going to start with a circle for the head so where you're going to want to start is about the center of your canvas so you can kind of go left to right at the top kind of find yourself a center spot and then you can do the same thing on the left or the right hand side of your canvas and you'll find yourself a center spot let me do this this way eyeball center spot and then just kind of move your fingers towards the center and that'll give you a good spot that is near the center of your canvas if you don't want to use a ruler that is and then once you've got that spot in through there then you're going to travel up from that i'm going to go about two and a half to two and three quarter inches and just make myself another dot up at top so that's going to be the bottom and the top of my circle and a circle is going to be as high as it is wide so whatever you've done here you can just use your pencil as a measuring tool and then just go like this and make yourself a marker at either side of that and that's going to represent top bottom left and right of your circle and now you're just going to sketch yourself a circle it doesn't have to be anything perfect this is just something that's going to give us a nice good starting point for our little cute baby swan that we're going to be doing and then once i've got that done i'm going to put the body on so my little swan is just kind of nestled underneath mama's neck so he's just kind of squashed and just you know in a comfortable sitting position so i'm going to have the shape of his body in an oval so my oval is going to be about as tall as this circle so you can kind of give yourself a little measurement there come directly below that make yourself another mark and then the width of it is about twice as wide as here so you could just take your pencil get your width from there and kind of go in the center like that make yourself a mark on the left hand side do the same thing come down to about the center make yourself a mark on the right hand side and that's going to give you the top bottom left and right of your oval so now i'm just going to connect all of my dots in an oval type shape and yours might not look exactly the same as mine yours might be a little bit you know wider or more narrow or you know more pointy on the edges it'll all work out in the end trust me so now that i've got that on there what i'm going to do is i'm going to give myself the shape for the bill of the of the duck so i'm going to come down about two thirds of the way down this circle so somewhere in through here is where the top of the bill is going to be and then the bottom of the bill is going to be somewhere in through here so i'm just going to give myself a little marker in through here in here and now i'm going to connect these with a little bit of a scooping kind of line it's going to come down a little bit and then maybe up just a little bit at that edge not a lot just just a little tiny bit and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to close off this back gap just a little bit so i'm just going to bring this in through here so that's all i'm going to do for the outline of my baby duck now what i'm going to do is i'm going to do the outline of my i called it a duck it's a swan i think they might be in the duck family i could be wrong though um so i'm going to do say i'm going to kind of approach the mom in the same way with starting with a circle for the head so i'm going to put my circle for my head in this vicinity my circle for my mom's head is going to be almost twice as large as my baby one so i'm going to have it starting in through here right around here is where i'm going to have it start and then if this is about the length of this circle i guess maybe an inch inch and a half or up a time time and a half so maybe about four inches is about the um length i'm going to do it so i'm going to start this maybe somewhere in through here so that gives me a good kind of starting point and then you can do the same thing with making your markers something like this and then crossing it over like this that'll give you a good kind of top bottom left and right and then you just kind of connect them in that circular type fashion and again it doesn't have to be an exact circle this again is just really giving us the base for i think this is going to be a little bit too low i'm going to put this a little bit higher um this is just really giving us the base to where we want the head of the swan to go and it doesn't again have to be a perfect circle just something that is representational of an of a circle type shape so now that i've got that on there i'm going to guide you into making the rest of the body but i'm going to put the inside of the neck so we've got the two heads and now i just have to kind of form the wings and the neck around it and the bill or the beak so i'm going to start by doing the inside part of the neck i'm going to start at the top of my baby's head in through here and i'm going to give it a curved line that's going to make the front of this oval down in through here so something like this just a little bit of an arcing line is going to give me the inside part of the mom's neck and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to be coming from the center part of my oval i'm going to come about halfway between that and the edge of my canvas so somewhere in here and come up just a little bit this is going to represent the outside spot where i want to stop for the neck so i'm going to start at the top of the head for the outside edge of the neck and i'm going to stop right about here this is just going to be a long arcing curved line that i'm going to start at the top of my circle and through here and you can even go up a little bit above that circle area that's going to show it that show the that the um arc of the neck is a little bit more bent and then i'm just going to kind of give this a continual type of curved line you can even come out this way a little bit and of course you can certainly reshape it to whatever you feel looks good so that's going to be the outside of my neck then i'm going to come straight over to the left hand side somewhere in through here make myself a mark and i'm going to connect these two with just a uneven kind of um like a curved line this is going to represent the top of one of the feathers or one of the wings now over on the right hand side i am going to put my beak on so what i'm going to do on this side is again i'm going to come about a little bit more than halfway between the edge of my duck of my duck i'm gonna keep calling it a duck and some in some of these videos i just get stuck on a word and my stuck word is duck even though it should be swan so i apologize in advance so i'm gonna go from here to here about halfway and maybe a little bit lower so i'm going somewhere in this vicinity is going to be the tip of my beak for my swan for my mama swan i'm going to connect here to here but what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring this down just a little bit down this circle in through here and when i go to connect these two i don't want a super straight line so i'm going to give it a tiny bit of a wave just so it looks a little bit more natural so something maybe in this vicinity you know just something that gives a little bit of movement to it and then the top of the bill or of the beak they have this little bumpy skin type portion in through here so i'm going to come about halfway down my circle to about here this is going to end up connecting to the end of my beak but i'm going to tell you what i'm going to do first so i'm going to bring this down in like a little bit of a bump and then i'm going to kind of scoop it down in through here and then i will bring it down in a curve at that end so here we go i'm going to start with just a little bit of a little bumpiness which is where the um the skin i i guess is that's probably not the correct terminology but that bumpy part at the top of their beak goes and then i'm going to just kind of bring this down almost in a straight vertical line gets it's a little bit um tipped diagonally but not a ton it gets skinnier and skinnier as it gets towards the end like in through here and then as i go towards that edge that's when i'm going to just bring it down in this curved type of motion and when we put the details on everything you can certainly adjust that um even more when we go through that process and then i just need one more wing over on this right hand side so i'm going to come down this oval to i would say right about in through here and then down on the bottom right hand corner of my canvas i'm going to come in maybe about a quarter of an inch make myself a mark i'm going to connect these two with a big wavy line so i'm going to bring it pretty darn close to my beak so somewhere in through here and then bring it down and yours doesn't have to be exactly the same wavy line mine is this is just going to represent the outside of a big beautiful wing from from mom's uh from mom's body and then that's all we're going to be doing for the outline we are going to be using our big brush for the next step so once you've got this all nice and done make any tweaks that you would like to put your pencil away take out your large brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to be doing for the next step is we're painting the water so i'm going to be using my big brush and the colors that i'm using are black green and yellow so my water is i'm making it kind of on the abstract type of side in my head i am envisioning this to be like the reflections in moving kind of pond or river or lake water that you can see all the forest around it with the greens and the and the dark you know blacks from the from the neighboring trees and stuff and maybe some little pops of sunshine with the yellow so that's why i'm going to be choosing to do these colors i thought they'd be really nice and complimentary to our mom and baby swan so how i'm going to be doing this is i'm going to be moving my brush in a left to right type of fashion to give you the appearance of ripples in the water there's going to be a couple of tricky spots which are going to be this one in through here and in through here so when you're doing this it's okay if you bump into your pencil mark you don't want to cross over too much because the black will hide it on you but if you bump into it a little bit that's okay you just want to kind of keep your keep it consistent looking throughout these areas so i'm going to start with my dark color which is black then i'll go to green then i'll go to yellow and i'm just going to do it in kind of a splotchy type of way so i've got my large brush and i am using a bristle brush that sometimes seems to have a mind of its own and go a little bit out of control so what i'm going to do with it is i'm going to take it and i'm going to squish it in my paint on the side of my palette and what that's going to do is that will bring all of my bristles nice and together and they'll be a little bit in more of a controlled fashion for me and i'm just going to kind of start on the right and work my way towards the left when you get towards or near your um your animals you don't necessarily want it to look like you are doing an outline around them like that you still want to maintain the brush stroke to look like it's going left to right even when it's hitting the um the animal itself so you just want to kind of consciously think i want to remain left to right i don't want to do an outline around the animal so that's where even if you it's easier to do this right up to the animal you can take that paint and just kind of pull it out and that'll give you that left to right type of brush stroke that you're looking for so i'm going to continue in through here give myself a couple of little black streaks in through here and again all the while i'm okay if i bump into my animal a bit and i'm trying to make it not very systematic looking i want to make sure it's got some sort of um inconsistency because these are just intended to look like little ripples in the water so i'm doing my black first so that way i've got some good um some good darkness in in it in in certain places but i'm not going to overwhelm it with the black i'm just kind of doing a few strategic areas in through here making sure that i've got some good balance just a couple of little pieces up top now without washing my brush i'm gonna pick up some green so i've got some green on my brush and if you once you start using the green if if you're still just coming out with black on your canvas you might want to wash and dry the brush but i think i'll be pretty good with just kind of using this little bit of green in through here making sure that i've got it represented throughout the entire um canvas and still all the while knowing that i want to save some spots for some green art for some yellow i mean and i am going to be overlapping in some areas i'm wiping my brush off on my paper towel because i want to be able to control my green a little bit more so i just wipe my brush off on my paper towel i'm saving some spots for yellow and i am also overlapping some of my black spots so this way this is going to really give me some good diversity as i go through the entire area and i do of course want to have some of this green into here so i'm really just using the little corner of my brush making sure that i get right up to the edge of my little i almost called it a duckling of my little swan in through here and i'm consciously making sure that i maintain that left to right brush stroke so this is just where it gets a little bit trickier in through here you could i suppose switch to a smaller brush if this this size brush was just not cooperating for you but again i'm leaving some spots for my um for my yellow to come in through here and again i'm i'm going for you know kind of a nice moody water so that way you know we've got you know some good movement we've got some good you know excitement in there and then as i get up towards this top i'm just kind of adding some in through here making sure again i'm leaving some spots for my for my yellow that i'll be putting on in a minute so i'm a little bit more liberal when it comes to these top areas because i can see that i've got more space to work with and again i can overlap into that black a little bit making sure that i get right up to my animal so that way it doesn't look like i'm working around it or doing outlines around it but again you can trace it if you want to around that edge but while that paint's still wet make sure that you utilize that left to right brush stroke and then my final color is going to be with the yellow so again i'm not washing my brush i'm just picking up some yellow paint and then i'm going to go ahead and make sure that i've got all these all whatever little white spots that i had left i'm just going to kind of come in and shoot a little bit of yellow in there and you can see it's starting to come to life with a little bit of sunshine just twinkling off the water in through here i've got this little tiny spot i want to make sure that i get in through here and again you can see that i'm bumping right into my the neck of my swan which is okay because i'll be able to paint over that i just want to make sure that i maintain this left to right brush stroke and as you get towards these um these final little spots that you're doing you can certainly pick up a good amount of paint it doesn't have to be um you know you don't have to blend over blend it just kind of sit it right on top of there just maneuver your brush left to right so i at this point i'm using the most amount of paint on my brush again you can overlap these colors i'm going left to right you can also kind of do a zigzag type of brush stroke as well and just make sure that you carry that color throughout the whole area and again i'm trying not to over blend this way i can maintain um the ripple effect if you over blend it what might end up happening is it might end up being turning into one solid color and if that happens it's not necessarily a bad thing but what you could do if you wanted to give the appearance of the ripples you could come in and do a second layer on top of it if you needed to or wanted to by just kind of adding these these kind of jagged um almost zigzag type of brush strokes that i'm doing in through here and then once you've got your water done we will be using 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 i'm just kind of finishing up with getting some of this beautiful yellow throughout my water and then once i've got this all nice and done i'm going to put this large brush away and i will take out my 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 going to be painting the base coat for our baby swan i'm going to be using my medium brush so this will be my quarter inch bristle brush and the colors that i'm going to be using are black white and brown and what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a medium to dark gray color so what i'm going to do is i i like my grays to be kind of on the warmer side so i'm going to add just a touch of brown some black and a little bit of white and i'm going for a medium to dark gray this is going to be the base coat for my little duck and my little duck is in the shadows oh duck my little swan is in the shadows of its mama so it's going to have a lot of darkness to it and a nice dark base will make your life easier when you go to build the um the feathers on top of it so this is about where i'm going with with my color and yours doesn't have to be exactly the same color as mine because you're going to have much opportunity to tweak it when we put all of the other details on it we're just going for a nice neutral kind of dark base so i've got my medium to dark gray and i'm really just painting it in it doesn't even have to be a beautiful coat it doesn't have to be perfectly executed you just want to have a nice you want to make sure that you get the whole thing but it doesn't have to be perfectly executed if you see little brush marks throughout it that's okay just when you the only part that i would suggest you kind of go slow at is the beak so when you're doing the beak just kind of go slow along the edge of that because that's the area where you'll want to have a nice edge to it when we go to um put the details on it but along the edge of the where wherever there's feathers that's okay you don't have to have those perfect because those are going to be fluffy anyways so i'm just continuing to get my color on here making sure i go all the way up to my water my water's edge and it this doesn't have to be perfect because that's going to be overlapped by mother's feathers as well and then just getting this little area in here and then when you've got the whole thing colored in we are going to be utilizing our large brush for the next step so get your um baby duck painted wash or put your um medium brush away wherever you'd like to take out your large brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to be doing for the next step is we're doing the base coat for our mama swan i'm using my large brush and i'm using the same colors black brown and white and what i'm really going to be doing is just making myself a lighter shade of gray than this so it doesn't have to be too much lighter but a little bit lighter so i'm going to take a little bit of my black a little bit of my brown and of course this time i need more because i have a bigger area to to go for so i'm just going to make sure that i that i create enough so i'm going to have a nice base coat for this and again it doesn't it doesn't have to be anything really super special just something a little bit lighter than you have for the baby and then once you've got the desired color there's no fancy brush stroke involved here you just want to make sure that you've got the entire area covered i am going to keep it a little bit smoother around the neck and the face but as far as where the um the feathers are going to go along the back side down below those don't have to be super perfect i just want to try and get this as much up to my water line because i don't want it to look like i've missed any areas and if you did like i'm noticing i have a little bit of a area that kind of shoots out into my water right here that's not painted i can always come back with my watercolor and make any of those type of minor modifications that i need to if i want to or i could just bring my swan all the way out there too if i needed to or wanted to and i think i've lost my little bump here so i'm just gonna make sure that i've got a little bit of that bump back on that forehead so i can make sure i know where where to go later with that so it's just bumping out a little bit of a little bit in through here with my brush and again um any anytime you you do stuff like this where you're just kind of making marks on the fly like i am in this initial stage or this what's referred to as a block in stage it doesn't need to be perfect this is just really giving yourself a nice base coat kind of a nice stable foundation to build the painting off of so if you do make you know what you believe to be are mistakes or boo-boos or whatever you have plenty of opportunity to fix them so don't feel the need to to have anxiety or anything along that line especially when you're in these beginning stages because you've got so much more to do and so many more areas to paint and layers to put on and texture to add to it like i just painted into my baby duck and i'm okay with that baby swan i really mean and i'm okay with that i just want to make sure that i've got a good coat on here i'm not even using any special brush stroke because again this is just my base coat i'm gonna have lots of stuff on top of it so it doesn't need to be anything fancy in through here i want to make sure that i get all the way down the bill or the beak of my swan boy it's amazing how much i have to really think sometimes about these words and then i'm gonna just kind of go slower around here and again if you wanted to switch brushes to a smaller brush as you are doing this little this area that takes a little bit more care you could certainly switch to a smaller brush or again you can do any little modifications when we go to do the details later but i'm just kind of trying to get it up to the edges keeping a little bit of a softer line at that bottom so it's not so super straight and then you'll probably see your brush strokes and some spots are going to be lighter than others or darker than others which is totally okay and then again i'm just going to kind of go right up to my edge of my wing for my swan and make sure i go all the way up to the edge of my water and your swan might get a little bit bigger during this stage and if that happens that's all right and then i'm just going to go ahead and make sure that i have this full coat on here and then we are going to be utilizing our small brush for the next step so once you've got this full coat on here just making sure that i've got the full coat on here and if you ended up not mixing enough paint and you need to mix more it's okay because it doesn't have to be a perfect match so just go ahead if you need to make more paint and you can certainly get a full coat on there and then you can put your large brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the black areas on the faces so i'm going to be using my small brush and black paint but i do want to forewarn you that before we start this this step that you want to make sure that your your two swans are dry so you know you could take that extra long break if you'd like to or you could dry it with whatever in innovative fanning method that you'd like to or you could do as i did and just whip out a blow dryer and get it get it dried that way so whatever way works for you is totally fine so again i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to be using black paint and i will most likely most of the time dip my brush in water first so that way the black paint is nice and fluid and i can get some nice clean lines to this so i'm going to start on my on my baby uh swan first so i dipped my brush in water and then i'm just picking up a tiny bit of black paint i'm going to do my eye first so my eye i've got marked kind of right here so it's if this was your original circle in through here and if this is the center you can just go down to the left a little bit that can be the center of the eye and i'm going to make myself a small circle that's probably about a quarter inch wide by a quarter inch tall quarter to a half of an inch something like that and then once i have that circle on there i'm going to get i'm going to pull it out in the back right corner so something like this give a little bit of a point in the back right corner and then i'm going to pull it down in the bottom left corner as well this gives you that little cute cuteness in the corner of the eye and in the corner of both of the both corners of the eye so then once i've got that done what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go ahead and put the beak in place so my beak is gonna start where my head meets the beak in through here and what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna just kind of bring this up towards the corner of the eye something like this and then i'm going to bring it down in a kind of a curved type of fashion down to about where the where you have this neck area in through here and again this doesn't have to be a perfectly straight line this can be have a little bit of movement to it and then this is going to uh end up and meeting the end of your beak but the beak is going to overlap the body a little bit so what you can do is you can come towards the front of the beak and just kind of bring this down into the body just a little bit and then this will then come back up and kind of meet back in through here somewhere in through here and again if you do something and you're like oh that didn't quite work out exactly as i had planned don't worry you can always make adjustments when you go to put the feathers on so i'm just going to kind of paint this in with my black paint get this entire area covered in in through here make sure i go all the way to the edge and just get the whole thing oh he's going to be so cute i like it even these little beginning steps when it's like oh there's his little cute beak i think i want to just pull this little tiny corner up just a bit so i just washed my brush and put a little bit of water on it just to pull this up just a tiny bit there we go and then i'm going to go ahead and move to the mom so i'm going to do the same thing i'm going to put her eye in place first and then we're just going to work our way from the eye so i have my eye marked right about here so this is if this was our original circle somewhere in through here it's almost about dead center maybe a little bit to the top a bit but nothing major and it's going to be about twice the size of what i did for the baby's eye so i'm going to start with a circle and yours might end up bigger or smaller than mine it's you know it all ends up working out because there are no two animals exactly alike in this world so we can have our own little modifications so once i've got that on there i'm gonna pull it out in the back left hand corner similar to how i did um the the baby one but this is going to go kind of more on a diagonal type of way and it's going to be a little bit longer so something like this and then just kind of bring it up and gradually kind of get it to blend into that circle that i just created now what i'm going to do is i'm going to find where my bumpy part that i have over here meets my head so i've got this spot right in through here i'm going to give it a curved line to meet my the top of my eye so i'm going to start at the top of my eye in through here and i'm going to bring this down first so something like this and then kind of across the face like this and then just back up just a little bit to meet that marker then i'm gonna do a similar thing over on this left hand side so i'm going to have this is in essence going to be a line that comes over towards the face where in essence going to be outlining the cheek if this is your cheek we're going to kind of outline the cheek and then it's going to come and ride down to the bottom of the beak so i'm going to start about here and i'm going to bring it curve towards the um towards the back of the head like this and then bring it over here so again i have a water and black paint on my brush at the same time i'm going to start in my eye i'm going to bring it kind of up a little bit as it's as it's exiting the eye and then i'm going to bring it over outlining what i'm going to call my cheek and then i'm going to bring it down in through here a curved line going like this and it's going to ride down i'm staying a little bit away from the edge of my bottom of my beak because i think that might be where the mouth is and then i'm going to where it kind of opens and then as i get towards the end of the beak i can certainly continue with some of that wavy type of movement i'm going to this we're going to thicken this up in a minute but i'm just kind of traveling around the the beak at the tip of the beak i'm going to do a a curved almost like triangle type section like this i'm going to go all the way to the edge of the beak on the right hand side like this and just kind of color this in so it's more narrow at the top and gets a little bit thicker down at the bottom now what i'm going to do is i'm going to create this um this piece in through here this ends up being part of where the nostril is going to go but what i'm going to do to make my life easier is i'm going to come about halfway down my my skin part in through here and i'm going to give myself kind of a curved line that's going to end up meeting this one so it's going to end up wider in through here pretty wide pretty wide pretty wide and then it gets more narrow until it meets here so here we go i'm going to start right about here and i'm going to bring this in a kind of a curved line over in through here i'm going to curve it around here reloading my brush and then this is going to get more narrow as it meets the end of the beak like that we'll color that in in a second just giving you a nice outline so you can follow and then the second part where the nostril is going to go i'm going to travel down to the bottom of that skin part so mine is right about here and then i'm going to give myself a little bit of this like little weird pointy part where my nostril is going to reside so something like this and this can be wiggly around the edges my dogs are are ready to start being part of my video i might have to press pause in a minute but what i'm doing is i'm just going to color in these two sections in with black and then once you've got these sections colored in we are going to be switching back to our medium brush so again i'm just coloring these in with black nothing fancy in through here and if you felt like you had any adjustments to make you could certainly go back into the original color that you used for the base color of both of the swans and you could you know reshape any of your edges if you needed to or you could use the black to make the edges bigger if you wanted to and then you can put your small brush away take out your medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to be doing for the next step is we're going to be painting our shadows on our swans so i'm going to be using my medium brush and the colors that i'm using are black and brown and i may end up using some of the original gray colors that i used as well but i'll let you know if i do that so the idea here is i want to make sure that there's some good dimension in here and how i'm going to be able to accomplish that is by putting some deep shadows underneath this baby swan as well as underneath the neck of the mama swan so and a little bit along this back area where the wings are going to be kind of encapsulating the the little baby one so during this process i'm going to be using my bristle brush and i'm not going to use a lot of paint i'm going to be using what i refer to as like a dry brush type of technique where i'll just be rubbing it into place if i don't get a good enough blend in my mind i will either pick up the original color that it's sitting on or i can use a tiny bit of water to get it there i'm going to have my deepest darkest shadow is going to be underneath the baby swan and right underneath that head in through there so that i'm going to use a little bit more black and then as i work my way away from that area i'll use a little bit more brown so i'm going to start with a teeny tiny bit of black paint on my brush and if you feel like you have too much just kind of wipe it off on your paper towel i'm going to start here because i know this is a really safe area to start so i'm just going to kind of rub it underneath my my baby swan like this and i can even bring it up into the body of the baby swamp because that will tell the viewer that this little animal has a roundness to them so i can go ahead and do that i'm going to now pick up a tiny bit of brown paint without washing my brush and this will get it to have a little bit more depth to it as it's fading away towards the um towards the regular bread now i'm going to go ahead and put some in her here so i'm not even going to wash my brush at this point i'm just going to kind of rub it on here i'm going to pick up some of the original gray color just to kind of get a little bit darker maybe maybe a little bit more black and brown it's not enough not enough for me and i'm just going to kind of get myself a nice dark area in through here this is again where those wings are going to kind of um cast the most shadow on the back of the swan's neck you can even bring this shadow up a little bit up that neck too but i'm leaving some brightness along the edge of the um of the swan's neck because that's going to have a little bit of the um the air the shot or the highlight from the um from the sky so just giving myself a little bit of darkness in through here making sure it blends in a little bit but again it doesn't need to blend perfectly because it's going to be overlapped by the wings and then i'm going to go ahead and do underneath here so i'm putting a tiny bit of black paint on my brush and i really just want this to look like this little head is kind of just squishing underneath mom's neck in through here and again if you feel like you do too much or you know it's just not working out for you it's okay we've got plenty of other you know when we go to put all of the fur or all the feathers on we'll be able to um manipulate this a little bit and make it a little bit more um natural looking so don't worry if you don't get it perfect we could it's a building process it definitely um every everything in painting is a work in progress until you sign it in my opinion so i'm adding a touch more brown and you guys can't always see this stuff off camera but i'm constantly wiping my brush off on my paper towel to make sure that i control the quantity of paint on my brush i'm in control and that's and that's how i do it so i'm just kind of getting this little bit of a shadow underneath this head making sure that it blends in with that neighboring um for feathers or background colors so i just picked up some of that gray that we used originally just to get this to blend in a little bit more something like this and then i have one little area left that i want to put a shadow on it's going to be on the neck of my little baby die here so i'm going to not even wash my brush just kind of maybe put a little bit of black back on there and then just make sure that i've got a little bit i don't necessarily want this area to go black on me because i want it to um i don't want it to get confused with the beak itself but i definitely want there to be some darkness so i i am constantly again just making sure that i am using the right quantity of paint and not too much i'm going to just kind of get this little bit of a shadow in through here and then we are going to be utilizing our let's use our small brush for the next step so once you've got your your shadows in place you feel like you've got a good dimension started on your on your swans you can put the medium brush away take out your small 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 the facial features on our swans so i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to use a whole bunch of different colors but let's see i'm going to be using black and white and brown black white brown orange and yellow so those are the colors black white brown orange and yellow so i'm using my small brush i'm going to start with my little baby one first and then we can work our way to our mama swan so how i'm going to do this i'm going to do my eye first i'm just going to pick up a tiny bit of white and my light gray color so i have white and light gray on my brush i'm just going to give myself a little kind of curved twinkle in the eye and i'm not going all the way to the edge i'm just going to kind of give myself just a little a little kind of dot twinkle like that and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel like this i'm going to pick up a little bit of brown with white and i'm going to give myself a little bit of a highlight around that eye i don't want it to look like a total outline so i'm going to be doing just a little light kind of sketch early brush stroke around it and if you feel like it's too light just pick up a little bit of the medium or the or excuse me the light or the dark gray and just kind of giving these little bits of um almost gives you a little bit more of an expression around those eyes when you have those light little pieces then i'm going to go ahead i'm not even going to wash my brush i have some of that lighter color i'm going to utilize as a highlight on my bill of my of my little swan here so i'm just kind of adding a bit of lightness at the edge of it in through here and then i'm now i'm picking up some black without washing my brush and this is going to give me a little bit of blending ability i don't want to get this whole thing to go gray on me but i definitely want there to be the identifying marks of the shape of it so this gave me gave you the impression that there's a rounded edge to it because i didn't bring the light color all the way down to the bottom that gives you the information that it is curved now i'm going to put a little bit of a highlight on the top of it in through here and if i curve it a little bit that'll tell the viewer that it's got a little bit of a curve to it and if you feel like you want a little bit more lightness coming over here feel free to do so just keep on adding a little bit more black on my brush so i don't go too light and that's all i'm going to do for that one i'm going to wash and dry my brush and i'm going to go on to my mama over here so i'm going to start with her eye i'm going to be using orange and yellow on my brush at the same time and i'm not using a lot of it i'm going to give myself like a crescent type of shape not bringing it all the way to the edge of the um of the area so that there's going to remain a little bit of a black outline along the edge and i'm going to have it not the same color all the way around so that's why usual when you utilize multiple colors on your brush you have the ability to have a variety of tones and shades and stuff within that one area so i'm choosing to use some orange and yellow so i've got this right side is a little bit more orange the left side i'll get to be a little bit more yellow and if you want there to be a little bit of lightness to it you can add a touch of white i think i'm going a touch of white and a little bit of yellow on my brush right now to give a bit of lightness down at the bottom which is where you would see the color part of the eye the most once you've got enough color in it that you're happy with i just keep tweaking it um the trick to doing something like this is never use a ton of paint on your brush and you can continue to just kind of keep adding these really delicate little layers to get it to that color zone that you want now i'm going to add my twinkle in my eyes so i just washed and dried my brush i'm picking up a touch of white paint and i'm just going to put a little bit of a twinkle towards the bottom of the eye as if it's kind of steering you to understand that the that mom might be looking at the at the little guy a bit i just i'm adding a touch more white to my brush so you can really get this twinkle evident in through there yeah that looks good to me so now i'm going to go ahead and start working on the bill part so i'm going to have a highlight over here on the right hand side on this skin part as well as on the bill itself this interior area is going to be my orange yellow type of mixture and then i'm just going to kind of get this highlight to gradually just blend into the black area so i'm going to start with the orange area orange slash yellow area because i might need a couple of layers on that to get it to do what i want it to i'm going to have it pretty dark down in this area in through here which will tell the viewer that it dips down a little bit here and then lighter around here which will give you um some dimension to it so i'm starting with just orange paint on my brush and i'm giving myself a good area of the orange in through here and now what i'm going to do is now that i've got that on there i'm going to start picking up orange and yellow and start to get it to be a little bit more on the yellow side over in through here and i'm going to start to pick up a touch of white as well so orange yellow and white are now all on my brush at the same time my goal here is to get it to gradually kind of blend in with this black area so i don't necessarily need a super clean line in through here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this and just kind of mess up my line a little bit with a couple little wonky waves i guess along that edge and same thing as i come in through here i definitely want to maintain some of this movement in through here so i'm i'm going to make sure that i continue to show that movement i don't want a super straight line and then i'm going to get these two to blend in with one another the light with the dark so something like this and same thing with where it meets this skin part i don't want it to be really clean i want it to look natural and that these pieces are just kind of working themselves into each other and they you know they are part of each other and then i'm going to go ahead and work my way towards the tip of the um bill as well so i have more white on my brush right now so i can have a nice light area up towards that front and again it's going to kind of meet and overlap with that with this black area i'm going to start in a second once i get these areas to talk to each other well enough i will introduce a little bit of gray on the tip of that beak as well to get it to look really nice and natural so i just kind of keep blending these into one another i want to get that orange and the highlight up at the um the bridge of the of the beak and you can keep layering these colors on as they're dry and you might say oh i think i want that one to be a little bit brighter or have a little bit more yellow in it these beaks can come in a very wide variety of shades between anywhere between yellow and orange i'm putting a really bright highlight over here on this right hand side which is gonna tell the story of where the highlight comes or where the light source is but i wanted to blend in with that orange but while i have the light color on my brush i'm just gonna kind of carry it into the top of that beak a little bit the front of it i'm picking up some more orange to get this to blend in over in this vicinity because i don't just want a white line i wanted to make sure that it blends in and of course you can again you can use any variety of the white yellow and orange to get these to really talk to one another and just kind of blend in with one another i might elevate that this little tippy top a bit more in a second here i'm just getting this on here as much as i want to with the lightness and again i'm gonna uh add a little bit of gray down at this bottom portion of the beak right in through here so i'm actually picking up some of my light gray which would have been the color from the body of the mom i picked up a little light gray and now i'm going to add a touch of white this just gives you a really nice like natural transition from the swan color into the color of the beak that bright orange when i was looking at various pictures of these um of these animals there definitely was a transition depending on you know the light source and all that good stuff from that bright yellowy orange color into like the bottom portion of the of the beak and i think i think this is looking pretty good in through here and then i'm going to let me just make sure i've got oh enough of a of it a little highlight in through here and a little highlight over here so again you can you know once you've got the idea of where you want those those bright areas to be it's just a matter of kind of going back and just tweaking it adding these little layers to get it to get into that intensity that you want um and getting those vibrant colors you might want yours to be really subtle you might want yours to be on on the you know softer side and in which case you don't want these colors to be super vibrant but um i'm going somewhere in the middle because i i'm digging the way that the highlight is looking i like the contrast with the with the light orange into the dark orange and now that i've got the beak pretty pretty well set i might i might tweak it a little bit more but i'm i'm digging the way that it's looking right now getting this to blend in over here i've got my light highlight here what i want to do now is i'm just going to kind of give myself that highlight on the top of that front portion of the skin so i'm washing and drying my brush and picking up a little bit of white paint so i've got white that's going to almost outline the edge of this skin and it doesn't have to be a super clean outline because what i'm going to do is i'm going to start pulling it into the left so i've got the bright highlight on the right and then i'll start pulling it into the left i'm going to pick up a touch of black with the white that's on my brush right now so i can get these two to transition into the darkness over here on the left hand side so if my highlight is over on the right that's great but i wanted to naturally kind of transition over here to the left i also have a nostril that i've got to contend with while i have this light hand this lighter color on my brush i'm going to just give a little curve in through here that's going to give the implication that there's a nostril and i'm picking up some more black just to make sure that i've got these talking well together i'm going to mess up my my line up here where it meets the the feathers that we're going to be putting on in a minute and my whole goal right now is just to make sure this isn't really clean around the edges i'm kind of messing it up a little bit giving it a little bit of dimension with the with a touch of gray in it and then i'm going to make sure that i have the i'm going to put a little bit of a highlight at the bottom of the the beak the chin area in a second here so that's looking pretty good to me so i'm going to pick up my light gray plus a little bit of white to make sure that i have this bottom area has a nice highlight on it so nothing really again it doesn't have to be a clean line i just really want to make sure that there appears to be a little bit you know that i didn't miss this highlight in through here and then you can of course keep fiddling with this oh i think i want a little highlight around the eye like i did with the baby too so i'm going to put just a little bit of this highlight around the edge of the eye again nothing needs to be super clean just give you those little bits of bright feathers that are around the eye we're going to be using a big brush to put the rest of the feathers so utilizing this small brush for the moment will will help you to get these little tiny details and then we are going to be using our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your details on your face for your baby one and your mama one you can put your small 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're finishing the feathers on our baby swan so i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors that i'm using are white my light gray brown and that might be it if i use any others i'll let you know so my thought process here is i want to just add some fluffy little baby feathers in through the chest so i will be using a kind of a curved type of brush stroke to get that on there on the head i just want to add a little bit more texture to give the the form of the head so i need to add a little bit more lightness to it but my biggest thing that i really want to accomplish here is the idea of the light that is coming from the other side of the swans and where oops almost just dropped my brush there where mom is casting kind of a shadow on most of it there's going to be these little pops of brightness along the edges of the feathers that are going to just show that those have caught a little bit of the sunlight so at no time will i ever use a lot of paint on my brush i'm going to be using very little bit of paint and i'm either going to be using like a dotting type of technique or a little bit of a swiping technique so i am going for my my brightest where i will use white is going to be around the edges but leading up to that i'm going to be just progressively getting lighter shades of the gray so what i'm going to first start with is my light gray that i use for mom's swan so i'm going to put that on my on the correct end of my brush and i don't need a lot of it so just a little bit of that light gray and i'm going to start to put things in place so i know that on the body and through here i'm going to have i'm really just kind of swiping and using the corner of my brush i'm adding these feathers coming off of the body coming in through this way to kind of encapsulate that chest area they can overlap your shadow a little bit because i'm using such a firm brush it will pull the paint so it's almost translucent so that will allow you to see some of that color underneath and then i'm just going to kind of continue to do this in this area the neck of my duck my swan is going to come down into here so that's going to have a highlight on it so right when i get about here i'm going to start maneuvering my brush to swoop towards the back of the of the little swan in through here so i'm just still just using that light gray from mom's base coat and as i get towards this little tail or the end of it i'm gonna go past my duck a little bit my swan oh my gosh i can't for the life of me get it right my i guess i need to paint ducks next and i watch if i paint ducks i'll start calling them swans who knows so i'm just going to go over the edge of it just a little bit into there so now that i've got the body started i'm going to go and move to the head i've got a lot in through here i'm going to use my a dotting type of technique for my head so something like this i don't want to color the whole thing that's why we have that dark base underneath it this is just going to give us provide us with texture to it but i definitely want to make sure that there is texture throughout the whole thing so i am dotting it but i have very little bit of paint on my brush right now so this is going to get that started in through there and i'm just going to kind of keep going until i feel like i've got good coverage and once i feel like i've got good coverage now i'm going to start building a little bit lighter on my chest so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to be picking up a little bit of brown and white so that's going to be my next lightest shade i'm not going to pre-mix it i'm just going to put a little bit of brown and white on my brush at the same time and again i don't need a lot so i can wipe it off on my paper towel and i'm going to give myself another little layer that's going to be even brighter coming off the top of the um of the duck but as i'm of the swan as i'm coming towards the lighter areas i don't need to bring this lighter color all the way down the whole thing i just want it to be the brightest where i'm going to have the um the lightest feathers so i'm again just brown and white are the colors on my brush right now and i'm going towards the lighter area which is going to be this rear end here where we're going to have a bunch of beautiful light fluffy feathers coming off the tail of this cute little swan little baby swan and you can see right now it's really starting to come to life we've got some some cute um fluff happening in through here and one of the tricks when you do want it to look nice and textured and have a lot of activity to it is don't do them exactly in the same direction they can overlap each other in a similar direction but they don't have to be exactly on top of one another i'm going to do the same thing on the head i'm just kind of building myself a little bit more lightness towards the front of the head in through here so just using this dotting type technique and i do want it to look like it's going to blend in with the rest of the head so i don't want just a vibrant section and nothing else i'm kind of fading it into the darkness around um the the rest of the head and if you felt that you know it would instead of this dotting if you wanted to really dry out your brush you could almost rub it a little bit but again you don't want to get too too much paint on there because it'll make it almost one solid color you're really just going for kind of like a gradient of sorts underneath here just to give a little bit of that extra dimension and i'm leaving some towards the a little darkness towards the eye so that'll that'll um give again a little bit more sweetness to it now i'm going to go in for just a little bit more white in my color combination which is going to get me a little bit more on this chest i really don't want to have too much paint on my brush and i'm just going to kind of tap it and pull it in this direction which is going to give me these little fluffy pieces along the edge and oh my god he's looking so cute so right now that i'm getting into pretty much the lightest that i'm going to want to go before i start adding that bright bright highlight along the edge i'm going to start putting in this back of the neck so i just kind of want to give myself a little bit of a guideline here so i'm just taking it and kind of tapping it along the back edge in through here so that tells me that and now i'm just going to pick up white so i'm not washing my brush but i did pick up just white no brown involved there and i'm going to put my brightest little highlight over here on the left side so i'm going to just kind of tap it along the edge of the of the head so it so it's not a solid line and once i've got it kind of tapped in there if i want to bring it into the head a little bit more to the right i wiped my brush off on my paper towel and i'm just kind of tapping it just a little bit in towards the eye area so that will give you a little bit of roundness in through there and then when i go to do it on the right hand side again i'm going to kind of tap it to to get it into place but this i want it to i want this to look a little bit more fluffy like there's little feathers kind of coming out so once i've got it in place now i can take the corner of my brush and i'm almost flicking it a little bit out to give you a little bit more of that feathery type of look along the edge and i'm bringing it almost all the way up into where it meets mom so i'm overlapping into my water area so you can get the the visual information of the edge of those little feathers and then i'm going to do the same thing on the tail so this is really going to help to show you where the the tail ends it's going to give you a lot of dimension along those edges and again it doesn't have to be a firm line i'm going to kind of just flick this bright white along those edges and then if you want it to have more volume you can bring it in just a little bit more and of course you can kind of keep tweaking this and having fun with it if yours is too if you feel it's too dark or too light you can certainly adjust it with lighter or darker versions of the brown or the white um and then we are going to be using our large brush for the next step so once you've got your beautiful little swan baby swan all nice and with these great little flecks of color and vibrancy on it he's so cute you can put your medium brush away and just adding a little bit more a little bit more lightness on his cheek in through here you can put this medium brush away take out your large brush and see now this is the part where i'm just going to want to keep playing with it um so you can do that if you feel like you oh you need a little tiny light spot over here too i messed this one in through here there we go so put your medium brush away take out your large brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing the head and the neck of mama swan so i'm using my large brush the colors that i'm going to use are my light gray brown black and white so my whole goal here i might not need black but my whole goal here is to make it look soft and fluffy and have this being my dark area this be my dark area but i want a really bright highlight around the edge in through here and i also want to have a little bit of a highlight like where the cheek is and where the front of the head is so i'm going to be using my large brush for most of the time with that dotting type stippling technique and then when i get to the edges i will i'll most likely pull it out just a little bit i don't want it to have as long of um edges as the baby um swan had but definitely you know some little fluffiness to it so i'm going to start with my original color my original light gray just to kind of get the party started so i put that gray on my brush and i'm just going to start to dot it on here in the middle area i want there to one this is providing me with assurance that i've painted the whole thing but this is also letting me have the information that this is going to be pretty much the the base color for it and it's kind of wetting it a little bit so i have an easier time transitioning into the lighter and darker areas i'm now going to put some brown on my brush without washing it and i'm going to have this brown kind of transition into the darker areas so something like this i am going to have a little highlight over on the right hand side but i'll do that i'll do that in a minute so just getting a little bit of brown on my brush bringing some natural tones to it so it looks really almost photo realistic when you're done with it when you've got these this brown type of hue to it and then as i'm getting towards my lighter areas again just kind of making sure that i've got this whole thing as much dotted as i want i'm going to start to pick up a little bit of white and brown at the same time and again very little paint i don't know if you can see how little paint i have on my brush right now but i like to be in control so the less paint i have on my brush the more i can control it so i'm just starting to give this little bit of a highlight near where it's going to meet that skin beak area and again this is not necessarily meant to be a highlight from the light source it's more or less meant to be like a contour highlight that will lead the viewer to understand that this piece of the body has some shape to it i'm going to do the same thing on the forehead so i've got brown and white paint on my brush so i'm going to give this lighter area on the forehead and i don't want to go all the way white yet because i want the white to be my brightest of color when i go along the real highlighted edge on the um exterior and if you feel like you went too light just pick up some of that original gray color and just get it to blend in or dull it down or do whatever you need to to feel like you've accomplished the the goal that you are going for i think i actually want this area by the eye to be a little bit lighter so i'm adding a little bit more white to my brush and i know that um this is a big brush for me to be doing this with but if you want to do the same you could certainly switch brushes to your smaller brush but i'm going to just kind of tap in a little extra highlight around that eye just because i think i feel like it wants it so something like that is going to make me nice and happy and then i can go ahead and just kind of pick up some more brown or the gray just to get it to to blend in if i wanted to or if i felt like i had too much paint on my brush i could always wash and dry it if i wanted to but i'm just kind of going with the flow adding some some extra little bits of information in through here and then as i'm working my way towards the exterior whoops almost lost my canvas there i'm picking up some of that gray and white or it could be gray brown and white so i can get this exterior edge to be on the lighter side as well but again i don't want it to go all the way white i want that white to be the color that i put at the very very edge of it so this is just a nice transition to get me there but i again i don't want it to go fully white and then i'm going to start backing it in to that grayish area that we had for the main area of the of the neck and as i'm backing it in what i'm doing is i don't have a ton of paint on my brush i'm actually just letting my my brush kind of run out of paint and this is allowing me to just kind of tap in a nice transition into the darkness and again you can certainly keep tweaking it and you know making it as powerful as you want or if you feel like you need more brown or more black you could certainly you know continue to just dot on additional layers but once i've got that area i've got a nice transition from my dark to my light now is the time where i'm going if you have a lot of paint on your brush you could certainly wash it but i'm just going to wipe mine on my paper towel and i'm picking up just white paint and i kind of want my bristles to be in control so this is going to be another one of those times where i squish it on the side of my palette to bring all of my bristles together and now i can really control it i'm going to use quite a bit of paint to kind of tap this into the edge of my of my bird's neck over here on the edge and i'm going to just kind of keep reloading you could use a little bit of yellow in your paint mixture if you wanted to as well that would help to make it look a little bit more sunshiny but you can certainly play with those colors all you'd like and i'm just tapping in this white even if you have wet paint along the edges from what you just did that's okay just roll with it let it all look like it belongs together and that it works together and then once i've got it kind of tapped in to those edges you can kind of get it to blend a little bit into the um into the color that you just did which was the that lighter gray and then i'm going to start pulling it out um past into my water area so that's going to give you that real beautiful natural transition um and tell the viewer that these the that there is a little bit of fluff to our swans um neck and head so i'm going to pull those pieces out now i'm just adding a little bit more white to my brush and i'm just going to kind of with the corner of my brush just pull out a little bit along this edge and i'm not pulling out much just a bit to give you that again the information that there is a bit of texture maybe maybe she just went under water and she's got a little bit of a little bit of fluffy pieces that are coming off the edge into here and the less consistent you make it the more kind of um natural you can get it the more it's going to look like you know mother nature's making like it you know it's like it really is like a photograph it doesn't have to be perfect that's the that's the that's the whole key here is just get put the elements into place but don't make them super duper perfect i think i want to lighten up a little bit of this back area here so i'm going to pick up a little bit more of my light gray with that white on my brush i feel like it needs to be just a little bit lighter in through here and then again you can see i'm leaving that area nice and dark and through there but i want it to transition well so again this is just part of my process once i've got my pieces of the puzzle in place i just kind of step back and see if there's any adjustments that i want to make and i'm only just kind of coming in through here because the wings are going to overlap it a bit and then once you've got yours in the way that you want we are going to be utilizing our medium brush for the next step so i'll probably just kind of keep tweaking mine a little bit and when i'm all set i will put my large brush away take out my medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are finishing our mother's wings so i'm going to be using my medium brush you could i suppose get away with using your large brush as well but i'm going to use my medium brush the colors i'm going to use are dominant is white i will most likely use probably the light gray some and some brown if i feel i want to go into the dark gray or whatever i'll let you know that too but i did want to before i do that i said i was going to put a little highlight on the edge of this neck which i didn't do with my big brush because it would have been too clunky so i'm using this medium brush so i'm just going to put a little bit of brown and white on my brush to get this little highlight going first before we move on into the wings itself so just brown and white on my brush i just wanted to elevate this little edge just a bit more bringing it all the way up in through this area right where it kind of touches or almost gets to the little guy's head so something like that just gives you the um information of the light where again where the light source is coming from that other side and i'm just going to bring it down into here just just a teeny tiny bit so we can um again get that full full effect so now what i'm going to do my wings are laying on the swan's back they're going to have little feathers that are going to be kind of overlapping some of the bottom of the baby right here and they're going to have some kind of overlapping each other in the middle so i'm going to start at the bottom of my canvas to get some darker feathers because i want it to look like they get darker as they go further away from us and then we'll then start working from the top so i'm going to show you how i'm going to do this i'm going to just wash and dry my brush i'm going to put put some brown and my original gray color so this would be brown and the light gray on my brush at the same time this is in essence going to kind of give me a road map of where i want them to go so i want them to look like they're at an angle so i'm going to start right about here and give myself just kind of a curved type of line coming in through here and just get it to kind of gently blend in with that shadowy area i don't want it to look like it's a separate entity i just want this to kind of look like it is blended in a little bit and then at the bottom right hand corner i'm going to take my brown and that original light gray and just kind of give myself a couple of swoops up into that right hand direction and i'm going to do the same thing coming up into this interior area kind of from the bottom and just kind of swooping up when i get to about here i'm going to kind of change directions of my brush stroke and i'm going to bring it up and over from this center area just kind of like in through there and then i'm going to do a similar exercise on the left hand side so i've got my brown and my original light gray color i'm going to start over on the left hand side and i'm going to bring myself some curved kind of streaks going in this direction to about the midway point right about here and that's when i'm going to start kind of switching directions like this and it's going to come in this left hand direction as i go towards the the center area that we created so something like this and again i'm just kind of pulling it back into this main central area from that center line that we created so now that i've got that done what i'm going to do is i'm going to wash and dry my medium brush so wash and dry my medium brush i'm going to pick up white paint only so what now wow now what i'm going to do is i'm going to create what i'm going to call um like the shoulder i know that's not what it is but the um the top part of the wing where all the feathers are going to come from so i'm going to do the brightest area is going to be over on the right hand side and i'm going to give myself like a curved line in through here and then all of my feathers are going to kind of fall off of that so i've got white paint i'm going to give myself a really nice light white edge in through here and these can be um like painterly type of brush strokes you don't have to make them really clean or anything like that so now that i've got this in through here i'm going to just give myself a curved line that comes to about down in through here so think of this as the main structure where the wing works from so if this is the main structure all my feathers would be coming off of this so that's the we'll call it the bone that's not what it is either but cartilage i'm not quite sure but that's where it's going to come from so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to use white paint but if i feel like they're getting i can't see the difference between all of my feathers i can pick up some of my original gray or even some brown to get them to separate a little bit so i've got this in through here and now what i'm going to do is i'm going to start just kind of building some feathers coming off of that so from here i'm going to pull them to the left and on the right hand side i'm going to of that line i'm going to pull them towards the right and that i'm thinking they all come off of here this and the edge are where i want my brightest areas to be and they can get darker as it comes farther away so i'm not concerned if i paint the whole thing 100 i want there to be some light spots and some some dark spots but i want that lightest area to be right at that bridge or the bone type of part so i just can keep adding white in through there and then as i come over towards my little baby i'm going to continue to add these feathers coming in this direction and they're going to merge into the center area and they're also going to overlap my bird or my little bird a little bit so i'm coming over here and i can just kind of pull a couple of them right in front of it and i'm just going to kind of keep adding in this direction and they don't all have to be laying in exactly the same direction i want there to be some nice feathery edges to them so i'm just pulling with the corner of my brush in in a general direction but it doesn't always have to be in exactly the same curve you can see i've got some coming down a little bit more i'm going to have some that are going to overlap i'm going to have some that are going to go right in front of my little guy but i'm going to maintain that there's a shadow underneath there so i am giving it a conscious thought but i don't have to execute it perfectly because they're all just kind of overlapping each other and i do want to make sure that this makes sense over here so this is all going to kind of come off in this direction and it's going to overlap into that original brown gray that we did and just again i'm not doing it perfect i'm having them come off at slightly different angles trying to keep a little bit of the darkness down at the bottom and i want to avoid making it look like we had an outline around the edge and when i looked at these birds it was it's really difficult to see the difference between the feathers because the feathers are all so bright white so if you can get just a little bit of that under gray to show awesome that's what's going to that's what's going to tell the viewer that there is some dimension to it but don't worry you know if a lot of it just ends up white because that's what these these feathers are but i like to see if i can get a little bit a little bit of dimension going that's why i started with the darker color underneath but if yours ends up mostly white that's okay too so i'm going to let this one sit for a second i'm going to move on to this left one and if i feel like i want to come back and do anything more to that one i will so i'm going to pick up some more white paint my edge of this one is going to be over in through here so i'm going to just make sure that that's really nice and bright in through there with a whole bunch of white and i'm going to have this one is going to be kind of laying down in this direction and it's going to be this will be my my base from which all my my feathers will come off of that center and through there so now i just start i just start building it so i've got these ones will come kind of in this direction and these ones will come kind of in this direction for the most part but of course you can certainly get some of them to come off a little bit different this as they're towards the center they might go a little bit more straighter but just know that they're all going to come off of this center kind of structure like a like a leaf a leaf has that center almost vein going down it and all the water that goes into that vein feeds the rest of the leaf so this kind of is the structure of the of the wing and it will feed the feathers out into these various areas so as i come in through the center area where they're meeting each other i can certainly have them overlapping a little bit so i'm just going to kind of get my my directional strokes in here to get it to look like it's got some nice shadow in between and that i've got you know maybe ones kind of going over the other one but i still all the while want to make sure that i maintain the direction of those of the feathers so i'm just kind of making sure they all kind of come off of this main structure and then as i get towards the bottom i'm leaving it a little bit darker with a little bit less paint on on my brush as i get towards the bottom of it and then i might when i when i feel like i'm kind of coming to to the end here i'll probably go back and tweak the one on the right a little bit more just make sure i've got enough of that bright bright white especially at those edges that's really a main goal for me on this one is to make sure that i've got those really bright edges that are gonna you know speak to the the beautiful delicate white vibrant you know wings that this that this beautiful bird has and i'm making sure that i can you know emulate that in in the painting so i'm gonna continue to do this and if i need or feel like i need a little bit more dimension to the wings i would definitely just add maybe a little bit more of the lighter gray down at the bottom you can always again like right now i have white and my lighter gray just to get these areas to make sure that they they talk to one another if you feel like your gray is too dark underneath then you can certainly just add additional layers or additional feathers on top of it just to make sure that it all looks like it belongs together and that it's not too overwhelming with the contrast sometimes when we do these layering type of steps if we you know we might have started a little bit darker than we thought that we you know wanted to and it we might not get that transition um in a gentle enough way it might be too high of a contrast so if that happens you just pull in a medium tone of whatever it is and that'll help you to kind of let those those areas speak to each other like right now i have my original gray plus white on my brush just to make sure that this bottom area really reads as being part of the whole equation and doesn't look too dark i do want it to be dark but it doesn't have to be overwhelmingly dark and then you just kind of keep tweaking and playing with it this is making me happy here comes my happy my happy painterly thoughts are are creeping in as we're as as i'm finishing up these little these little last pieces but i'm going to keep tweaking mine a little bit we do have one final step to go and that's going to be with your small brush so once you've got your beautiful wings on here and you've played with them as much as you want to ah yeah you can put your medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we are on to the final step this is the final step of every painting which is to sign it so i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to use black paint i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i think i'm going to sign this one in the bottom left i do my initials but you could certainly use your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you'd like for your identifying mark to be it's totally up to you i'm having some fluidity issues with my signature right now there we go we got it now um so once you've got it signed that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a beautiful swan cuddling her baby and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music] [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 31,553

Keywords: how to paint, acrylic, painting, tutorial, beginner, simple, easy, painter, class, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, landscape, realistic, peaceful, beautiful, best, top, instructions, stunning, summer, day, inspirational, sun, pretty, art, wall, spring, ocean, reflections, wet, shore, shoreline, secluded, bird, crane, feathers, toward, looking, coastline, swan, mother, child, baby, swimming, sitting, laying, covering, coddling, protecting, ripples, lake, pond, beak, wings, neck, under, adorable, cute, duck, goose, white, cod, pen, water, floating

Id: ybsck8eN-qY

Length: 89min 50sec (5390 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021