Learn How to Paint PROUD PEACOCK with Acrylic - Paint and Sip at Home - Fun 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 i'm going to be painting proud peacock and i'm going to be sipping on a little spike seltzer and if you do enjoy this video i 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 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 cobalt blue mars black burnt ombre which i'll call brown chrome orange fluorescent purple phthalo green and chrome yellow and of course you can switch up those colors but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have a white piece of chalk for drawing but you can certainly use whatever drawing utensil you would like for our sketch and then i have three brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a number 10 round brush and i have a number three round brush and throughout the painting process i will refer to these as small medium and large of course you can switch those up as well if you'd like to and if you're painting along with me you'll probably want a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying your brushes and down below this video in the video description i do have a couple of additional resources for you that can help you throughout the painting process what you're going to find on there is you'll find a link where you can purchase the same exact paint kit that i'm using from the large canvas to you know that fancy palette that i use and all this all good stuff in between 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 probably the easiest step of all time i'm going to be using my my large brush and i'm going to be painting my background with black paint so there's nothing tricky about this i'm just going to load up my brush and i'm going to paint the entire background with black paint um you can use different brush strokes you can go left to right you can go vertical whatever works for you you could even use a larger brush if you wanted to black really has a way of covering nicely so you probably won't need more than one coat in order to get this entire area covered but if you do find that you have streaks or you have thicker spots and thinner spots and you want to get a better smoother coverage for your background you can certainly just do a second coat on top of this one you would just get this this coat on let it dry or you can dry it with a blow dryer and then do a second coat however it's probably not going to be necessary for you to get a perfect coat for this first for this background because we are painting so many things on top of this this is really just providing us with a good color to put all of our details on top of so i wouldn't really stress over having this background perfect you can certainly if so if an area is not covered a hundred percent trust me when i say nobody's ever gonna notice because you're gonna be putting so many things on top of this and if you want to if you want this to look all really nice and finished and have a nice professional look to it you can take this black and actually paint the edges or the sides of your canvas during this step that way it'll look like the edges are nice and and finished and it'll have that nice professional look to it and then we are going to be using our chalk for the next step so once you've got your background painted you can put your large brush away wherever you'd like to take out your chalk and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're drawing the outline for our bird i'm going to be using my chalk you could certainly use any writing utensil that you would like to that's perhaps easy to correct if you need to make corrections i'm using uh chalk because you're going to be able to easily see it on my on my canvas as well as it's very easy to make corrections so how we're going to do this is we are going to start by making a circle which is going to represent the basic shape for the head i am going to be making mine if if this is the i would say this is about the center of your canvas i'm making mine a little bit to the right of that and my circle is going to be about two two and a half inches tall by about two two and a half inches wide and it doesn't have to be a perfect circle just something that's going to provide us with a good shape in order to um paint the the bird's head then what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a little marker for the tip of my beak so i can do it of the length that i want so i'm gonna make my beak about the same length as the length of that circle so if you've got it maybe about two two and a half inches you could use your hand or something else as a measuring tool and kind of measure it and go diagonally down like this and you can just put yourself a little bit of a marker in through there i'm going to connect my circle to that tip with a shape of a beak of sorts so i'm going to start about halfway in this circle and i'm going to give myself a curved line that is going to meet the edge of that beak so something like this and it doesn't have to be a terribly um you know severe curve i'm actually going to make mine a little bit less now that i've i've determined what i want to do so something like that and then i'm going to come about halfway up the the circle on the right hand side to give myself the front part of the beak this is going to be have a couple of little bumps on it so i'm going to start about halfway up that beak somewhere around there or halfway up that circle and i'm going to come down in a diagonal line with a little bit of a curve like that and then i'm going to do another little bump that's going to give me the other portion of the beak something like this and again you can you can adjust it if you feel you need to then i'm going to come all the way down to the bottom of my canvas i'm going to come in from the right maybe about three and a half four inches or a little bit to the right of my beak so if you come straight down from your beak down to the bottom of your canvas if you come over to the right maybe about a half of an inch or an inch make yourself a little bit of a marker and then you're going to do the same thing on the left hand side i'm going to come straight down from the left of my circle so just travel straight down to the bottom of your canvas and go to the left of that maybe about a half of an inch or so make yourself a little bit of a marker this is going to be the bottom um of that chest area that we'll connect the head to so what i'm going to do i'm going to do my first line is going to be from the bottom of my circle is going to come to this right marker i'm going to curve it to the left a little bit and then curve it back out to the right which is going to give you the um the prominent peacock chest so i'm going to come a little bit to the left like this and then i'm going to have a gradual kind of slope down in through here and then i will puff it out just a little bit for that chest region and of course you can you know adjust yours as much as you feel that you need to and then for the other side down here this is going to be the the left side of the neck obviously and the back of the head so i actually want the back of the head to come out a little bit farther than that initial circle so what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to start my curve at the top of the head and i'm going to bump it out a little bit farther maybe about a half of an inch to an inch farther than that circle and then it's going to come down and do a similar um curve that i have on the left hand side so here i go i'm going to start up at the top of the head and i'm going to bump it out something like this and i'm watching this curve on the right hand side so i can keep it of a similar nature something like this and then i'm going to bring it in here and then it's going to bump out something like that then what i'm going to do is i'm going to put there's a little piece this neck as it goes into the plume behind behind the the neck i want to see a little piece of this body right in through here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come up about a third of the way up that body and i'm just going to give myself a little bit of what's going to be part of the blue area that kind of transcends into the um the big feather plume that we're going to be doing in a little while then i'm going to be doing the start of where the feathers come out of the body i'm going to be i'm sectioning off an area that is almost the feathers in a concentrated fash in a concentrated form behind the bird so i'm going to come about halfway in my circle to the left of that is where i'm going to have this coming up from the from the back of the body and i'm just giving myself this like bumpy kind of almost like an oval type shape that's going to come and converge into this area in through here and it doesn't have to be anything perfect just something that we can have as a separating area and then we're going to be using our medium brush for the next step so if you need to do any tweaking on your outline feel free to do so and then you can get your medium brush out get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting our quills for our feathers so i'm going to be using my medium brush the two colors that i'm using are brown and white and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to do a whole bunch of kind of chaotic lines that are going to be stemming from this section in through here because this is where all of the feathers are coming out of and expanding from so at all times every time i load my brush i'm going to load it with white and brown i'm not going to pre-mix a color because i want to have diversity in the colors of these quills so i have brown and white on my brush at the same time and i'm going to make several several quills that are far that are spaced far apart initially so i can keep my brain correct while i'm doing the hundreds of other quills that i'm gonna have and i do this so i have a visual reference and i don't make them too um out of sorts so i know that they're all gonna be splaying out of this central region so if i just kind of use that thought they're coming out of this central region that's going to help me to make them come out in a correct direction and if i do them on you know kind of evenly spaced apart that's going to keep my brain straight as i'm doing the hundreds of other ones that i want to do so i'm just doing slowly i'm doing a few coming right out of the you know where i've perceived them to be coming out of or in a direction that i perceive them to be correctly coming out of and then once i've got enough on here and these ones would probably come down in this vicinity once i've got enough that can visually guide me now i start going really fast so i have a lot of paint on my brush and i'm just going to kind of make a ton of these they could be you know thicker they could be thinner i reload my brush often it's okay if they cross over one another it's okay if they don't all connect to that center area this is really just going to be background noise and add to the authenticity of these particular feathers because they really have a strong um quill because they're so long and they're so beautiful and they they need that stable base to them so i'm just making sure that we've got a lot of firm quills that are going to stabilize these beautiful feathers that we're going to be putting on in a little bit and again i'm using brown and white so you probably detect that some of my quills are lighter or darker than others which is exactly the point and if i bump into my bird which i have already done several times it's okay because we're going to be painting over that as well i just want to make sure that i have natural looking curves or directions of these quills so that's why i like to go fast because my intuition sometimes is a lot um more on point than my direct thought so if i if i'm sitting here and i'm thinking okay i need this one to be exactly like this it might not look as natural as my hand just saying oh well they're coming out here so just kind of flick your brush in this direction so sometimes i really like to just let my hand and my intuition take over and that has bodes well for me at times and then once you've got as many quills as you feel that you want and again they can cross over one another they don't have to be exactly in the same direction you know laying down exactly equally spaced apart but once you've got as many as you feel looks good we are going to be utilizing this same paintbrush for the next step so i will be washing and drying it and getting ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the base coat for the main section of our bird i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm using just blue paint so i'm going all the way up to my chalk and i'm painting the entire area of my head of my beak of my neck and of that little spot near the i don't even know what to call that spot near the near the plume region i don't know it's a um it's it's part of the body i'm sure like part of the the neck area but i i don't know what the official anatomy anatomical name is i am painting my beak blue even though the beak of a peacock is not blue i am using it as a base coat so when i go to do all the beautiful details that surround the face because there's going to be some blue and green stuff around there this makes my job easier so i could certainly separate out the color of the beak right now with a tan color or gray color or something along that line but i know the way that i paint i want things to look like they belong together and they and look like they go into each other naturally and i know that there's a lot of of those blue markings blue and green markings on the face are little feathers and stuff here around the beak so this is just going to make my job a little bit easier and because i am using acrylic paint on a black canvas these colors this blue especially is going to get a lot darker as it dries so just know that as as you're doing this it'll be pretty bright um when it's wet and as it dries it's going to get a lot darker which i've planned for that so i wanted this to have some great dimension within um the birds so that's why i chose to do a nice black background on it when i get in this section again i'm just going right up to the edge of my um chalk mark and i'm just bringing this whole section down with blue paint you can leave a little bit of a space between this spot and this spot if you want to it's not necessary i will show you how to get those two spots to separate later so if you just paint right over that that's totally fine and then we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got your first layer on your bird with blue paint you can wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is the first step to the feathers so there's going to be multiple steps that are going to create these beautiful alluring colorful feathers but to make them look a little bit more on the realistic side i want to incorporate some of the visual effects that we see when the when the bird has all of their feathers out so if you if you look at pictures of the the peacock with the plume all fully out what happens with parts of those feathers the little pieces along the edges of the feathers it gives it almost a spiral type effect behind those beautiful eyes of the feathers so we're going to create that spiral looking effect that is in fact created from the little um tiny pieces of the sides of the feather so i'm going to use my medium brush i'm going to be using brown paint and i'm also going to be using a custom green that we're going to make that's going to look more along the lines of like a forest green so the green that i have on my palette has a ton of blue in it it looks like a dark teal kind of color so i want to make that more into a um like a forest green so i'm going to take it and i'm going to mix it with a touch of orange that's going to take that blue out and it's going to make it look more of a natural type of a green and then i'm also going to add a little bit of white and a little bit of yellow so i did fallow green orange yellow and white and i'm mixing it together so it turns into like a let me see if i can get this on camera a little bit better like a forest type green color just a more natural green than that phthalo green i want to use that fowl green when we get to um the the fur the fur the edit maybe it is fur the the feathers the chest feathers of the bird so that's why i'm choosing to use that as my main green on my palette but for these pieces of the feathers i want those to look a little bit more natural so this is about where i'm going with my green and i'm going to refer to it as a forest green so once i've got that all nice and in play i'm going to start making this spiral type effect and this can be really messy it can be these marks that you're making are just going around in a circle around the the canvas i'm going to do some with green and i'm also going to do some with brown so what's going to happen is you'll see little bits and pieces of them in front of the quills when we get through the whole painting process this is going to be one of those background effects that nobody's really going to notice that you um did this detailed step behind it but it will add to the to the more realistic look of the painting even though we're doing a nice painterly um interpretation of it we don't need to make it look like a photograph but i am definitely utilizing the um visual kind of cues that i was seeing when i was looking at the photographs because if we were to sit here and try and do every single little um feather that it would that is actually making this happen in real life we might be here for i don't know 962 days so i'm i've found a way to give us the illusion of this in a nice quick fashion so again right now i'm just using my forest green and it doesn't have to go exactly in a in a circular motion you can certainly kind of flick up a couple in in little different directions if you want to i'm going to start picking up some of my brown paint as well and now this is going to i didn't wash my brush this is just going to add another color or tone within um within the the background area for us and again i'm just doing it in this circular type fashion around the entire canvas and then i'm going to do this until i feel like it's pretty full i don't want to obviously cover up all of my quills but i definitely want this to have a real um a real visual effect when when my painting's all done so once you feel like you've got enough we are going to be using the same brush for the next step so you can just wash it and dry it just make sure i've got some of this brown over here on the right side wash it and dry it 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 to this area in through here and i think if i go back to my rooster knowledge days on a bird this part might be called a saddle so i might not be right but i think that's where it is what it's called where all the feathers kind of come out of so i'm going to be making a custom color and the color that i'm going to be making is kind of like a light orange i'm going to use my dark chrome orange to create my lighter version so i'm using my chrome orange and i know if i just add white to it to make it lighter it's going to turn a little bit too pink on me so i'm going to add a touch of yellow to it as well so i'm using orange yellow and white to create this light orange color and this is going to be a color that i'm going to use throughout the painting in other areas so you'll want to make sure that you make a good amount of it so once you've got your light orange color that's about where i'm headed with mine i am going to just color this area in with no fancy brush stroke i'm just going to make sure that i get the entire area colored in and i'm going to just ripple it along the edges going all the way to my pen my um chalk mark and if you don't hit your entire chalk mark that's all right and it's going to look streaky because you have black underneath it don't worry about that because we're going to be doing a whole lot of other stuff on top of it but if you wanted to have nice kind of texture to it and be a uniform kind of look what you can do once you've got it on here i'm just kind of doing my outline for a second here once you've got it on here you can just kind of tap your brush and that's going to just give you a uniform kind of textured look along the whole thing which is great when you're doing a base coat if you don't want there to be evident streaks per se where you have a distinct line if you if you maneuver your brush in almost like a dotting type fashion or a a dash or something along that line that's going to give it a visual texture and if you do that throughout the entire area that makes for a a nice finish for it so even when you're doing additional stuff on top of it it's going to have a good texture to it and a nice uniform look so once you've got that on there what you can do we're going to utilize this same brush for the next step and you don't even need to wash it because we're going to be using the same color so you can just get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is the second step of our feathers so i'm going to be using my medium brush i'm going to be using that same pre-mixed kind of light orange color that we made and this is going to be the basic shape of that colored part that you see on the feathers so these feathers that that distinct shape that we're also familiar with is kind of like an oval type shape maybe a little bit smaller at the top of the oval um as opposed to the bottom of the oval and i'm going to call the top of the oval the part that's away from the bird and the bottom part is going to be the part that's towards the the base of the bird i'm going to have them a little bit smaller in through here and they're going to progressively get a bit larger as they go towards the edges of my canvas you can have them very systematic or you can have them in a more chaotic fashion i've seen it both ways so whatever um works for you is totally fine your paint is probably going to be a little bit on the see-through side or streaky side which is okay you can totally do a couple of different layers if you want to or you can um just let it happen because it's going to be all right we're going to be doing so many different things on this you can see i'm putting a couple towards the edge of my um saddle as if they're coming right out of that which is which is fun and you can have them spaced again as far apart from each other as you want or as close as you want but i'm going to do some on the smaller side as they're closer to the bird and then as they get farther away from the bird i'll make them a little bit larger so the base or the widest part of that oval should be again facing the bird and they're coming off of the um [Music] off of the quills but because we're going to have so much detail to this you don't have to push this position them exactly on top of a quill you just want them to go in the same direction as those quills are going so as you can see i'm going to start to get a little bit wider or a little bit larger as i come towards the edge of my canvas and again they don't have to be perfect and they're probably going to be a little on the see-through side which which i'm all right with this one's going to be a little bit smaller because it's closer to the base of the bird and again i'm just kind of having fun putting them wherever i want them to be you could certainly plan yours out a little bit more distinct than i am but i'm just kind of using my own visual preference to put them wherever i want maybe i'll have a little one over in through here just kind of working my way away from the bird in a sense you can i suppose you could have some you know poking out around the the head of the bird you can have them really wherever you'd like them to be they can be very uniform looking i have seen them on the more oval side versus round you can you can do them both ways so if the round way is more visually appealing to you you could make these just in a circular fashion but um i'm doing mine a little bit more in the oval sense with that top part being a little bit smaller and i'm trying to get them a little bit larger as they're going away from the center of the bird but i'm not terribly concerned if mine are perfect or not so if i don't have my ratio exactly perfect that's that's all right by me i'm just trying to put them in the correct direction which is fun for me and i did also notice that they can be really large too so if you want to have some of your bigger ones even at the top they could be really large like almost the size of the the bird's head i've seen them so and it's totally up to you however large you want to make them go and then we are going to be using our small brush for the next step if you want to do a second layer on these you can see i'm just kind of floating around making sure i've got good coverage on them but we're going to use our small brush for the next step so once you've got this base coat for this area on you can put your 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 are painting our beak i'm going to be using my small brush and the colors that i'm going to be using are brown white black and i might use a little bit of my premixed orange color and maybe a little yellow but i'll let you know as i get to those to to the the details of it i'm going to start with just brown and white on my brush at the same time so i'm not going to pre-mix a color i'm just going to have them both on there so this is going to provide me with a good um just kind of base coat and outline for the beak so we have these two distinct bumps in through here this top bump is the housing for the nostril so what i'm going to do is i'm going to give myself the outline of my nostril it's going to be kind of in a oval type shape in through here and then once i've got that shape in place now i'm going to kind of separate my beak from my head so i'm going to take this color and i'm just going to do these light sketchy lines this is going to be the top of the beak it's going to come in through into the head we'll get that to converge in towards the eye area in a minute i'm going to bring this down in through here we've got a mouth area that's going to come out and through there and then like this so these are just kind of sketchy lines along the edge that we will get to blend in with the face in a few minutes and then i'm just going to take the brown and the white and in a direction towards the beak i'm going to color it in so i'm using a directional brush stroke and you can see it's kind of stripey which is great because these beaks have all kinds of lumps and bumps and um various details within them so this is how i'm starting it with the brown and the white let me put a little bit more brown on my brush just to get a base coat on here i'm leaving the blue nostril for now and if yours ended up in a different formation along the edge that's okay that's why we kept the blue base so that way if yours is a little bit different you'll have a nice base to work with and it will merge nicely in with the face and then i'm just kind of getting this whole beak to be colored in here i am going to add a bit more detail in a second but i'm just getting a nice base coat here and you can see that sometimes it's lighter sometimes it's darker it would make sense for it to be the lightest along the edge but if it's not at this point that's okay just get it colored in and i'll tell you how to adjust it in a minute here so once i've got my base coat on here i want to add a little bit of detail to it so i need to know where the mouth is going to open so i'm going to put a little bit of black and brown on my brush without washing my brush and when you're doing this because we're doing such little bits of information you can use a tiny bit of water on your brush to give yourself some skinny lines or to allow them to blend in with one another but don't be afraid if you do something that you don't like because you can always just let it dry for a minute and paint over it so i'm going to have my mouth coming somewhere in through here so i have that dark color on my brush and really all i want to do is give it a natural kind of curve along where the bottom edge of the beak is then i know that there's a little dip behind the nostril a bit so i'm just putting some of that dark color in behind this nostril a bit and maybe if i want to or think that it's important i can put some more of that dark color in through there i'm gonna add a bit of a um i don't know if it's an air vent or something above the nose there's a little there's a little dip above the the nostril as well so i'm putting a little bit of dark darkness up in through here as well and then i'm going to go ahead and put some black inside that nostril because i don't think there's blue inside the nostrils so i'm just going to color my nostril with black and if you want there to look like there's some dimension to it you can put black on the right hand side and then maybe a little bit of brown on the left hand side but you still want it to look like it's deep in there so you can you know definitely black is gonna be your your friend but if you um put little bits of brown in there as well that will give it a little bit of texture and then i'm gonna go ahead and color the um the beak with a little bit of brown maybe a touch of this orange color just to give it a little bit of warmth it doesn't have to be any distinct color it's going to be light in nature but maybe i just kind of rub in a bit of a warmer tone in through here just so it adds um it almost looks like it's of a wood kind of color to me when i was looking at these beaks they were they weren't all yellow they weren't all brown they they were just kind of this light almost wood kind of color which is weird for a description on a bird beak but that's what i saw so and i'm going to put maybe a little bit lighter of a of a i don't know a little yellow kind of tinge on the end of the nose but of the end of the beak but again you can kind of adjust these as you see fit maybe i'll put a little bit of this orange and brown up in this top little portion and you can see i'm just kind of adding these bits of warm colors throughout the beak i'm going to make the lightest part where i feel that it bumps out the most so i just wiped my brush off of my paper towel and i picked up a bit of white because i want there to be a real evident contour to this beak so i'm going to put extra brightness right in through here right in front of that nostril and then right behind the nostril as well or to the side of the nostril i've got a little bit of extra lightness going on in through here and you want them to kind of talk together talk to each other so if you can get them to blend in a little bit and then if you need to you can modify any little bits throughout the rest of it and you just kind of keep tweaking it until you feel like you've got it blended well enough and then we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got your beautiful beak all nice and all nice and painted we are going to get that beak to go into the face in a minute so we're just going to kind of stop right here for now and then on the next step we'll get these little pieces to travel into the face when we do the rest of the face so we're going to be using the small brush so you can just wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are finishing the face i'm going to be using my small brush and the colors that i'm going to be using are i'll be using this orange color i'm also going to be using yellow white brown black blue and maybe some green too some of the phthalo green not the forest green um but i'll call them out as i'm using them so how i'm going to start this is i'm going to start it with a base coat for the eye and then i'm going to connect the beak to the head it's already connected to the head but in these peacocks they have these beautiful white markings around their eyes which is where some of these little um areas that i kind of protruded out they're going to be connecting to these white markings around the eyes they can be large markings or small markings think of like a dog that has different spots all over them these peacocks have different um displays of these markings around their eyes so you can certainly have fun with yours it doesn't have to be exactly like mine so what i'm going to first do is i'm going to put my eye in place with that orangey color i'm having this a little bit up from or maybe diagonal from my nostril somewhere in this vicinity it's kind of like the size of maybe a p on my canvas but maybe yours is going to be in a little bit different position or size it's okay if yours is a little bit larger or smaller than mine it will all work out and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to wash and dry my brush i'm going to let that dry for a minute and i'm going to go ahead and connect these little skin parts of the beak with whatever type of decorative markings that i would like so what i'm going to do is i'm going to have this one coming maybe in through here i'm going to wiggle my brush i have brown and white on my brush so this way i get a really nice natural type marking as opposed to a really clean line i'm going to have a little bit of a spot up in through here and then maybe i'll have this one kind of connecting all the way around the eye and again have fun with your markings they don't have to be exactly as mine they can be more dramatic or a little bit more subtle if you want them to be i'm going to get this to kind of connect in through here and then i'm going to let's see do i want that to be maybe a little bit bigger a little bit bigger yeah and then what i'm going to do is i wiped my brush off on my paper towel and i'm picking up a bit of brown and um white excuse me brown and my orange and i'm adding almost um what i would call like little skin pieces on the inside of um to the right of the eye and then maybe a little bit to the left of the eye these are just going to add a little bit more dimension to the eye as it's sitting in the head and then what i'm going to do i'm wiping my brush off on my paper towel and i'm going to put some black paint on my brush i'm going to give myself a little bit of a pupil within this eye i'm going to be coloring putting more color on the eye in a minute but i'm just want to get this pupil started so it has a has a minute to dry so somewhere in the upper region is where i'm putting just a little black pupil and i'm also going to be using this black paint to give myself some shadows within this colored region that i have so i've got a little bit of black paint on my brush it doesn't have to be a lot of paint um just a little bit of black will give you some great shadows i'm going to put a little bit of this in through here as well and maybe a touch of the shadow underneath that that chin chin or i don't know if it's a chin the beat going into the neck this area in through here so right now i'm just kind of adding my shadowy areas with a little bit of black on my brush and you could use black and brown or whatever darker color that you want maybe you use a darker blue but right now i'm just adding these shadows from the objects on the face and also contour type shadows so that i'm going to have a little bit of a contour shadow back here i'm i just picked up some blue to make sure this black blends into the blue and through there and you can get it to go as you know full-on detailed as you want now what i'm going to do oh i want to put a little bit of shadow up in this vicinity as well so i just put a little bit more black on my brush getting these shadowy areas on in through here now i'm going to go ahead and add some more color to my eye but first i want this to go up a little bit higher yeah i like that alright so i'm going to add some more color to my eye so i'm going yellow and white on the right hand side and through here so this is going to be a nice bright area in the eye and through here a little bit of yellow and white and then i'm going to pick up my original chrome orange that's going to be over on the left hand side and then i'm going to just get them to blend in so really what i'm going for is it a little bit darker on that left hand side lighter as it gets down towards the bottom of the eye and then i'm going to go pretty dark up at the top with a touch of brown so i've got three colors kind of included in this eye as i've made it but you could certainly have yours a little bit brighter or you know adding more contrast to it you could add more white down at that bottom i'm going to add a sparkle dot in a minute but i'm just kind of getting that color to really pop on the eye they have a whole assortment of different colored eyes so i'm just going for one a color that's going to really complement my painting and typically an eye is going to be a little bit more shadowed or darker up at the top i'm going to put a bit more color in these little skin areas so you can again decorate yours as as much as you want you can have it as bright as you want or as subtle as you want i'm going to start before i put that twinkle in the eye i'm going to add the colors on the top of the head and within these feathery regions so this is where i'm going to use my phthalo green and white as these little added speckled pieces of feathers all along this area if you feel like you go too bright you can always bring back some of your original blue or even dull it down with a touch of black but this is going to give you that shimmery look to the to the face feathers and and all the details around it i did it within this corner down here and i'm also going to do it up at the top i'm doing more of just like a polka dot type brushstroke trying to keep my hand out of the way so you can see what i'm doing um this phthalo green on top of the blue really provides a beautiful um effect and because i am using it with white on my brush i'm getting varying tonal values to it so it's it's you know lighter in some areas and darker in other areas i might add a bit more white on the tippy top just to give myself some more little sparkle to it and of course you can bring some down in front of the head and just you just want it to make it look like it's naturally blending in with the rest of the bird if you feel like you need to do any more on this area i just picked up a little bit of blue and just making sure it polka dots well and that they look like they blend nicely together and now i'm gonna just put my sparkle dot on so i'm washing and drying my little brush i'm adding a touch of white to my to my brush and i'm putting my sparkle dot in my eye in the upper region like this and then i'll just kind of pull it down a little bit just to give it a little bit of more information other than just a dot on there and then you can of course do any little modifications that you would like throughout this um throughout this face if you feel like anything needs to be blended a bit more feel free to do so and then we are going to be using our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this beautiful face on here you can wash and dry 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 doing the third step to our feathers i don't know if i've ever done a painting that has so many steps to one little area but it's hopefully i won't get too confused at the number of steps for the feathers with giving you the correct number that is i'll know how to paint them but i'm not sure i'll give you the right number all the time so i think this is the third step so what we're going to do is we're going to use the medium brush and what we're going to do is we're going to be putting two of the um colors in place for the for the center it's going to be um we're going to do a yellow kind of outline and we're going to do the blue part that's going to be kind of the makings of the eye of the of the um of the feather and again you can alter the color variations as much as you want we're just giving it a nice painterly kind of interpretation here so the blue color i wanted to be very complementary to what is going to happen on the peacock's chest so i'm going to be using blue my phthalo green and white to create a complementary blue for the for for the main chest area so i'm taking a whole bunch of my blue and i'm going to add some of my fallow green to it and then i'm going to add a touch of white to it so this is just going to be a light like teal blue kind of color it's going to be a little bit lighter than that blue and it's going to be a little bit lighter than the green but it's going to be a combination of the both of them so that way it really blends in well with the um body of the bird and of course you can have variations of it as well you could have it more green or more blue or have it looking lighter or darker or having variations of both colors in it so now that i've got my color in through there the eye of the um of the feather is towards the bottom or towards the the wider part of the oval so i'm not bringing it all the way to the bottom and i'm only going to bring it up about halfway up that that shape so something like this and it doesn't again have to be perfectly circular or oval just something that is going to work for that particular um feather and this one of course is hiding behind the saddle but again i'm keeping it away from the edge a little bit so that way we can have those other colors incorporated along the edge of the um of the feather as well and i'm just going around doing the entire every single one of them you might find that you want that you want or need to do a second layer on these depending on the type of paint that you're using if it's a little bit too see-through for you you can certainly add a second coat to it it is going to take on the color that's underneath it so it will have a bit of that orange um speaking to it as well so a second coat would help to eliminate that if it's too overpowering for you you can also um again with a second coat you could do more of the original cobalt blue color or more of the phthalo green whatever is speaking to you as a pretty color feel free to to do it whatever um value or shade you would like and then when before i get done this step what i'm going to do is i'm going to do an outline around each of these um feathers with a vibrant yellow kind of color and again i'm just going with a color combination that i found to be attractive but again there is peacocks come in different different varieties so you can find one that is appealing to you so i'm going to wash and dry my medium brush and i'm going to be using my yellow but i know that my yellow is really see-through so for me what i'm going to do is i'm going to add a little bit of white to it so i'm going yellow my bright yellow plus a tiny bit of white i don't want to change the the power of that yellow so much but i do want it to be not so see-through and the white is going to help me to make it um have better opacity to it so once i've got my color that i want what i'm going to do is i am going to just do a skecherly kind of outline around each one of these feathers so i'm leaving that orange showing i'm leaving the blue showing and i'm not terribly concerned if these are perfect i just want to get that beautiful color to be evident on here and i don't know if you're noticing this or not but i'm resting my palm on my canvas i have a terribly shaky hand and this is the way that i can control myself so if you if you're noticing my my palm is completely resting on my canvas that is why and that's sometimes why my hand gets in your way because i need to stabilize myself or i can do it with my pinky so this is this is just one of my techniques to to keep myself in control here and if you go outside of the orange and you end up having some of that black as your background don't worry about it again we've got lots of other things that we're going to be doing around the edges of these feathers and i am reloading my brush every almost every feather so i have a nice thick coat of this yellow because i really want it to be nice and vibrant and again if you feel that you want to do two layers on it that's totally fine and then we are going to be utilizing our large brush for the next step so once you've got the outline of these beautiful feathers on here you can put this medium brush away i'm almost done here you get your rhythm after a while in the beginning you go a little bit slower but once you get to these edges oh can't miss this little guy over here and yeah i do recommend when you think you're done step back for a minute and make sure that you didn't miss any of your beautiful feathers because i am notorious for doing that i think that i'm all done and then i you know i feel like i'm ready to go on to the next step and realize oh darn it you missed you missed six of them or you missed one of them so just kind of step back take a look at it from a distance make sure that you didn't miss any of these and then you can put this medium brush away take out your oops see as i'm speaking look at i missed i missed the blue on that one so i'm just going to go ahead and do my yellow outline wash my brush real quick and put my blue in the center and then we're going to be using our large brush for the next step so once you've got this done 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 blue part of the body i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors that i'm using are black blue phthalo green and white and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to build it from the dark to the light and i will never have a lot of paint on my brush so i'm going to start with a tiny bit of black paint on my brush and i'm going to put this on what i'm going to call the shadow side which will be the left hand side and it's also going to be a little bit of a shadow where the front of the body kind of trails to the back maybe a little bit down in through here so i've got a tiny bit of black paint on my brush and what i'm doing is i'm just almost dry brushing it onto the edge of the the um back of the bird and i'm going to bring it a little bit in through here like this and then i'm going to bring it down towards the bottom and through here and then without washing my brush or adding another color i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and i'm going to get it to rub in to the surround the neighboring blue paint so i'm able to do this because i'm using a really firm brush which is the bristle brush but if you are using a softer brush it might not be as easy for you to do to rub it in like that so you could use a touch of water or just pick up a little bit of that original blue and that will help you to get it to blend in a bit you can also make sure that you have a good shadow up in through here so if you need to add a bit in through there i didn't wash my brush i'm just using the remnants now what i'm going to do without washing my brush i'm picking up a little bit of my cobalt blue to make sure that these are really nice and blended with one another i know that the blue will get brighter the more layers i put on top of here because we um originally painted it on black on a black surface so the blue will be darker on that first layer and the more i add layers to this blue the brighter it will get so i'm just making sure this kind of looks like it transitions over here with a bit of that blue on my brush with whatever the remnants of black were and then as i move towards the um upper portion of the of the chest i'm going to start picking up a touch of my green paint as well and this is so right now i've got the darker blue with a little bit of the green on it just to make sure i have a nice good coat on here and again i'm not using much paint at all i just really am almost rubbing it on at this point just to give myself a nice solid base to which i'm going to put the fluffy feathers on in a second i just want to make sure that i don't have any unpainted spots so the blue and the green on my brush right now are helping to give me that nice base coat that i wanted and now that i've got that i'm going to use the blue and the green with a tiny bit of white paint so i could even go for that color that i used on the center of there if i wanted to which actually i think i'm going to do that just to start so i put a tiny bit of that on my brush and so little that i'm wiping it off on the side of my palette and this is going to start my little fluffy feathers within that chest so i'm utilizing just the tip of my brush and i'm using it in kind of a curved type dashing dash type motion to get the these layers of feathers to just build upon each other and as i want them to be more visible i start adding a bit more white onto my brush i'm being really cautious at this point because i don't want to overdo it you can always just keep adding paint onto it once you go too light it's it's pretty tough to take it away and unless you want to do a lot of work and let it dry so i just keep adding a bit of white to my brush and i'm getting this area where i feel to be the lightest or have the most bump out have the most contour to it i'm adding the lightest of the colors in through there and if you feel like you've gone too too much or too light what you can always do just pick up some of that original blue and green and just get it to slowly transition into the darker areas or if you've gone way too far you can let it dry and do another layer on top of it of those original colors so i just wiped my brush off on my paper towel because i want to make sure that this transitions nicely into the blue so i'm just i've added a little bit more of the um the dark blue onto my brush and i'm just going to continue to get it to blend in here and i know that it's going to get a little bit darker as it dries so i'm just making sure that i've got it all talking to each other nicely and then i'm going to be using let's see what are we going to do for the next step i'm going to be using i think i'm going to use my my medium brush for the next step so once you've got this beautiful chest area all nice and done and you're feeling like it's nice and almost like sparkly looking you can put your large brush away 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 the second step to our saddle so i'm going to use my medium brush the colors that i'm going to be using are my forest green my yellow and white combination that i had here and maybe a little bit of my orange so what i'm really doing is i'm going to just get a gradient that is going to sit behind my um details of these feather tips that we'll be doing on a separate on a separate step these are the makings of these beautiful feathers later so they're going to incorporate those same colors within this whole area so i also have i want it to look like there's a contour or shape to it so i'm going to have the right side lighter and the left side darker so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to start with my forest green i don't want to get rid of all of this orange base color that's going to just be kind of in intermingled with it so what i'm going to do oh i forgot one of my little um feathers right there i'll get that in a little bit but i'm i've got my forest green i'm really just going to be use utilizing this as a um a tonal chain i wanted to have incorporate some of my leaf colors or my um the feather the green part of the feather color so i just took a little bit of that green and i'm just rubbing it in now what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up a little bit of that green plus a little bit of yellow and i'm going to get it to go progressively lighter as it goes towards that right hand side so now what i'm doing i'm going to pick up some of my yellow and white the without washing my brush and what's going to happen you're going to see that it's starting to get lighter and lighter and i'm not coloring in the entire thing because i want some of that orange to be represented as well and i'm going to attempt to get that top right hand section the lightest so as i'm doing this i'm just using the end of my brush and i'm kind of doing it in a circular motion which is allowing it to give you the appearance of some texture within there and when i go up towards that right hand side i don't know if i said i was going to be using white or not but i'm going to use pick up a little bit of white on my brush as well in a second here once i get up towards that tippy top right hand side just making sure i get all the way right next to my bird and if you bump into your bird the the blue section it's okay you can just make a little correction when you need to i just picked up a touch of white i want this top right hand corner to be the brightest and then once you've got this step done we're going to use this same brush for the next step so you can just wash it and dry it yeah this is going to be a pretty base excellent so wash and dry this medium brush get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to be doing for the next step is we're doing the green the greenery around the feathers there's lots of parts to these feathers and i and i don't know all the distinct names but we're just going to give it uh our our michelle description so what i'm going to use my medium brush and i'm going to be using as many shades of green as i want to have this these green pieces stand out so it's in essence going to be that forest green that i used only in lighter shades of it so what i've done is i've taken my medium brush and i have my forest green here and you can make as many shades of it lighter as you want you can add a little bit of yellow you can add a little bit of white just make yourself a couple of different shades of it i do recommend at least two shades so that way when you're doing this you'll have some good dimensional elements to it so there's my forest green and i just made a couple of other shades of it and again it doesn't have to be anything exactly like mine but having those multiple shades is gonna make it um a nice easier process for you so from what i um know of a peacock's feather the when it comes up from the the quill the fed the this greenery part kind of wraps itself around the edge of the feather and kind of comes up it is actually part of the feather i'm sure um but it to me it looks like it's almost a separate little piece so i'm coming up and you can come out but you want to kind of encapsulate that particular feather and i'm using just the tip of my brush and i'm going to go ahead and do them all with one of my greens and then i will just come back and do little hints of whatever that second tone of green is that i chose to do probably a little bit lighter than the one that's on my brush right now so i'm keeping it pretty systematic i just kind of go around the feather the colored part and then just kind of bring it up in a pointy type fashion along the top of the feather again i'm not really concerned how it totally connects inside with those quills i'm just looking to give it my own painterly little adaptation of the way that i perceive these feathers to look and um i remember as a kid i used to actually collect my my peacock feathers my grandfather um had peacocks on his on his little country farm he had peacocks and he had deer and cows and all kinds of fun stuff for us grandkids to play with and so peacocks were one of those those animals that he he had for us to enjoy so i loved the feathers they were always so delicate looking with their vibrant colors so i know that they come in in a variety of different um colors which is super cool so however you want to depict yours is great and again i'm just kind of giving them this loose um almost like fluffiness around the edges but you can see the color i'm choosing to use is definitely more visible than the original green that i used for the for that spiral type look that we did and when i go to do this second tone on top of this with a little the um the additional little added flicks that i'll be doing you'll see that this is going to pop out even more but right now i'm just kind of keeping it with that first tone of green that i elected to make making sure trying to make sure that i don't miss any of my my um i i really want to call them flowers but miss any of my feathers because they do they do you know speak to me as flowers do with their beautiful colors and then i'm just going oh that was a lot of paint that's alright um i'm just going to get these couple ones and you can see how i'm using a you know pretty systematic brush stroke as i go about here bringing it towards the bottom and kind of flicking it as it goes towards the top and you might find that a smaller brush works out well for you i am using quite a bit of paint on the tip of my brush but i'm not pressing hard so that way i'm getting the natural little fibers of my brush to give me those beautiful little singular pieces of the feathers as they're going towards the top of that feather so again i'm i'm right now i'm i'm kind of um still just utilizing that this the darker of the two greens that i have elected to make for this step and then in a second i will kind of fly around with the lighter version of it and the reason why i'm just kind of systematically going with this one tone is so it looks pretty uniform throughout the entire painting if i started to utilize the um both greens at the same time i could certainly have done that but i think this is going to provide me with better better dimension since i'm doing um them almost separate from one another if i had done them um together i might have had one you know on the darker side and one on the lighter side which wouldn't have been too bad but i know that these can sometimes really look really pretty uniform as the goes around the bird here so now that i've got that one now i'm just going to start picking up the lighter version and on this lighter version i'm not going to do it as much so i'm really just going to kind of take my brush and do these little kind of flicks around the um around the center and then that's going to give me all the dimension that i need on these and then once you've got this step done we're going to utilize our small brush for the next step so i'm just going to kind of go around here with a c you can see this b this is where this is where i i begin to get oh so happy in my paintings when i've got these these last little vibrant kind of pieces of information that start to really get all of the work that we've done through the whole painting it starts to pay off when we put these final little details the feathers are almost done we've got just a couple little tiny things left to go on the feathers but we're we're in the home stretch on them i can i can feel them coming to life now and then i am going to be switching to my small brush for the next step just getting a couple more little flicks in place here making sure that i've got as much of these brighter tones on here as i want and you can see with this second color that i'm using i am being a little bit freer with my brush stroke just kind of letting it happen and not overdoing it i know that sometimes when we're doing layers of colors that each layer that we do we tend to want to put more on to hide the last layer but this is really just meant to be an accent to give these beautiful little feathers more dimension and to make you be able to see them and have them pop out in front of oops i just i just painted into my bird a little bit um they're just intended to give you that little extra bit of information and again we're going to be utilizing our small brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can just put this medium brush away wherever you'd like take out 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 finishing our feathers i'm going to be using my small brush and the colors that i'm using are black and purple so we're going to be putting the i guess i think it's called the eye in the center of these um feathers so i'm going to use just a little bit of black paint and the the eye of the particular kind that i'm doing is towards the top of this blue section so and it's almost in like a horseshoe type shape so i've got a little bit of black on my brush and i'm just making it into like this horseshoe type or like a u type section and then i'm going to pick up a touch of purple and incorporate that purple in with it because um the ones that i was looking at they have these beautiful variations to them they can look like they're clean lines or soft lines so however you feel you want to distinguish this you feel free to do so because they can they can slowly gradually move into the blue or it can be a nice clean line but i'm going to do this horseshoe of sorts and if your paint is really thick you can certainly water down especially your black paint a little bit so that way you can get the colors to um kind of gradually go into each other so i did my black now i'm picking up some of my purple and getting it to blend in a little bit and if you can't see your purple you could certainly um put a second layer on if you want to i'm just having mine as a little bit of a hint or a hue of the purple you could take the purple and go outside of the blue area so again i did my black and i if you want that purple to be more evident you can go right outside that blue area a bit and you can you know get it to blend right in with your black if you want to so again you can get these to be as distinct as you want or as subtle as you want i want a lot of that blue to remain evident so i'm not going to overdo this black section because i really want that blue to still complement the rest of the painting so i did my black now i'm picking up purple and i'm just going to kind of repeat this step until i have all of these um eyes done and if you get to a trouble spot and you're like i just you know that black i want it to blend in more with the blue just pick up some of your original blue and get it to blend in you can you know you can sit here and fiddle with it as much as you want you can have that black area larger if you want to or smaller whatever is visually appealing to you you could even get it to grow further outside of the blue it's all you know again what is is working for you visually you can um have fun with the intensity of this um of this eye section i think i wanna i like the idea of picking up some of my original blue and blending that in with the black but you can you know have yours distinct or oh yeah those are looking pretty alright so i'm just going to kind of cruise along the rest of them i have this little these little tiny ones in through here so we're going to just put a little black in through there a little black in through here if you got smaller ones you can maybe hit a couple of them at the same time with that black on there then just wipe your brush off and pick up a little bit of purple to get the outside so you can you know utilize your own painting efficiency however it works with with your own kind of discipline and again you can if that purple is not representing itself dark enough for you or vibrant enough for you you can certainly let it dry and have it go on again on a second coat but i'm going to go ahead and do these up and through here so again i'm just kind of utilizing this horseshoe type shape picking up once i get the black on there picking up some of my purple to get it to blend in and my purple is not very prominent but i do want it to be represented a little bit so that's why i'm choosing to utilize it as well you might want yours more vibrant than mine mine is really just kind of a subtle type um accent to it but again it's going to be all up to you how you want it to um to be bold or or subtle and if you wanted to really you know blend in softly with the blue you can certainly do that as well and i'm just going to kind of keep cruising along here i am leaving some of that orange and yellow of course evident along the sides if you bring your eye right to the edge that's that's fine too um but whoops like that one that one just went that one just grew a little bit really fast on me um but you know it's all going to be how your hand works and if you wanted to blend in with those neighboring colors you could do the black first on all of them let the black dry and then come back and add the purple along the edges so again you just kind of work with it the way that it um is free and fun for you to do because there's no reason for this to be stressful we just enjoy the process and if it comes out the way that we wanted it to great if we just enjoyed the process that that works too you know sometimes we we plan things out and they don't come out exactly as we want or they morph into something that is pleasantly you know wasn't expected but is you know very pleasantly accepted because we we end up liking the end product more than we thought we would which tends to happen when you enjoy the process of painting so i've just got a few more to go here and i might end up going back and and vamping or making my purple a little bit stronger but i'll wait for this to dry and see if there's see if i want to do any additional little layer to it but i'm just kind of getting some of these blacks on here and sometimes again if you you could just do the black first and then come back and add the purple i know my black stays wet for a minute here so i can certainly do two or three at the same time and then just come back and add that purple as it's drying and again my purple is very subtle but you could have a it's subtle because it's sitting next to onto and next to that black but if you wanted yours to be more vibrant and ha and you know have much more of a of a presence you could certainly do again multiple layers or you could have yours in a different type of purple whatever whatever works for you i'm gonna get this to blend in a little bit with my blue and let's say pick up some of my purple oops that was a little bit too much making sure i have enough on my brush but not too much we don't want it to get too far away from me and it's okay if you get the purple on the black and just get them to meld in with one another it'll give you a beautiful value of the of the um the eye of the almost called the flower the eye of the feather and then i've just got these last couple ones to go and then we are going to use this same brush the small brush for the next step so once you've got all of your eyes to your feathers you can wash and dry this little brush and just get ready for the next step just got a couple more here and again if you feel that you want to fiddle with them anymore or add to them oh that purple was nice on that one that's going to make me want more purple on them oh yeah see now that i'm getting down to these last ones i'm i'm seeing how how different it would look if i put just a little bit more purple so i might i might fiddle with mine just another minute or two but we're going to use this small brush for the next step so you can just wash it dry it and get ready all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing the saddle i'm going to be using my small brush and the colors that i'm using are black yellow and white i don't think i might use another color but that's predominantly where i feel that my head is going to be going right now so i'm using my small brush i'm going to first use some black but i am watering down the black a little bit so i'm taking a little bit of black and adding a touch of water into it because i want it to be like an ink consistency when i do this this is in essence going to be the shadow between like a thousand little feathers on that saddle so i want to have kind of narrow lines and i want to kind of go fast i'm going to be doing these arcing type motion to get the illusion of little shadows throughout these feathers so i'm going to start at the bottom and i'm going to go to the top i'm going to have them a little bit closer to one another at the bottom and then wider um at the top so i've got my watered-down black paint on my brush and if you feel like you you know you're going about this and you're like oh my god i did too much my line is too big don't worry about it when we go to do the little highlights in a second you'll be able to dull it down so i've got my my mixture on my brush so i'm going to just do these little curved lines and again i'm just doing this to give it the illusion that we are in fact seeing the little separations between the feathers that are in this saddle i don't want to go too dramatic i don't want to have it too systematic i'm just giving the illusion here if i wanted it to be more photorealistic i would sit here and make sure every single one of them is in line and perfect but i'm just going for a nice loose painterly interpretation so that's why my brush is kind of going fast i'm just doing the top side of an arcing kind of motion that one was a little big so you'll see you'll see me disguise that one later um and then once i've got enough of them on here that is making me pretty comfortable which definitely this is looking good i'm going to put a little bit more on this left hand side because i want this to look more like it's in the shadow so the darkness from these will will help me do that and then now that i've got as many on here as i would like i am going to wash and dry my brush so just washing and drying my little brush and now i'm going to put the little tips or highlights on top at the at the tippy tops of these feathers so i'm going to be utilizing my yellow and white for some of them and then this is my mixture that i made earlier for uh the outsides so that's just my original yellow with a touch of white in it so it's not so see-through and i'm adding these little flicks of curved lines underneath those black areas i'm going to use white i'm going to do the same thing with white up on the top ones but right now i'm just using my yellow and white to give these nice vibrant little highlights so i'm i'm putting them right next to those black curved marks and i know that they're going to turn out a little bit darker as they dry and i'm going to put more on the right side than i am on the left side because this left side is going into the shadows i want to make sure that i've got enough right by the bird's neck in through there and then as i get towards the top especially the top right i'm going to start to add some white but i just want to make sure i've got enough of these little flecks in through here that's looking pretty good making sure i've got some in through here and you can see i'm not painting over the entire area this is just meant to be little shimmering kind of tips of these feathers throughout the throughout the saddle and then i'm going to put some white paint on my brush i didn't even wash my brush i'm just putting some white paint and this is going to add even brighter ones over on this right hand side and then we are going to be using our small no let's use our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can wash and dry yeah that looks good wash and dry your 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 um doing the the thing on the top of the head so i think it the headpiece thing that's maybe it's a crown or a headdress or something i don't know maybe he's going to a festival and he's got his beautiful headdress on top i don't know but it's a it's the fluffy stuff that's going to be poking out from the top of his head so what i'm going to do is i'm going to do um a base coat for the feathery part then we're going to make some um of the quills i guess that are the stems that will meet his head and then we'll put a little texture on it so i'm gonna i'm using my medium brush the colors i'm using are blue phthalo green white and black i'm gonna start with just blue paint and i'm gonna give myself a polka dotted section where this is going to go i've got it almost it if you split the difference between the top of your canvas and the top of the head it's maybe a little bit less than half so if this is half maybe a little bit below there and then i'm just kind of polka dotting this blue paint on here in almost like an arcing kind of shape i don't want it to be really clean looking i just want it to have a lot of texture i've got it coming out a little bit further than his face on the right hand side it's maybe about an inch to an inch and a half tall and then it just kind of arcs so in this fashion so i don't have it straight across i guess you could have it straight across but i'm using mine in a little bit of an arcing motion then i'm going to wash and dry my medium brush and i'm putting the little stems of sorts whatever those are called that are going to connect this to the head i'm using brown and white paint on my brush at the same time so that way i have a variety of light spots and dark spots similar to how we did the quills and they are why they are splayed out more at the top and they kind of converge into a smaller area so i'm going to just do one going from the head to the um to the structure in the center and then i will start to kind of just splay them out like this and if you run into a little bit of wet blue don't worry about it and i'm only going to have it maybe about an inch or a half of an inch wide as it hits the head and maybe about i don't know twice as wide where it hits the um the fluffy part so we've got this in through here so you can see it's maybe about a half of an inch to an inch wide here and then about two inches into there and then i'm going to wash and dry my medium brush and i'm going to start putting the dimension on the fluffy part on top so i'm going to pick up a little bit of black paint to put shadows underneath that blue similar to how we did on the body i just want there to be some dimension here so i'm just dotting in a little bit of black paint underneath that blue and i'm getting it to kind of blend in with it a little bit and if you can see through it in in parts that's great because that's going to mean you're just seeing through to the other side which would totally happen on these little fluffy things and then i'm going to wash and dry my brush because i don't want that black to overpower the rest of that section and then i'm going to be using my phthalo green blue and maybe a little bit of white to add similar texture that i did on top of the head to add that to the top of this headpiece of sorts so i'm really just using a polka dotted type brushstroke and my blue paint underneath is still a little wet so that is providing me with a great way to to get this textured effect i'm making it lighter on the top and just kind of having not so bright of dots coming down where it meets that black area and that's going to give me the texture that i want you can have it as fluffy as you want if you want to add more green or blue feel free to do so and then we have one little step left to go and it's going to be with your small brush so once you've got to this head thing crown of sorts on here you can wash and dry 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 be using my small brush i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right corner i'm actually going to sign mine in the bottom left and i think i'm going to use some of that blue mixture that i used in the center of the of the feathers so i signed my name with my initials but you could certainly sign yours with the your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you would like to sign it with is totally up to you it's your painting it's your identifying mark you get to do it however you want to and then that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a beautiful colorful proud peacock and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 58,194

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, beginner, simple, easy, painter, class, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, sky, landscape, realistic, peaceful, beautiful, best, top, instructions, ontop, country, on, one, up, yellow, open, stunning, nature, natural, summer, day, inspirational, sun, pretty, art, wall, spring, flying, wings, beak, bird, single, farm, standing, peacock, pheasant, plume, plumage, male, peafowl, Indian, resplendent, Asiatic, crown, looking, orange, blue, green, feathers, eye, chest, saddle, tail, train, out, at

Id: -nwvrOQk1WI

Length: 92min 10sec (5530 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021