Learn How to Paint WINTER CARDINAL with Acrylic - Paint & Sip at Home - Fun Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint and sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today i'm going to be painting winter cardinal and i'm going to be sipping on my hot cocoa 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 go painting and let's get sipping all right so for my materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and primed 16 by 20 inch canvas your paint 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 burnt umber which i will call brown mars black fire red and deep yellow and of course you can switch up those colors if you'd like but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have a white piece of chalk that we'll use for some drawing and then i have three brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a number eight round synthetic brush and i have a number one round synthetic brush and i refer to these as small medium and large as we go through the painting process and of course you can switch those up as well if you'd like to if you're painting along with me you're probably going to 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 a couple of additional resources that can help you throughout 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 type of paint and the chalk and the brushes and all the good stuff in between so that's there for you there's excuse me 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 we're going to be doing for the first step is we're going to be painting our background so i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors that i'm going to be using are brown white and black and how i'm going to do this is i'm gonna do the majority of it in like a tan type of color and i'm gonna add some like soft gray areas as well i really just want this to look like an out of focus wintry background kind of sky and i wanted to have some nice colors in it that are going to make my cardinal and my lamppost pop out really well so i'm going for some real kind of medium tone neutral colors for the background so i've magically mixed a couple of colors to start so i can show you what i did so i'm doing a lot of it with this tan color so how i got to that i'm going to just use my medium brush to mix this so you can see i used a lot of my brown and a good amount of the white the white will very easily take over so you i would say maybe half and half of the two colors to start and then if you need to make it lighter or darker feel free to do so i'm going for like a kind of a light milk chocolate type of look to it kind of like between cross between white chocolate and milk chocolate and somewhere in there is the color i'm going for and then you can just plan for it to get a little bit darker as it dries so that's the the tan color that i'm going for and i'm also going for like a medium to light gray and how i got that was i mixed black and white together so i didn't use any brown just some black and white and again i'm just going for a medium to light kind of gray i think i need a little bit more white in here so we can get it into that value that's what i'm talking about somewhere in through there so what this is going to do the the um the gray contrasting against my um tan in the sky is going to make that gray almost look a little bluish so it it speaks to a nice natural tone so i've got that going on there so now i'm going to just put that medium brush away take out my large brush and i'm going to do the majority of my background with this tan color so because i know that i've got a lot of white in my mixture i know that my opacity is going to be really good and really high which means you're not going to be able to really see through this color too too much and i'll get good coverage with one coat but i am going to be introducing that gray as well but i want to get a lot of the canvas done with this tan color you don't need a perfect coat because again i'm going to be adding some of that gray in a minute but what i'm doing right now is just kind of getting a lot of it done with this tan color and then i'll introduce that gray in a minute so we can have some good contrast within the background but without having too much detail so it doesn't take away from the rest of the painting so that's looking pretty good to me i'm going to start picking up without washing my brush that tan color excuse me the gray color so i'm just going to add in some kind of like splotches of where i want that gray and then i'm just going to kind of start blending it in with the with the brown around it or the tan around it so as i do this i'm going to be you can see i'm kind of using a messy type of paint stroke just to kind of get it on here and while it's still wet what i'll do is i will take my brush and kind of utilize it in a circular or a soft kind of fashion to get everything to kind of blend in with one another so i tend to use this like kind of long criss-crossy type of motion but because i want this to blend really well i i can also start like moving that paint in different directions as it's drying and that's going to help me to get this really cool soft organic type of a blend where it's not one specific shape that's happening some shapes may be you know round some might have a little bit of you know squareness to them but because i'm continuing to move the paint as it's drying it's allowing me to get these kind of softer edges to it and this gray in here is really going to make it look like a nice out of focus type of background so i'm just going to kind of keep fiddling with it as it's drying you can also paint the edges or the sides of your canvas and then once you've got this step done we are going to be utilizing our chalk for the next step and you're more than welcome to do a second layer on this background if you feel like you want it to blend in a little bit more you can certainly let it dry and then just add another layer to it that's going to be totally up to you as to how smooth that you want it to look so once you've got that done you can put this large brush away take out your piece of chalk and get ready for the next step all right so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm going to draw an outline for my lantern and my bird i'm going to be using my chalk but i do want to forewarn you that you're going to want to make sure that your canvas is dry for this step because it's a whole lot easier to draw on dry paint than it is on wet paint so this is that time we get to take that extra long break if you'd like to or you can find some kind of fun fanning method or you could do as i did and just whip out a blow dryer and get it dry that way so how i'm going to do this i'm going to be just doing some very basic lines and shapes we're not going for full on detail here we're just going to give ourselves um a road map for painting it in in a few minutes i'm going to do my lamp post first when i do my lamp post i'm going to keep in mind that i want to have enough room for my bird which i'm going to have my bird somewhere in this vicinity so what i'm going to do first is i'm going to draw myself a vertical line i'm going from almost the top of my canvas to the bottom of my canvas i'm also going to be using something as a measuring tool so you can whip out a brush or anything else that you want for a measuring tool i'll show you why in a second so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come in almost about a quarter of the way in the top of my canvas so if this is about halfway you're about halfway between that and the edge of your canvas so somewhere in through i would say right about here is is good and i'm just a tiny bit away from the top maybe a quarter of an inch to a half of an inch away from the top then you're going to use anything you want as a measuring tool to see how far away from the edge of your canvas you did that you can mark it with your finger and then come all the way down to the bottom of your canvas and make a mark at the same distance away from the edge of your canvas and then you're going to connect those two dots so it doesn't have to be a perfectly straight line but you're just going to keep your eye on the prize which is the other dot and just make yourself a line going all the way down your canvas then what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a horizontal line this is going to be the part where the bird is going to be sitting on eventually so i'm going to come up the left hand side of my canvas i would say almost about a quarter the way up so if this is halfway up my canvas i'm a little bit shy or a little bit lower than the quarter way so if there's about quarter way i'm a little bit lower than that make yourself a marker then use your fancy measuring tool to measure how high up you did that and then you're going to come over to i would say maybe about a quarter of the way or a third of the way in from the right hand side of your canvas and you'll make yourself a mark at the same spot then you're going to connect those two dots with a horizontal line so nothing too fancy and if it's not perfectly straight no worries then i'm going to put the the top of my um lantern on so i'm going to have i need room for my bird so i'm not going to have it too far wide or too you know take up too much room so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come down i would say about a quarter of the way down my canvas make myself a little bit of a dot in through here and then i'm gonna you could measure how far away you did it from the center line and then go over to the right of that and make yourself another little marker so that way you're an equal distance away from each other then i'm going to connect these to the center line with a little bit of a diagonal or an arcing or upward kind of line something like this and your your lantern can be decorated or shaped whatever way you want i'm just going for something that was pretty in my head so i i created it to look like this so then what i'm going to do is i'm going to come a little maybe about an inch down from this line in through here i'm going to do two more similar lines like that but they're only going to be about an inch long and then i'm going to connect the edges of these two to here with another kind of arcing type of line so something like this and then like this and then i'm going to give myself a pretty like i don't know arrow type of topper or diamond type of topper and again you can really make yours into whatever way that you would like if you want yours to be shaped differently than mine that's totally fine and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to come a little bit more than halfway between here and here so a little bit further if this is about halfway a little bit lower than that this is going to be the bottom part of the lantern i'm going to do a horizontal line that's going to be about two inches over to the right and then about two inches over to the left i'm going to connect these two to up here but i'm going to be shy of the corner of that by i would say about a half of an inch to an inch so something like this you can even make yourself a couple of little markers so you know that you're kind of equal distance and then just connect that to that and then connect this to here and then i'm going to put a little um place for my light bulb to to be inside my lamp so i'm just going to kind of do a horizontal line somewhere in through here and then these little kind of arcing kind of lines going in through here so that'll be where my light bulb goes later then the rest of it is just all kinds of decorative elements so i'm picturing mine to be like a cast iron type of um lantern so you can have all kinds of swirly pieces of cast iron whatever decorations you want i'm going to have like a little circle type shape in through here and then i'm going to have some little swirly things come in here so whatever you do on one side you just kind of want to mimic on the other so i'll have these little curved lines in through there and then i'm going to have this kind of arcing line in through there it's really tough to get your brain to do the same thing on the other side so good luck but if you can if you can totally um you know keep your brain going in in the right way you'll have success but it's a good thing for chalk because if we do something that we don't like i'm trying to mimic that but i'm not being super successful here um but good thing for chalk we can make any adjustments that we want that's good enough and then i'm going to go ahead and move on to my bird so whenever i teach drawing birds i teach you with two basic shapes a circle for the head and a egg for the body it can work with any kind of bird the um the egg for the body the pointy part is going to be where the tail is so we're going to start with that i'm going to have my bird kind of sitting on this post and through here with its back that way and its head is going to be looking that way so i'm going to put my tail to the right of here maybe by about an inch inch and a half so that's going to be the pointy part of my um of my egg and then the top of my egg is going to be i would say somewhere in through here so i'm uh maybe about three or four inches away from here and maybe about two inches in through here if you go straight up that'll be about the top of it and then i'm going to connect the this to here with an arcing type of a line and then when i go to do this side i'm going to be a little bit bigger so this way this can resemble an egg type of a shape so i'm going to go somewhere in through here so that'll be my egg my circle is going to be about i would say about two inches wide by two inches tall so i'm going to go up from here i'm going to have my circle overlapping this in through here so you can kind of do that and then i'm just going to kind of make myself my circle somewhere in through here so i would say it's about two inches by two inches i'm going to put myself a little bit of a beak right in through here so the beak of a um of a cardinal is not very far out from its face and it can kind of hook down a little bit it is going to come we'll paint it into the face in a minute or when we go to paint but right now we're just putting the tip of it on i need to connect this circle to the main body so i'm going to come down from the back of the head in through here and just give myself kind of a little bit of a connector piece and through there and then in through here i want to close off this little pointy gap so i'm just going to take my chalk and kind of close off that gap like that i'm going to start my crown on the top of the head so from where the beak meets the head i'm going to give myself this curved line going back like that and then i'm just going to give myself these little jaggedy kind of lines that are going to meet the head in through there i'm going to give myself a tail so the tail is going to come off of the pointy part and it's going to be about two inches away from the corner of my canvas at the bottom right corner i'm going to just kind of splay it out just a little bit and the end of the tail doesn't really matter because we'll have that's going to be painted similarly to how we do the crown and then i'm just going to mark where i want my legs so i'm going to come in just something like that and something like that don't have to do feet or anything like that that just gives you a little marker and that's all we're going to do for this step we are going to be switching to our medium brush for the next step so you can put your chalk 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 we're going to do the base coat for our lantern and our bird so i'm going to use my medium brush i'm going to be using red and black paint and there's nothing too fancy about this i just loaded my brush with red paint i'm going to be doing my bird with red and my lantern with black so on my bird this is just going to be the base coat so the only parts that i need to concentrate and do anything special to is the edges and around where that beak is so i say that because if you want it to look nice and natural you'll want to start the feather making process from the get-go from from the start of of painting it so i'm going pretty close to my to my chalk mark right now because i know the interior doesn't need anything fancy and then when i get to a place like my tail i'm going to along those edges use a looser kind of brush stroke and just kind of get those the little fluffy edges of the of the wing feathers to start to emerge so instead of doing a straight line at the bottom or a straight line along the edges if i ruffle it up a little bit if i ruffle the feathers a little bit it's going to start to look more natural same thing like on an edge like this so as i come around this corner if i just kind of use a looser brush stroke where some of my paint is going to be thinner and some is going to be thicker that's going to help to make that side once i remove any chalk remnants that'll make that side look nice and more realistic than a solid line and same thing with over here going along this edge with a looser i'm not pressing very hard and i've got um this looser edge to it with my beak i will slow down and go nice and slow on that so i can have nice clean edges to it like this getting it to go all the way into that chalk mark and i'm just painting it red to start and then on the crown i'm going to do the same thing that i did with my tail feather so i will kind of go up like this and then just pull out along these edges these little ruffled edges to it so something like that and then do the same thing down the back of the head and you don't have to get rid of all of your chalk mark at this point because we'll be doing much more information on it which will help to eliminate that but i'm going to wash and dry my brush i'm going to put the base coat on my um on my lantern i'm going to save my legs for later so i'm not going to do those right now so i'm just going to pick up some black paint and this is really just going to be coloring in um some sections so i'm going to color in this top section with black paint and i'm not doing any details right now just kind of bringing it all the way to my chalk edges and again if you don't paint in the whole chalk and that you still got some remnants once you're done no worries or if you do as i do and run your hand through your paint or through the chalk the whole time you'll get little like white marks all over your canvas which is totally fine especially when you're doing a snow scene because the it will just work its way into the snow but chalk is great because you can just erase it with with uh water if you still have some left over at the end that you don't want so i'm just doing this top section with black when i get to the other areas of the um of the lantern all the little detail work that i'm not going to be painting in here that's going to be my my glass portion so i'm just going to take my brush i want these to be kind of wide so i have my black paint on my brush you could even use black with a little bit of water on your brush and as i do this line i'm going to push pretty hard with my brush so i get a pretty wide line coming down in through here this way i may only need to do one or two passes with it but this way i won't have to go down the left and down the right so if you if your brush isn't as wide as mine you can certainly you know have thinner um a thinner structure than i have or you know you can go over it a couple times but when i'm doing something like this if i want my lines to be pretty systematic or similar from one area to the next utilizing a similar pressure on my brush from one area to the next will help me to get a similar width line so it's just one of my little tricks that i do i'm going to go ahead and paint in this center section where the light bulb is going to go and you might consider yours to be a light bulb or a flame or whatever you want this light source to be on the inside of your lantern is totally fine you can imagine it to be whatever that you would like and it goes straight across this bottom portion here and again this is a decorative piece so if you wanted to round out your corners you can you know round out your corners or if you did something and you're like that didn't work out too well just make it into something else so you don't have to follow my design work you can really make this into what whatever you want it to be again just kind of using my black paint to give myself my um my line going down here i'm going to press pretty hard to get this center line pretty wide and my chalk will bleed into my black which is totally fine so if you have some areas that look a little gray that's totally fine and i have a shaky hand so as i'm doing a step like this i'm i'm okay with you know my hand wobbling i've just come to a point in my life where i'm like all right if i have a wobble line that's okay but if you need your hand to be straight or your line to be straight you can use rulers or any kind of aid you can also put your hand on your canvas as you're painting that will stabilize your hand a little bit and then i'm going to go in for these little details in through here and again i'll try and get one side to mimic the other but you know we're freestyling this here so if one side ends up looking different than the other that's totally okay and we can hide anything with snow later too so know that that's always a benefit of a winter scene is if you do something that you were unexpected that was unexpected just cover it with snow and then i'm going to go ahead and do this little decorative circle piece in the middle and again it may not be exactly the same from one side to the other but that's okay and then i just have the one last little line to do down at the bottom and i'm just going to do that again with black paint and then we are going to be switching to our small brush for the next step so once you've got your base coat on your bird and on your lamp post you can put this medium brush away do any kind of little modifications and tweaks that you want me just bring this down a little bit so i've got a little edge there and then you can put this medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're going to paint the face and the feet or lip legs and feet of our bird i'm gonna be using my small brush i'm gonna be using black white brown yellow and red i'm using all my colors on my palette so how i'm going to do this i'm going to work on the face first and what i'm going to first do is i'll separate my beak from the um i like to call it the mask on this bird and then we'll do all the little details so i'm going to be using my small brush i'm going to pick up some black paint and i like to water it down a little bit so i took my brush and i picked up a dot of water and i just kind of watered down a little bit of it this way i have a nice fluid consistency on my brush my brush stays nice and pointy i can keep control of it so what i'm gonna i'm gonna section off where i want my beak to go so at the bottom of my beak where it meets my neck in through here i'm going to give myself a little i'm going to extend the bottom of that line in essence so you can kind of outline the bottom of that beak and then just kind of extend it into the face i would say about a half of an inch to an inch but get keeping it with a little bit of a curved line helps to make it look a little bit more natural i'm going to at the top of the beak i'm going to give myself kind of a little point a little almost like a top of a triangle and then i'm going to connect that to here with a pretty organic line i don't really want it to be a straight line i want it to really look kind of nice and natural so i bump it in a couple of times you know give a little bit of a of a circular or a curved line in through there then what i'm going to do is i'm going to put the opening for my beak so from about midway from the top to the bottom of the beak on the left hand side that's going to meet the beak in through here with a curved type of line so you can start at the tip of the beak or a little bit back from the tip of the beak at the bottom and then give yourself a little bit of an upward curve something like this and then just kind of gently curve it back up into the back of the beak in through there and it doesn't have to be a firm line and if you went too big or too bold don't worry when we color in the beak you'll be able to you'll be able to dull it down a little bit and then what i'm going to do with that watered-down black paint is i'm going to put the mask on the on the face so the mask is going to kind of come about back in through here but the eye sits in there too so if you go to the left of your beak maybe about a half of an inch to an inch and up almost to the top of that beak so somewhere in through here i'm going to put a nice solid little black circle and this way i know where my eye is it's going to be you know a nice small little p size eye somewhere in through here and just a nice little circle and then i'm going to use that watered-down black paint too in a little feathery brushstroke so i can still see a little bit of that red underneath going to put this mask on in through here so this is going to go above or to the top of the eye and kind of come around the back side of it just a little bit i don't need to i don't need my mask to go all the way black you can still have some of that little red showing underneath which is why i'm utilizing a little bit of the water down black that's going to help me to keep it a little bit translucent and allow me to still see where that eye is and then i'm going to bring this down towards the neck and again i'm just using this light kind of skecherly type of brush stroke it's coming down all the way down to this part of the neck where it kind of dips in and meets the rest of the body and i'm leaving these really light fluffy little pieces of feathers along the edge gonna do pretty dark right underneath that beak but again still a little bit of that red pokes through and then as i get towards the edge where it um where it meets that background i'm to pull out a couple of little tiny pieces of these feathers right underneath that chin it's going to be a great place for us to put some snow later so this is a fun little detail to do and again just kind of letting that that black show but not overpowering that red where i'm not going to be able to um you know to see any of that red and if you want to manipulate it any further or make it any any more dark you can certainly do that but i'm gonna not wash my brush i'm gonna pick up some brown and white i'm going down to the feet for a second here or the legs what i'm gonna do is i'm just going to because i have that dark color on my brush i'm just picking up a little bit of brown and white in addition and just giving myself a couple of little legs this one is going to come into the body just a little bit in through here we'll disguise the edge of it with our feathers in a little while this one to the left is going to be the one that sits behind or is on the other side of the body so i'm just bringing down these like little stick legs in through here like this and then i'm just going to put a couple of little the illusion of some toes kind of coming out and just kind of arcing onto the um the board so to speak but again snow is going to help us to hide any anything that is imperfect in through here so just giving a little impression of some cute little legs in through here i'm gonna go wash and dry my brush and go back up to my um beak so wash and dry my brush on my beak what i'm really looking to do is the beaks on cardinals can be anywhere from bright yellow to red so i'm going to just give myself a nice highlight on the top of the beak with some yellow and white and then just give myself a little bit of dimension down at the bottom so i'm going to start with a little bit of yellow and white on my brush the key to doing this is never have a lot of paint on your brush at any time so this way it will dry on the fly for you and you can keep manipulating the values of the the bright and dark colors as you go through this process so i have a little bit of yellow and white on my brush i'm illuminating or highlighting the top of that beak in through there so we can have a nice highlight now i'm picking up without washing my brush some yellow and red to get it to kind of blend down into this bottom area in through here and this is that time where you could disguise the opening in your mouth if you needed to and just kind of get it to be as prominent or as subtle as you want you might find that you want to reshape your nose or your beak your nose i guess it's a nose it's a nose beak thing um you can certainly have fun with that i'm going to put a little bit more white on my brush just to illuminate this edge just a little bit more and then i will also while i'm up here i'm going to put a little sparkle in my eye as well but i'm just getting my beak to be nice and bright on the end so we can definitely see the shape of it and again this is just one of those less is more kind of steps you never need to have a lot of paint on your brush and just kind of keep elevating it until it is in the the color that you want maybe a little bit more yellow on here and again these beaks can be such a wide variety of tones and colors so feel free to make yours as yellow or as red as you want it to be then i'm going to wash and wash my brush i'm going to put a little bit of detail in my eye so i'm just going to put a little kind of crescent on the back side of the eye just to give myself a little bit of information maybe a little twinkle in the eye somewhere in through there and of course you could put a little in the front part too nothing much i'm just i mean you could even put a little brown in the eye to give yourself a little bit of color but i'm not really doing much because i know we're going to have lots of snow and all kinds of other stuff that's going to take away from any need for lots of detail in the eye and that is all i'm going to be doing i might tweak my nose or my beak a little bit more but we're going to be utilizing our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your your face and your legs done on your on your beautiful bird you can put this small 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 we're going to do the details on our lamp post i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors that i'm going to be using are white yellow red um and black if i use brown i'll let you know so how i'm going to do this i'm going to do my light bulb first and then i'll add the rest of my details around it so i'm going to have like an old-fashioned kind of almost edison looking kind of bulb where it's going to have this unique shape to it you can certainly have whatever style light that you would like but how i'm going to first start it is with a very little bit of white paint on my brush so i'm in essence going to put the luminescent value to it in first i'm okay if i bump into this center post because we can reestablish that later and sometimes it the light will look brighter if it takes away some of these edges so i'm going to be about half the distance between here and here is where i'm going to put some bright white like this and then i'm going to rub it out until it gets nice and soft along the edges so i'm just utilizing my brush to allow for those edges to be nice and soft and you can you can bring this out pretty far however far you want that light to be to be cast you can certainly bring it out far i'm just kind of maneuvering my brush as the paint is drying using some remnants off of my the interior of my brush to allow for this soft edge to happen and then once i've got that established well we can amp it up in a minute but once i've got that kind of area established what i'm going to do is i'm not washing my brush i'm going to pick up a little bit of red and yellow this is going to give me my exterior kind of outline of my um of my bulb itself and of course you can put a little bit of water on there as well so what i'm going to do is just give myself um my shape that i want so i'm going to start up in through here and then just kind of bring it down like this and again you can have yours in whatever shape that you want something like that that makes sense i'm going to rinse my brush off real quick pick up some yellow paint and get this red exterior to blend in with some yellow and if your paint dried too fast and you weren't able to do that you can just re-wet it with a little bit of water or some kind of fluid medium will help you to re-wet it or at least soften it around those edges and then i just kind of keep working these edges until i feel like they're they're the way that i want you can kind of reshape them you can just work them until they're i'm getting i want mine to be a little soft around the edges so i have a touch of water on my brush which is allowing me to kind of soften these edges and if it adds a little bit of additional glow to it that's fantastic and then just wetting my brush a little bit to make sure that this is just blended in a little bit i want i think i'm going to put a little bit more yellow at the top so i just picked up a little bit more yellow on my brush getting it to be a bit more with that yellow feel to it up at the top and then of course you can keep fiddling with this i'm going to put more white in the center in a second as well but just getting this kind of glow gradient thing happening on the exterior now i'm going to pick i'm going to wash and dry my brush and pick up a little bit more white to make that center a bit brighter and this is one of those steps that sometimes just building it in a progressive way will help it look the most natural so i just picked up a little bit more white and i'm going to get this center area to be a little bit brighter and you know if your paint dries fast and you're like i just can't you know get it to to blend quick enough that's when you might want to start adding a touch of the water to your brush or a little bit of liquid medium which will help you to take help allow it to take its time while while you're spreading it i think i want a little bit more of that red and maybe orange at the top so i'm just looking at it saying what do i want that's going to make it appear to be more luminescent and for me adding these tones of the orange and red around it around it will certainly help and of course yellow as a glow would certainly help so i just put picked up a little bit more yellow and i'll put that around the edges of it so you can really steer the the information of where this light is going and how it's affecting the stuff around it by just adding these little hues of the of the glow around it and then when we go to put the the snow and the you know and all the other information on it this that will these little accents of tones definitely help to make it look more more believable and realistic and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to once i've got my light on there i'm going to wash and dry my brush i'm going to start putting some um gray i'll call them highlights on the rest of the details i want to add a little bit of lightness to this center piece and through here so i'm going to use the gray that we had with the background this gray in through here plus a tiny touch of black on my brush and i'm going to just give this little guy in through here a little bit lighter look so it looks like it is a different element um than this exterior structure so just a little bit of of gray on the inside here is going to allow me to have this little piece inside have its own identity so something like that and i kept that center area to itself so that way it looks like this sits behind it and then all the other little areas like this ball if i wanted to look three-dimensional i can just use a little bit of that gray color that was on my brush give myself a light spot like that wipe my brush off of my paper towel pick up some black and then just get this light spot to dissipate to the darker side of this object so this is probably the hardest little piece this round piece to um of all the objects on the lamp post to get to look three dimensional but if you can get a little bit of a lighter area on that top side top front area that's going to make it look a little bit three-dimensional and then the other pieces of the um of the lamppost i'm really just going to be adding bits of highlights on them to give the viewer the information that they're that they're three-dimensional so i can utilize that gray that gray that we use for the background plus black on my brush and just kind of streak in these little bits of highlights and if you feel that your gray is too bright just put a little bit more black on your brush to dull it down a little bit and just giving these little bits of information even down the sides of the um of the structure or even down this center area along my post in through here just adding a tiny bit of gray to that black structure even if it's not perfectly executed with a with a perfect gradient just having that bit of a lighter spot is going to tell the viewer that it is in fact per you know perhaps three-dimensional and something is catching the light in a certain way so that helps to give the viewer that information and you can of course keep tweaking this little light area into here like i will probably keep tweaking mine and then on the top of the structure again i'm going to just use that gray plus some black i'm going to leave this little center area so i'm going to just kind of outline the left and the right of that center post in through there and then i'm going to rub in some of this gray paint in through here just to again give a little bit of dimensional element to to this top piece of the um of the lamppost so you can utilize you know you could make your own a different gray you could utilize the gray from the background and then just put a little bit of um additional black into it this does not have to be a one solid color you could have one side a little bit lighter than the other to indicate that maybe the light from the atmosphere is more evident over on the right side so you can feel free to make that as dominant or as subtle as you want might make that a little bit darker in a second but just adding these little elements is going to help you to make it look a little bit more natural and have more information on it i'm going to darken this just a little bit that was a little aggressive on the on the light color and then what we're going to do we're going to be utilizing the same brush for the next step so once you've got your lamp post on and you've made any little adjustments to the colors feel free to wash this medium brush and if you wanted to at this point you could certainly take care of any extra chalk marks that are along the edges you can just put a tiny bit of water on your brush and that will eliminate all of those little extra kind of marks along the sides and then you can wash and dry this 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 finish our bird i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors i'm using are red brown black yellow and white all those colors again so what i'm going to do i'm going to kind of work my way from the dark to the light adding shadows where i feel that they would be so i'm going to have shadows or darkness underneath the bird and on this left hand side shadows on the left side of the bird i realize that we have a lamp in through here but in my head this the atmosphere is also providing light to this so i also want to show the shape of the bird so i'm going to have my lightest areas kind of in the center of the bird showing the form that to me was the most important part um to to tell the viewer on this so i don't think that's lamppost is putting off very much light anyways so we're gonna have shadows on the left um a dark little wing over on this side because to me cardinals have their wings are a little bit darker than this vibrant red belly area some shadows underneath the tail and then some vibrancy in the areas that pop out so i'm going to start with some black brown and red on my brush at the same time so i've got red brown and a little bit of black i don't need a lot of black because the black can take over i'm going to start with my shadowy areas so i know that i have shadow underneath my tail whenever i do birds my biggest thing is always especially when you get to the the feathery the the details of the feathers always move that brush in the direction that you feel those feathers are coming out and laying down so if i feel that i'm working on the tail feathers they're going to be going in in that direction in the downward direction these are longer strokes because the feathers on the tail to me are going to be a little bit longer than they would be like in the in the mid region of the bird so again red black and brown i keep reloading my brush with i'm going to put some shadow behind um this leg in through here so something like this i'm just using the little tips of my brush to give myself these little edges to the the feathers i know that i'm gonna have some little darkness i think i'm going to put a little bit more black on my brush just to get this area in through here to be nice and dark as it's going into the bottom portion of that tail where i feel that it would be pretty pretty darn dark so something like this too i'm gonna have a little bit maybe on this side of the leg coming in through here now this leg is on the other side of the body so i'm not going to be um worrying about putting shadows around that but i definitely definitely want some going up this side of the body so this is where i'm going to be doing shorter brush strokes than i did on the tail but i'm going to be doing them in kind of a curved fashion as if they're curving around the body in through here and this is where it's really kind of important to not have too much paint especially black on your brush so you definitely want to maintain the control of the quantity of paint that you have on your brush so to be safe go heavier on your red than you do on the black and the brown you can always add more black and brown but it's tough to take it away once it's on there and then i'm just kind of creeping my way up this left hand side of the um of the face or the of the body i think i want a little bit more fluff on the coming out this head back here my line was a little bit too firm so i just added some more fluff coming out through there still just adding my black brown and red i want this shadowy area to kind of meet up at some point with this mask so again just kind of adding these little with the tip of my brush these little strokes in this curved type of manner i'm working my way all the way up to this kind of mask type of area because i have the red and the brown on my brush it's not going to be as dramatic as when we did the mask itself i'm going ahead and i'm adding some of this darkness in through here because i feel like you'd have these little kind of shadowy areas in between some of the pieces on the crown i feel like i have a little bit too much black on my brush so i just kind of wiped it off and then i'm just kind of watching what's happening and anytime i need to control the quantity of my paint on my brush i do so and then once i've got that i want to do kind of a darker the essence of a darker wing over on this side so again just utilizing that same color combination and just giving myself a couple of darker little streaks in through here just to give the impression of that um darker wing or at least the the shadow underneath it perhaps over over on this side and maybe bringing that down in through there meeting that tail a little bit now what i'm going to do is i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and i'm just going to pick up some red and brown i want to make sure that the neck kind of has all its own little bits of i don't want to call it shadow shadow but definitely a little bit of darkness somewhere in through here but i don't necessarily want there to be black i just want it to be a little bit darker than what we're going to have in through here and then i'm going to just release all that brown off of my brush to get it to kind of blend in with those areas and through there now i'm going to wash my brush and i'm going in for my light areas so on these light areas i'm going to be using red yellow and white and i'm going to be progressively getting it to go lighter and lighter in through these areas if your red doesn't get as bright as you want it to one of my tricks is you take white paint and you can actually just kind of add white paint to your brightest area in order to create a lighter value underneath what you're going to have as the red feathers this will help it think of it like a primer coat this will help to make these areas more intensely red because you're working on a dark background the red can only get so bright it with that darkness that's underneath it so if you want it to be as bright as it can be take a little bit of white as i'm doing and give yourself the the primer coat underneath in order to make it as as red as it can be so i just have a tiny bit of white paint on my brush wherever i want those lightest areas to be i'm putting a tiny bit of white paint and this is going to make the red that i'm going to put on in a second even red or as red as it can be so i'm going to put a tiny bit on the um on the tail so that's why i'm starting to use white from the get go and then i will use red and yellow to um get the the additional layers on here so that's looking pretty good to me so i'm not going to wash my brush i'm just picking up some red paint right now and i'm going to start adding my my bright bright red stuff on here so another trick or tip is if you use red and white you'll on your brush at the same time you'll end up with pink so if you don't if that happens to you what you can do is you can counteract it with a little bit of yellow so red white and yellow is going to make like a peachy color as opposed to a pinky color so if you run into that issue where your bird turns pink on you you can utilize some yellow in that mixture and it's going to help to get that that that brightness even more so or less pink on you and so i'm just adding some red yellow and red and yellow on top of that white that we had established and you can see how it's really nice and vibrant and giving us that brilliant cardinal color that is so attractive to all of us especially when you when you see them in the wintertime against the the white snow it's just they're beautiful birds and they you don't you don't see them as often as you as you'd like to but i'm putting the red and the yellow right on top of those white streaks so that's gonna help to make them even brighter and then if i want to or if i feel i need to go even brighter i can i just keep on keep on adding the lightness so you can add a little bit more of the white with red and yellow on your brush and again i'm going for real lightness in through here and i'm just adding it in these short little brush strokes that's going to provide me with a lot of texture on the um on the on the feathers i'm leaving this area a little bit darker so it gives it that um that information that it dips in a little bit and i'm going to go ahead and make this little cheek as bright as i want it to be and then i'm going to add a little bit of information on the um on these little pieces of feathers underneath the chin too i'm going to put tiny bit more white up in through here and again this is that step where you might find yourself fiddling with it for quite a while just to get everything on there the way that you wanted to but you know just go in slow stages and and you know you can always repeat a a color if you needed to if you know you got rid of all your red put it back you know if you made some section too light make it darker you know you can just continue to adjust it until you feel that you've got everything the way that the way that you had wanted it to be and this is looking pretty good to me i'm going to go right to the to the black area i'm putting a little bit of black and white on my brush so i can give just a little bit more texture in this in these feathers underneath the um underneath the neck into here because i feel like they were a bit too flat with just being black so i'm just adding a little bit more texture on them i'm going to add some snow on them too in a little while but this is just helping me to make it look a little bit more three-dimensional which makes me a little bit happier and then once you've got that done fiddle with it all you want and then we're going to be using our large brush for the next step maybe a little bit a little bit more fluff on this leg here to make it look like we've got some fur in front of the our feathers in front of the leg into here and if you felt that you wanted to do uh you know more details on your feet feel free to do so i'm just trying to keep mine nice and easy and and relaxed so i'm just kind of letting letting happen what's happening and then we're going to use our um large brush no we're going to use this medium brush for the next step so once you've got your bird done you can no we're going to use our sorry we're going to use our large brush for the next step 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 be doing for the next step is we're going to be putting the fog or the glass on our lantern and we're gonna let it snow everywhere so snow and glass is what we're doing so i'm using my large brush the colors that i'm gonna use are white um gray and a little bit of brown so i'm going to do my glass first and what i'm going to do is i'm going to put a little bit of brown up at the top of it and then i'm going to get it to go foggy so this is going to be one of those steps you don't need a lot of paint and you'll probably want to use a little bit of moisture on your brush as well which could be a little bit of water so i'm going to start with a tiny bit of brown paint like an itty-bitty bit of brown paint you can even tap it off on your paper towel if i've scared you and then i'm just gonna put a little bit of we'll call it like a little shadow or something up at the top of that glass so something like this will help to give that that bit of um of darkness up in through that area and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up some of my gray paint and a little bit of water so just take my brush make sure i got it dipped in there and then dab it on my paper towel and i'm going to put this fogginess maybe a little bit of white too i just added a little bit of white so we can actually see it and i'm going to put this little bit of a fogginess on my glass in front of my light itself the goal for me is i want it to be a little bit lighter than this background color so i'm gonna i just added a bit more white onto my brush and i want it to be translucent so you can see everything behind it i don't want to take away from my beautiful light that i put in there so i'm going to do it just a little bit at a time a little bit of white a little bit of water or a little bit of gray whatever whatever intensity you want it to be if you want it to be lighter than i've got mine you can certainly add a little bit more white i continue to add a little bit of white just so i can get it as light as i want i i always like to kind of err on the side of caution i'd rather start slow and you know build my way to my rest my ending resting spot as opposed to going too heavy and then losing all that information that i put behind it so when i'm doing a step like this where i'm looking to just add the illusion of something i like to just kind of be a little bit on the cautious side so that's why it's taken me just a minute to to get this on here and you can certainly fiddle with yours as much as you want but once you've got it on there it'll probably dry a little bit different than um it is when it's wet so i'm just kind of getting mine to dry as we're talking and then or as i'm talking rather and then i'm going to put some detailed snow on my lamp and on my bird and then we're going to have fun making it snow everywhere else so you can i like to get my snow progressively lighter so i'm gonna use white on my brush plus a little bit of my gray to get start some some details on my on my snow on my um lamppost so i'm going to put some along the edge and through here and again i have white plus my gray on my brush and then i'm going to get some some snow i'm just dotting it you can certainly make yours into whatever kind of type of snow that you would like but i'm going a little bit darker to start just so i can have a kind of a progression to the bright snow so again right now i have gray plus um white on my brush just giving myself some little clumps of snow definitely going to kind of hide these feet a little bit so you can get yours as much as you want maybe a little bit of this gray snow is gonna kind of work its way up this top a little bit and you can have it piled you can have it flat whatever is visually working for you then i'm gonna pick up some um just white paint on my brush and when i'm doing these smaller areas you can take your brush and just kind of squish it on the side of your palette and that's going to bring your bristles together and allow you to have more controlled kind of areas where you're where you're dotting it and you can have your snow sitting anywhere you would like in whatever kind of formation you would like it's your snow you have it going where you know however tall or bright that you would like to and if you're working with some of the darker snow just don't cover it all with the bright white snow this is just meant to give you those um that dimensional look to it with varying tones of the snow so maybe some of it looks like it's in the shadows or is being you know sat on by other snow and have fun with you know just getting this to be whatever you want when i go to the um bird i'm you gonna i just put white on my brush and i'm just using the teeny tiny tip of my brush and i'm gonna give myself a couple of little my hand might get in the way that's why i'm talking about it first just little tiny tips you can even take your brush and wipe it off on your paper towel just to give these little like like the snow is just kind of sitting on um on the edge of the the bird and just the little tiny corner of my brush or maybe the bird's been sitting here for a little while and it started to accumulate on on his side of his body so feel free again to have fun with this you can use your small brush if you wanted to do you know even more distinct little tiny markers in through there and then we're going to let it snow everywhere else i'm going to show you a couple of different types of snow that you can make one of them is the flicking method so i've got white on my brush this always works better for me if i have a tiny bit of water also on my brush and then i dab it on my paper towel and then i start flicking away so i'm using a nice firm brush and i just start um flicking and it gets all these little tiny like thousands of little pieces i think i need a little bit more paint on my brush because i'm not getting much of flicks there we go we're we're letting it snow now so this way you may end up getting little squiggle marks if you're not fond of the squiggle marks i would recommend practicing this with varying amounts of water on your brush or liquid medium on your brush because that will the the quantity of the fluid plus the paint will um dictate if you're going to get any of those little squiggly marks and everybody's brushes work a little bit differently so i would i would recommend kind of practicing if you're not fond of those little squiggle marks you can also utilize your medium brush or another round brush of sorts to give yourself like bigger pieces of snow so you can just do a dotted type of um technique with a round brush if you wanted to get those more firm larger pieces of snow and then you can the um my best and most fun method is just my big brush and kind of smashing it in my canvas so i want to have a whole lot of snow like around the edges especially around the top so i have lots of white paint on my brush right now and i'm going to be giving myself this almost like a border around my canvas of heavy white snow especially at the top and then i'm going to kind of get it to come in and be a little bit more faint throughout the rest of the painting but right now just kind of giving myself these pretty heavy white borders along the side with a lot of white paint on my brush and then what i'll do is i will kind of allow myself to run out of paint as i work my way in towards the um interior of the painting and that's gonna it's gonna border it almost like um it reminds me of like a christmas card where you have like that dreamy looking through the winter window kind of feel to it and this allows you to kind of soften give the painting a nice soft look to it and then i'm just gonna at this point just kind of run out of paint allow myself to run out of paint and what will happen is as i'm running out of paint i can utilize the um the lack of paint on my brush to make this look softer and softer as it's going into the paint and you can even go over the edge of your objects i went over the edge of my um my little bird tail i'm going over the edge of my um my lamppost and now i hardly have any paint on my brush whatsoever so i'm just utilizing that as my million little additional snowflakes throughout the painting so you can take it and just kind of add just keep dotting away and this is going to provide you with that soft ethereal kind of look to it and you just kind of keep going until you feel like you've got enough snow and then we have one tiny little step left to go so once you've got your snow all nice and you know falling all over your canvas you can put this large brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step my hot cocoa has disappeared i'll get it on 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 typically sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right corner i'm going to be signing it with my small brush i'm going bottom left i sign mine with my initials you could certainly sign yours with your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you'd like for your identifying mark to be is totally fine and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a beautiful winter scene and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometimes [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 167,004

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, lesson, beginner, simple, easy, class, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, black, snow, winter, sky, snowy, red, night, flying, Christmas, holiday, cute, looking, falling, storm, standing, canvas, art, wall, idea, feet, illustration, realistic, top, best, blizzard, day, eye, bob ross, cardinal, bird, lantern, lamp post, lamppost, wrought iron, cast iron, antique, vintage, sitting, beak, feathers, perched, animal, portrait, light, tail, post, street, lamp, steps, flakes, side, inspirational

Id: 0AE_60H4w20

Length: 67min 28sec (4048 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021