Learn to Paint BIRCH TREE OWL with a Painting Knife - Paint and Sip at Home - Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today we're going to be painting birch tree owl and i'm going to be sipping on a little cabernet so let's get painting and let's get sipping all right so for the materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and primed 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'm going to be using i'll be using acrylic paint today my colors are cobalt blue titanium white burnt umber which i'll call brown mars black deep yellow and chrome orange and of course you can switch up those colors but that's what i'm going to be using for my tools today i have a standard number two pencil i have a double angled palette or painting knife and then i have two brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush and i have a number three round brush and i probably refer to these as small and large as we go through the painting process if you're painting along with me you're probably going to want a cup of water for washing your tools as well as a paper towel for drying them and down below this video i do have a couple of additional resources for you that can help you through your painting process one of them is a link where you could purchase the same exact paint kit that i'm using including the knife and the canvas and the same paints and all that good stuff so that's there and what is also there is a downloadable 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 do for the first step is we are painting our sky we're going to be using our large bristle brush and we're going to be using blue and white i'm going to have my sky a little bit darker at the top and really really light down at the bottom so i'm going to start with blue and white on my brush at the same time and i'm going to be applying my paint in a circular motion you could certainly go crisscrossing you could you know go back and forth left to right whatever kind of brush stroke works for you is totally fine by me and then what i'm going to do is now that it's pretty dark up at the top i'm i might never pick up blue again i'm not going to wash my brush i'm just going to keep picking up white and what's going to happen is my sky is going to naturally get lighter and lighter as it comes down my canvas and that's going to give me the effect that i was looking for that i'm i'm trying to achieve which is a really light um sky down at the bottom i want this to look like a beautiful crisp autumn day where you know the sun is just shining and our owl is just maybe hiding up in the in the birch tree a little bit um so i want my sky to be really nice and beautiful and alive and you know no no dreary rain clouds to be found maybe just a big puffy cloud here or there floating by but i am just having a beautiful nice you know maybe september or october day where it's just so nice and beautiful and and you know like i want to walk through the woods this particular day and again i'm just kind of going all the way down to the bottom i'm going to keep just loading my brush with white so you can see it's getting lighter and lighter as it comes down my canvas and then i am going to just finish up down towards the bottom and i am going to actually be switching brushes to my medium brush so after i've got my sky all nice and painted i'll put my large brush away and i will take out my medium brush and get ready i'm sorry i have a woodpecker that's on the outside of my house i don't know if you can hear it or not but it's really it's really kind of funny it's like on the outside of my house so i'm a little distracted as i'm finishing up this stuff but anyways we're gonna switch brushes to the medium brush uh after this step so oh there it is i don't know if you can hear it all right on to the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are drawing an outline for our owl so i'm going to be using my pencil and i'm going to give you a couple of little markers to make and then we're going to make a couple of shapes and hopefully by the end of it it'll look you know something like an owl shape um so the way that i typically teach to draw birds is every bird has two basic shapes to it there's an egg for the shape of the body the pointy part being where the tail is and the head is always this the shape of a circle so it could be um a swan it could be a flamingo it could be a hawk it could be an owl they all have the egg and the circle but they have different length necks they have different length wings they have different kinds of ears and beaks and you know there's they all have their own individual characteristics but they all have that basic shape to their body and and to their head so for this one we've got an owl which has a big you know kind of a wide body and a wide head so it's still going to be an egg in a circle so we're going to start with the egg so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to come about halfway into my canvas from left to right oh i can't forget to tell you as i'm touching my canvas just realizing you want your canvas dry before the next step so before you start penciling because it's going to be really a lot easier to put a pencil mark on your paint if it's dry so you can either you know take a little bit longer of a break or you could sit here and blow on it but that might take it a little a little while or you can you know just take a blow dryer to it and blow dry it so whatever way you got to do it maybe yours is already dry but if it's not you'll want to dry it so i'm going to come over about halfway into the middle of my canvas and then i'm going to come down about halfway um from in the vertical way so then i'm going to make myself a little bit of a mark i'm going to come up from that maybe about three or four inches and make myself another mark and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to come straight down from here to about i would say maybe a little bit less than a quarter way up my canvas and come over to around here this is going to be the top of my head the top of my body or my egg and this is going to be the tip where the the the pointy part of the egg goes so i'm going to give you a couple more markers so that way we have kind of a good gauge as to how wide we want this so i'm going to come down from this one maybe about an inch and a half or so and over to the right i'm going to make myself another little marker and i'm going to come directly to the left of this one and come somewhere around this vicinity make myself another mark from here i can go up almost about halfway between here and here right about here a little bit shy of halfway and come out to the right about the same distance as here maybe a touch further and then directly across to the left and i'm going to make myself another mark it's about it might almost be directly above this one and it's across from that one so now we've got a couple of markers that we're just going to kind of connect the dots so i'm going to make these four into an egg so i'm going to start this like this my pointy part being down here my widest part is typically where like the shoulders or the belly kind of area is so i'm going to do something like this and then something like this and again it doesn't have to be perfect we will kind of reshape our egg as we go through the painting process but this gets the the shape started for us and you can see how i'm just kind of manipulating it a little bit make sure it's what i want it to be so something like that now i'm going to do my circle i know that i wanted to come up this high and be this wide so i can really and the owl's head is really kind of stocky kind of so i'm gonna do a pretty wide top to it and my circle will most likely overlap this particular egg shape which is totally fine and it doesn't have to be a perfect circle so don't don't feel the pressure to make it into a perfect circle this is just giving us a little bit of a guide as to where we want it placed so i've done my egg and i've got my circle now i've got to kind of connect that neck so it doesn't look like it's a bobble head so what i'm really going to do on this left hand side is i'm really just going to kind of bring it almost straight down to meet the edge of the body and i'm going to do the same thing on the right hand side i want the cheek to be a little bit further out so i'm going to bring it in just a little bit something like that and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a couple of ears so this particular owl that we're doing it's resembling what's called a screech owl and i guess sometimes they can be called long eared owls or that's a a type of them um i hope i'm getting that right i think i i think i'm pretty close as to the description of it um so what i'm gonna do they've got pretty long ears they're almost like kind of cat ears to me so i'm going to leave maybe about an inch to an inch and a half vacant in the middle of the head and then i'm just going to bring this kind of up and make myself a little bit of a triangle type shape that's a little bit you know a little bit wider into there and both sides don't have to be exactly alike it's almost better if they're a little bit different from one another so this one maybe i'll bring a little bit you know more towards the side and maybe this one's a little bit more angled maybe this one's a little bit more tipped or something like that and that's all we're going to do for the outline of our um owl we are going to use our pencil for the next step so just take a little bit of a break and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're drawing an outline for our main branches so i've got my owl kind of like sitting on one but there's one behind it so and they're birch tree um branches so they're nice and long and they're gonna they're gonna look great against our owl so i'm gonna just kind of i'm gonna have two one big ones going to come behind it and then one like a little skinnier one is going to come in front of it so i'm just going to make myself a couple of markers on the right hand side because i want them to kind of converge into one mass over on the right hand side so i'm going to come up maybe about a quarter the way up my canvas on the right hand side make myself a little bit of a mark down at the bottom of my canvas i'm going to come in maybe about an inch inch and a half make myself a little bit of a mark i'm going to on the top left hand side of my canvas i'm going to come down maybe about two or three inches make myself a mark then i've got woodpeckers i've got flies i live in the woods just for the record um i'm going to make another mark about maybe halfway up the head over here on the left-hand side then i'm going to come maybe about you know somewhere in through here over on the left-hand side and then maybe another inch down so these are going to be my big branch and my little branch and they're going to converge over to here so here we go i'm going to and don't make them super straight you want them to have a little bit of a wobble here so i'm going to have this one coming down in through here maybe hitting about that part of the head then maybe this one comes in something like this they got to come out onto the other side and make it look like they belong to each other so you can just kind of make an invisible line to do somewhere around here and then just kind of make yourself some kind of wobbly line that meets that i'm going to do the same thing here maybe come i don't know somewhere around here and then make myself a little bit i'm just going to make this one a little bit like that i'm going to make this one converge into it so this is going to go in front of my um owl so i'm going to go maybe something like this something like this and you can see i'm just kind of making these little bumps i think i'm gonna get this to meet in through there and then maybe this goes over in like that and then this is going to come somewhere around here and again your branch can be different than mine i don't think there's two branches exactly alike in this world so you have fun with however you want to create yours and then we're going to be switching to our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your branches in place you can put your pencil down take a little bit of a break and grab your medium brush and get ready for the next step or your is it your medium brush we only have small and large so let's go for our our small brush for the next step all right so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm mixing myself a dirty gray color which is going to be the base coat for our um for our big branches so i'm using my small brush to mix you could certainly use your palette knife if you wanted to but i'm just going to use my small brush i'm going to be using some white a little bit of brown and a little bit of black and i'm just taking a section of my white paint and turning it into this dirty gray color and i say dirty because that's where i'm i'm i'm using the brown i want it to be really a natural earthy kind of medium gray this is going to help us with the shadows at the bottom of the um of the branches and stuff like that so once you've got this uh dirty kind of gray paint we're going to be that's this step the next step is going to be done with the knife so you can put your brush away take out your knife and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the base coat on our branches we're going to be using that custom gray that you use or that you created as well as brown so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my palette knife i want to be able to see the difference between these two branches here so i'm starting with brown on my palette knife and i'm just kind of creating a little bit of a separation type kind of edge in through here at when you apply the paint with your palette knife for this particular step you can almost kind of scrape it on you don't need to do anything fancy with it we're really just kind of getting a base coat on here so now i'm going to pick up some of my gray without washing my knife and really what i'm doing is again i'm just going to kind of apply the paint and you can almost just drag it or scrape it onto that particular branch i want to get it all the way up to my owl so i'm going to make sure that i get it right up to the owl and i want to kind of hide my my pencil marks for the edge of the um of the branch but if you don't hide them 100 don't worry because we have a a much more detail oriented step that will be coming um in a little while so don't don't worry if it's not perfect at this point so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to get the paint all colored in on both of these main branches and again i'm just kind of dragging the paint i'm applying it with my tool and then i'm just kind of almost laying my my tool down on the canvas and just pulling that paint so it really spreads nicely um and you can get a nice even coat throughout it and because i didn't wash my brush i do have some of those browns kind of speckly kind of marks throughout it which is great as well because the more colors in a branch the better and then i'm going to go ahead this one's going to be in front of my um owl so i'm going to make sure that i lay the paint going in front of that particular section of the owl so i'm going to reload a little bit more gray and if you didn't mix enough gray don't worry about it just you can kind of mix on the fly or you can um utilize just use brown or you know um you can use a little bit of black and white on your on your tulle at the same time and that's going to add some gray but we'll be adding like i said more texture and details to it later so again if you don't get it perfect in this particular step don't worry about it i gotta kind of finagle the way that i'm gonna hold this with my easel in the way and then putting a little bit more of the gray if you have the double angled palette in life like i do if you need to utilize that shorter um side of the angle just to get some of these um weirder spots or more awkward spots go right ahead and do so and then i've got just a little bit more to go here i want to make sure that i get it all the way to my pencil mark and then we are going to be using this same tool for the next step so once you've got your first layer of your beautiful birch tree branches on here you can put your not put it away you're going to actually just wash it and dry it and just one last little section and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the first layer of our owl we're going to be using our knife and we're going to be using brown and black so i'm i'm going to be leaving the basic shape that we have here but i do want to add a little bit of a tail feather down at the bottom so i'm going to add a little bit of brown and black onto my knife to just kind of get i've got this the pointy area but i also want to kind of have a couple of feathers that come a little bit further down than that pointy part so i'm just really kind of pulling down a couple of additional pieces down in through here and then what i'm going to do with the brown and black is similar to what i did for the branches i'm not concerned about getting a perfectly even coverage throughout the entire bird i'm really just looking to get a coat on there and i want it to have multiple tones in it so that's why i'm using the brown and the black at the same time so i've got both colors on my um tool and if you bump into your uh branch don't worry about it we will we'll rectify any any bumping that happens so again i've got brown and black on my tool you can almost just kind of lay it on there and then just start scraping away until you've got a nice coverage throughout the entire bird and you're gonna have like i said light spots and dark spots which are gonna really help to make this look nice and realistic and have great dimension to it so i am just kind of finagling the little pools or piles of paint that i that i almost just splotched on there and now i'm just kind of taking my knife and dragging it um or scraping it whatever terminology you'd like to use and i'm going to bring it right up to the edge of my branch make sure that this particular section comes right to the branch and again you don't need to get it perfect just kind of make sure that you've painted the whole canvas and same thing with the ears so i want them to have some some little movement to them which means i don't want them to be really too perfect so that's the beauty of using one of these knives because you can't really control everything that you're doing i'm trying to stay in the lines but if i bump out of them that's that's great it's gonna just make it look a little bit more fluffy and have a little bit more movement to it so i am okay with um not staying in the lines the whole time but i do want to make sure that i get the entire um owl covered and once we get done with this step we are going to be using this same tool for the next step but you you're definitely going to want to wash it and dry it and just got this little tiny ear to go and you can see you know it's it's fun to use these tools you just get to kind of manipulate this paint push it around you're going to have these you know because i'm using two colors i've got this beautiful um first layer that we're going to get to work with and have it really benefit us as we're adding the different details onto the bird and then that's all i'm doing for that step so you can wash this tool and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are painting our leaves on our autumn birch tree so i'm going to be using my palette knife i'm going to be using white yellow and brown um and as you're doing this just have fun we're using a knife we're just giving this almost like an abstract uh kind of impressionistic type of look to it um so i'm i'm really not terribly concerned about everything being super perfect you're not to get it super perfect with a knife this is just meant to give you the impression and the um you know kind of a loose interpretation of these autumn leaves so i'm going to be starting with a whole bunch of yellow on my knife i'm going to strategically place the yellow and then i'll start adding the white and then i'll come in with some brown i want this to almost look like we're looking up at the owl from the ground so almost like we're seeing underneath the tree so i'm going to have some darker ones down here and some real bright ones up at the top but first again i'm going to just start with some yellow and i'm just going to kind of strategically put some clumps of yellow i will be um blending them in a little bit uh in a little bit but i want to just kind of get them on into the places that i want them first and then i will get them to do a little bit more fancier stuff once i've got them once i've got my marks on here so again i'm just kind of taking yellow i want to make sure that it hits the bird in some parts i don't want it to look like i'm just taking paint and working around everything i want it to all look like it kind of belongs together so just make sure that you do put color right up to the bird even if you bump into it or you bump into your branches don't worry about it just kind of get that paint on there and it doesn't have to connect to anything right now i've got a little bit in through here i'm going to put a couple of marks up and through here make sure that i actually touch that branch and we'll be putting other branches on where you'll be able to um make them look like they're intermingled with the leaves but i'm just going to kind of put some yellows yellow marks in through here i will put more um paint in a moment here but now that i've got that now i'm going to pick up a little bit of brown so i didn't wash my tulle i want these colors to kind of look like they belong together and i'm going to have a little bit of brown down there maybe a little bit in through here maybe a little bit in through here and again i'm just strategically placing these colors right now um i will get them to merge together and look like they all belong in just a minute here but right now just kind of having fun placing some some of these colors in through here now what i'm going to do is i feel like my tool is a little overloaded so i'm just going to wipe it on my paper towel and i'm going to pick up white paint and now i'm going to add a bunch of um almost thicker marks for the white and in a minute i will get them all again to look like they belong together but right now i'm just kind of almost polka dotting it wherever i want there to be you know maybe a cluster of leaves so i want a whole bunch into here i'm going to start to overlap my color sections in a moment and i don't want to cover the entire canvas i want some of that sky to peek through and show its beautiful brilliant blue that we put on there but right now um just kind of getting laying on my paint so i've got some good colors where i want them to be and then in a second once i've got my colors where they want to be now i get to play so all my colors are kind of laid in now i'm just going to kind of take my my tool and just really tap it maybe at times i will almost wiggle it you have fun with it um getting these colors to just intermingle with one another and again think of this as like an abstract interpretation representational kind of play on these autumn leaves that are brilliant and they can have this beautiful you know light color or vibrant color you just have fun you can see i've got little tiny vibrant marks i've got more subtle where i'm almost mixing not necessarily mixing mixing but getting the colors to kind of talk to one another where i've got these colors overlapping and i think i want this to be brought up just a little bit more here as if it's all um almost encapsulating our beautiful owl here and if you want to add more i just added a little bit more white to to my tool because i want this to be a little bit more um almost a muted i guess a little bit more and you know you can have clusters of colors here and there you don't have to have all you know one color in one particular area and again i'm just kind of tapping my my tool i wanted to make sure that it looks like there's some that are behind the branches and that i've got some good um different shapes and different directions of these particular leaves and i'm just having a whole bunch of fun right now it might end up looking like little flowers or little specks of different color leaves you just you know watch what it's doing and if you want more vibrancy or more lightness you go ahead and you create that within the painting and once you've got this step all nice and accomplished we're going to use let's see what are we going to use for the next step we are going to be using our small brush for the next step so once you've got your leaves all perfectly placed with your palette knife you can put the knife away take out your little small 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 first kind of detail step of the face which is we're going to put the forehead kind of in place and where the eyes are going to be in the big round um circles around the eyes so i'm going to use my small brush and what i'm going to do is i'm going to take that gray paint that i made for the trees and i'm just going to make it a little bit darker i'm going to add a touch of black into it this is just going to allow me to almost make guidelines on the face you could certainly use black you could use a little bit of brown you just want it darker than what you had for the trees but yet lighter than the actual owl itself so i've got mine somewhere in this vicinity so what i'm going to do is i'm going to have you make a couple of different um lines so to speak we're gonna put the forehead on first so if you can kind of imagine your original circle somewhere in through here your nose kind of has to go or your beak almost dead center so somewhere about there but it has this forehead so i'm going to put the forehead on first and then everything else will kind of work its way around that so my forehead is going to kind of come from the middle of my ears and it's going to almost come right down into the center of my face so i'm really just going to kind of i need it a little lighter so you can see it i thought my gray was going to be light enough but it's not so i start a little bit in the the center of that ear and then i'm just going to kind of come down into the center of the face and then i'm going to do the same thing over on the left hand side and again it doesn't have to be a perfect line it's almost better if it's not so don't worry about it being a super perfect line so something like this in through there and then i'm going to make myself a area where my beak is going to go so i'm just really going to make a almost a little curved kind of line something like that then i'm going to in essence outline where the eyes are going to go so the eyes are going to be in in this vicinity right around where the top of your beak is and then about halfway up that that line i'm just going to make myself a circle that part in there is going to be where the eye is so we're in essence putting a lighter area around the eye right now something like that and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to do another line close to the edge of my um head and it's going to come down something like this and i'm going to take this and i'm going to color this whole section in with the light with that that gray so this is going to in essence give it that um the structure for the face so we've got this lighter gray something like this and then i'm going to do the same thing on the other side so i'm staying a little bit away from the beak so that way i have um i know where the beak is going to go but this can come down a little bit farther or a little bit lower than the beak and it's gonna come you know somewhere up in the near the ears where it goes up to and it comes right close to the edge of the head something like this and again it doesn't have to be perfectly round this is just giving us a good um place where we're going to be able to add the the other details later and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to add some white to my brush and i'm going to do the first layer in the center of the eye so you can if it's overloaded just wipe it on your paper towel we're in essence giving our eyes the primer coat so what i'm going to do is i'm going to leave a little area between this gray and the the lighter color that i'm doing right now and i'm just going to color this in it's going to look really googly right now but you'll thank me later for this nice bright white that will be underneath our colored part of the eye because it'll really enhance the vibrancy of the color that you put on the eye later so i'm going to do that just a nice thin coat of it and then what i'm going to do is get ready for the next step that's all we're doing on the head so we're going to use the small brush so you can just get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are going to be outlining our starting our wing i'm going to use my small brush and the colors that i'm going to use is that gray paint it could be the lighter one in the dark or one it doesn't matter and brown so i'm going to pick up a little bit of both in brown and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to start maybe about an inch to an inch and a half below my beak and a little bit off to the right and what i'm going to end up doing is i'm making myself a line that is going to come down like this and kind of scoop in and it's going to in essence connect to back here so i would come down you know this by the edge of your the left edge maybe an inch or so in through here and again it doesn't have to be perfect i'm just kind of giving you a guideline as to where i'm starting so i'm starting in through here i'm going to come a little bit to the left like this and then i'm going to kind of scoop it in a little bit like this and then make sure that it meets down here and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to do another one of those lines pretty close to it to the left so i'm going to start something like this but again i don't want it to be super duper perfect so and i don't need it to be exactly like that one so maybe this one goes like this and maybe this one meets this one right in through here so we're just giving the illusion of these layers of um it's got one main wing but it's got layers of feathers throughout it so that's how i'm gonna start that and i think i'm gonna do one more of these we'll put this one back into this vicinity so this is just going to help us with the layers of the of the wings of the the feathers and then we are going to be using our let's see what we're going to do for the next step oh i'm looking at it i'm going oh my god he totally looks like an alien right now so just trust me when i when i when i tell you he will definitely look like a really cool owl in a little bit but right now he looks a little like an alien so we're going to use our palette knife for the next step so when you get done with you know this alien detail you can just get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are adding the highlight and shadow and kind of part of the bark to our big branches and through here so i am going to be using my knife i'm gonna be using white black brown and probably my gray that i had and again it could be kind of either of the gray so i want this to really look like a nice sunshiny day so i'm going to be doing a lot of white on the top of this branch maybe a little bit here this might be in the shadows because of some of the leaves and stuff but definitely a lot up here and a lot at the top of this branch in through here and again if you run into wet paint i'm noticing i've got some wet yellow in my leaves don't worry about it just paint it through you can you know if something happens just let it dry and you can paint another layer on it so i am going to be taking my knife and i'm going to be kind of dabbing it up at the top of my i think i have a little bit too much on there at the top of this branch in through here i'm going to go ahead and do that over on this side as well so i'm just taking that white paint i'm kind of dabbing it on here i want to do the same thing for this branch here and because we're using the knife the and we're using pretty thick paint as we go through this process it takes a few minutes to dry that's why it's you know the process of just laying the paint on there and going and finishing laying the paint on there and then working through it it works out because the paint stays wet for you so once you've got that paint kind of in the areas that you want it to be then what you can do is i'm going to be kind of pulling it down into the tree but i'm going to be you i'm going to be using kind of an arcing motion because i want to give the viewer the information that this is a round tree so as i'm doing this i'm going to be kind of pulling it like this and you can certainly add additional colors to it so if you're if you're going about it and you're like oh well that's kind of just too dark for me well i'm going to be bringing the shadow up in the opposite direction in a minute so but if you're you know nervous that it's taking away too much of the of the nice gray color you can certainly add some of your gray back into it right now but well give me a minute and i will bring the um we'll bring the darker color back up into it so again i'm just kind of taking it and pulling it in this almost um kind of as an arcing motion as i'm coming down that the tree now i'm picking up some of my gray and brown and i'm not gonna wash my my tool and i'm going to bring that at the bottom of the that particular part of the tree and when i bring it up that's when you're going to see those colors kind of merge together you want to make sure that you got right up next to your your owl so i'm going to sit here and play with it for a second and i just continue this process till i have the whole tree done and you might want to go further up into it but you can see the view it's almost like a like marbling or you know it gives it this great natural textured look to it i'm making sure that i've hidden all of my pencil marks i'm seeing a couple of them peeking through right now and then i'm going to do that to the rest of the branches so i'm picking up some of my original grays and then i'm going to pick up some of my brown and i'm going to go down the bottom of here you could use a little bit of black too if you wanted this to look a really shadowed you could pick up a tiny bit of black i wouldn't go crazy with the black because you're going to have the birch marks on in a little bit and those are definitely going to um want to be black so i wouldn't go too too crazy with the darkness but you might find that you want a little bit and again i'm just kind of getting these these darker colors on here and then i'll just start pulling them up into my lighter area and it just magically merges together and makes it look super natural oh supernatural supernatural yeah not like supernatural like out of this world but super natural like nature just so i can clarify that statement um and then we are going to be using this same tool for the next step so once you've got this beautiful layer of your birch trees all nice and ah this looks great i love it when when it it works out as i had it planned in my in my little painterly head so we are going to use this same tool for the next step 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 painting our body feathers so this is going to be all the feathers from like the neck down i'm going to be using my knife which i didn't clean as much as i probably should have i'm going to be using white is going to be my dominant color but i'm also going to be using brown yellow orange to give it a little bit of you know rusty texture um and if i need to i can use some black too so i'm gonna do two distinct different types of um i was gonna call it brush strokes but we'll call it tool strokes on the chesty area i'm going to be kind of tapping it in almost like a curved fashion to there's very short little feathers in this particular area and then on the wing i'm going to be using more of like a little bit of that dragging type motion i'm not going to be able to get or need as much detail on the feathers for the wing as i will for that chest so i wanted to also have a lot of dimension to it so i'm gonna have it really light over on that right hand side so i'm gonna start with some white paint on my tool and what i'm going to be doing is i'm going to be kind of getting in motion my the order of these um of these feathers and i want to keep this area in through here nice and dark so i might actually come in with some black in this area here so it looks like it is shadowed underneath that um particular wing so with this white i'm just going to kind of keep reloading my tool but i'm not using a ton of paint just so i can kind of just tap it in in that direction that i really want these to appear i'm going to put i'm just keep reloading my my tool with white paint i really want it pretty heavy along this edge like i was saying i want to have it really represented as a um a nice bright area in through on this front or the right side of it so i am continuing to just kind of tap in these really bright white um little feathers and then once i've got a good direction and again you're going to have spots that are lighter than others don't um don't labor over it just kind of let happen what's going to happen i've got those in through there i'm going to pick up some brown paint i did not wash my tulle and i'm going to continue to add more in the same kind of direction that arcing kind of tapping direction i'm going to do that with all the colors i i've still got some brown i just picked up a little bit more brown and i'm going to start you'll start to see me kind of overlapping some of these but i'm not pulling i'm not dragging i'm literally just tapping so this way it's giving it that um that look that these particular feathers have i'm picking up a little bit of yellow now to get a little bit of that yellow in through there once i've got all of these colors on here i'm going to go back to the white to make sure that i've got everything overlapped so it looks nice and realistic so i'm going to put a touch of orange and if ever you feel like you need to wash your your tool or wipe it off on your towel feel free to do so so just a teeny bit of the orange the orange can really get away from you so if you um i'm gonna get it to blend a little bit more in a second but i just wanted a little on there i'm actually picking up a touch of black because i want this to really be nice and dark in through here so i'm gonna gonna make sure i've got some nice deep darkness in through underneath this this little wing in through here and then while i've got the black on my on my tool i'm going to just tap it into the neighboring um little feathers so that way that it looks like it's just transitioning and it's it's going um like gradually into the shadow and then i'm gonna just keep manipulating it as much as i want i just picked up some more brown to get this just make sure it's exactly as i want it to be that orange is a little bit too bright so i am just kind of um getting it to dull down a little bit i am going back a little bit brown and black just to make sure that i've got as much as i want in through here this is looking pretty good for me and then as i go into the um this wing over here really what i'm going to do i'm going to be using my shorter side of my tool and i want some of the lightness on the edge of this particular wing so it almost looks three-dimensional so i'm picking up a little bit of the white and maybe a little bit of brown and now i'm dragging it a little bit into that section and this again is just kind of giving you a little bit of a of a visual effect that um this is the edge of the wing and maybe there's some layers of feathers in through here and i'm going to do the same thing over on this side so i'm really just taking a little bit of that lighter color and you know you can drag it with you know whatever way looks correct to you but these these wings or the the feathers on the wings they are going to kind of overlap one another and you can kind of keep manipulating it and making it look like there are shadows in between them if you want a little bit more shadow you can add a touch more black back to your tool i think i want those edges to be a little bit lighter just so it looks like there's a little bit of a highlight on it so added a touch more white into my brush my brush my tool and i'm just adding these little pops of i'm going to call them layers of feathers yeah that looks pretty good give myself a little bit of a lightness over here on the edge and then i'm just going to put a touchdown in the the tail part because we can't forget about that little tail part and this again is just some strategic little little streaks just to give the viewer the information that this in fact is you know part of the part of the bird it's got a couple of little bright spots in through here i just want there to be a little bit more texture down there so again brown black white and just a little bit of streaking just to give it a visual effect that these are in fact some little wing you know the tail feather down here you want some shadow underneath it so just make sure it's nice and dark where it hits the branch and then we are going to be switching to our tiny brush for the small brush for the next step so once you've got these body feathers on here you can put this tool away and you can 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 finishing our eyes so how i'm going to do this i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to be using white yellow orange brown and black so the best tip that i can give you for this is don't use a lot of paint how i'm going to do this is i'm going to do in essence kind of like a gradient i'm going to have it light at the bottom and make it darker as it goes towards the top and then i'll do a little bit of details around it and then come back and put a eye the pupil in so i'm going to start with a little bit of yellow and white on my brush at the same time i'm going to have it lighter at the bottom and darker as it goes towards the top so i've got yellow and white on my brush right now i'm going to go ahead and put it on both sides so yellow and white and now i'm going to pick up a touch of orange and put that on both sides and get it to blend in with the with the yellow and you'll see it's going to go darker and darker as it goes up that eye and again don't use a lot of paint because what you can do is you can manipulate it and get it to blend much better if you don't have a lot of paint on your brush um and now i'm gonna pick up a tiny bit of brown paint as i go up towards the top of that eye just to get it to kind of almost fade into the darkness of what's going to be that eye or the forehead kind of part you could even use a tiny bit of black as you get up towards this top i just put a touch of black on my brush just to get it to blend a little bit in with that darkness now what i'm going to do is i'm going to i wiped my brush off on my paper towel i'm going to pick up a touch of black and i'm going to make sure the outside edge of my eyeball is nice and black so i'm just going to really do a nice clean outline around the edge of my of my eyeball something like this and you can get it to kind of just like fade into um the the feathers next to it but this gets you to have a nice clean edge around them and then i'm going to pop in a little pupil so i'm going to get my i'm going to have my pupil near the top of the eye so just put a little bit more black on my on my brush so somewhere in through here and again i'm not using a ton of paint because when i do these kind of steps i like them to kind of dry on the fly so i can continue to add colors to them because i know that once i get this pupil on i'm going to probably want to do a little bit more to the actual colored part of the eye so i just want to make sure that i have it in a in a way that i can control it and the only way that i'm going to be able to control it is if i don't use a lot of paint and it dries nice and quickly for me so now that i've got my pupils on there now i'm going to just kind of sit and slowly kind of get manipulate my paint so it all really works together i'm going to wash and dry my little brush and i think i'm going to put actually another layer on my colored part because i really want it to pop i wanted to have a lot of information and and dimension to it so i just put a little bit more yellow and white on my brush to get this bottom part really nice and bright and you can certainly do the same for yours you you know if it if you didn't get it as vibrant as you wanted on the first layer just kind of keep tweaking it add as many layers as you need to to get it to be as vibrant as you want it to be and again my trick for getting a lot of dimension in these eyes is i really want it to be nice and dark up at the top so i'm gonna i just wiped my brush off i'm picking up some more of that brown and orange to get this to really read as it's you know almost in the shadows up at the top of that eye and you can certainly do the same just kind of keep playing with it put as many layers on there as you need to maybe it gets a little bit darker in these corners and through here but again you want that brightest part to be down at the bottom of the of the eye and then we're going to use the same brush for the next step so once you've got your eyes on here all nice and in the shadow up at the top and bright at the bottom you can wash and dry this little brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are doing the feathers on um around the eyes and like the sides of the head so i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to be using brown black orange yellow and white and i'm going to be doing a dotting type technique so i'm going to have the feathers uh on the sides of the head inter here kind of a grayish color and then in through here they're going to be more of like a rusty um rich kind of color almost like the color of the eyes we are going to be in a little bit putting tiny little feathers around the beak so don't worry about those or really just kind of getting the base coat in through here so i'm going to start with brown because it's really safe to start with brown and i'm just going to start kind of dotting in through this gray kind of area and same thing over on this right hand side i've got myself some brown i'm going to dip into a little bit of my gray color to um get myself some of this textured little fluffy fur fur is it fur or is it hair or is it feathers hmm i don't know i'm i'm gonna go with i'm gonna go with feathers but is it feathers on the head i don't know i don't know there goes my really intelligent um knowledge of owls i know it's a screech owl that's about the best i got for you here i'm going to have it a little bit lighter towards the eyes so i'm using more orange yellow and white as i go towards those eyes and again i'm just kind of using a dotting type technique i really just want this to look soft um and like there's this um almost like delicate short little fluffy stuff around the eyes i wanted to really read as there's you know some some dimension here i know i need to have almost like a black outline around um that gray area that will be a real identifying mark for these kind of owls so i'm making sure that i don't lose that darkness right around the lighter area that the eye sits in so i've added a little bit of black to my brush just to make sure that i don't lose that i'm also going to be putting a little bit of a shadow underneath that forehead so this is the black also that is just kind of um being utilized to add a little bit of shadow underneath that forehead so that adds a lot of dimension to it i'm also going to make sure that i have black around where my beak is going to go so this is going to just help to finish this this face but i'm just making sure that i've got black all around this eyeball um fur feather type area and i'm going to make sure that i get this light enough so i'm adding some more orange yellow and a tiny bit of white and again if it goes too bright on you just let it dry you can come back with the darker colors you can come back with brown you can come back with black you can come back you know with white if it's not light enough for you so just know that you can certainly continue to um bend this in in the vibrancy or the subtleness that you want sometimes using yellow and brown is going to look a little green so if that happens just you know utilize more of your orange with it and then just kind of keep keep playing with it until you've got some good dimension again i'm going a little bit lighter around especially this right eye here just so it adds some some information about the sun and where the the light source is coming from so maybe a little bit in through there and then just making sure that i've got enough of this color and i do also know that it's going to turn a little bit darker as it dries and we've got a whole bunch of other little feathers and stuff that we're going to be putting around the beak and at the bottom of the face so again if it's not perfect at this step don't worry about it we've got plenty of time to you know tweak it a little bit and we are going to be utilizing this same brush for the next step so once you've got this face feather area all nice and accomplished you can a wash and dry this small brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we are finishing our beak so i'm going to be using my small brush i'll be using black and white paint but i'll probably also use a little brown and a little orange uh but i'll let you know as i call them or as i use them the i'm going to be painting the beak but i'm also going to be painting the little tiny feathers that surround the beak to they almost like encapsulate it so i'm going to be using a little bit of black paint to start and i want to make sure that i have my area where the beak is really nice and identified so i wanted to start about as high as the bottom of my eyeballs are so i'm going to take a little bit of black paint and almost kind of just outline where i want that beak to go and it doesn't have to be a super clean outline so i'm going to just mess it up a little bit so it doesn't look or so it does look natural and then i'm going to just make sure that i have exactly where i want the darkness to go so i'm utilizing my black as my shadow kind of color and making sure that it naturally kind of goes into the areas next to it now i already have my gray in there for my color of my beak what i'm going to do is i'm going to just put a tiny bit of white paint on my brush and i'm going to give myself a little bit of a highlight so this is going to be a little bit of a crooked line it doesn't have to be super perfect that just really gives us the information that the beak is a little curved and if you needed to you could certainly bring back any of your original gray if you need to reshape it or not that's totally up to you then i'm going to be utilizing a tiny bit of white paint um to start these little uh feathers around the the beak and really what i'm doing is i'm just putting these teeny tiny little feathers they almost come some of them come towards the beak some of them go away from it they're really kind of just surround around where the eye is they come down from this little forehead piece so i'm i'm really just utilizing the tiny tip of this brush to pull in i don't know what these little feathers purpose is i don't know if they're just part of the face or if they protect the beak in any real way but um you can utilize i'm utilizing mostly white um but if you need to you can certainly bring back some brown if you you know if you went too heavy on it or you can bring back some of the black you know so definitely you know tweak it tweak it that's going to be my word um make it as dimensional as you want i like to have a little bit of shadow in the corners of those eyes too so that i want to make sure that i don't miss out on that piece so i just kind of keep adding little bits and pieces of these colors i think i'm going to touch a teeny tiny bit into my orange we'll do the forehead in a minute and it's going to be pretty similar to this but right now i'm just trying to get those little pieces around that beak and then we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got well that's i've already started my forehead once you've got your beak and all these little cool pieces of feathers surrounding it you can wash and dry this little brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do now is we're just finishing that the rest of the head so it's going to be the forehead and the ears i'm using my small brush i'm going to be using brown white maybe a little black maybe a little yellow but something that's going to look complementary so i'm going to be using i'm starting with brown and i'm going to be using that dotting technique i don't want this to be um as orange or as rich of a color as these two areas i want it to be more dull like um the body itself but i want it to look nice and natural so i want there to be a little bit of a highlight up at the top so i'm going to add a little bit of white to my brush as i'm doing that and again i'm just kind of doing this dotting type technique on this forehead i have a interesting leaf right on top of my my owl's head so i'm going to take care of that now and just kind of get a little bit more paint over my leaf and then as i go into the ears really what i'm going to do is i just want a little fluffiness to them i'll fix i'll finish my forehead in a minute here but i'm going to be adding um almost you can do like the dots on on the exterior or the um this the side closest to the top of the head i'm going to be doing my little dots and i'm not going crazy i just want there to be some kind of texture to it and then when i go to the what would be the inside of the owl's ears that's what i'm going to kind of be flicking my brush out they have these long pieces of um i don't know if they're hair or fun i've imagined some kind of fur for hair stuff coming out of the inside of their ears um but again go for texture that's really what i'm i'm looking to do uh i want there to be a little bit of lightness so you can see the transition from the forehead into the ear so that's where i'm going to add a little bit more lightness to my brush so i've got these you know lighter almost contour type motion to it i'm going to go ahead and work on my other my other ear in through here and maybe put a little bit of a lighter edge in through here so you can see the the edge of the ear you could do the same thing over on this side if you wanted to and then as i work my way towards the exterior i'm going to be utilizing maybe a little bit more brown and getting these little tiny pieces to just kind of flick out of the ear again i'm not quite sure what these are i'm sure there's something to protect the inside of the ear making sure that i still have a nice shadow underneath that forehead and now i'm going to be i think i'll use a tiny bit of maybe yellow and or orange just to get this nice and vibrant and white in through this forehead piece because i really want this to read as three-dimensional in through here so i'm adding more of this lightness so it's you know like he's got this real powerful forehead and he's you know it's protecting his his eyes and stuff and again i'm just i'm just adding little little pieces of feathers um little streaks is how i'm is how i'm doing it um but i want there to look it to look dimensional so i i don't want it to be a solid color so i just picked up a little bit of black just to make sure that i've got those dimensional elements in through there and now i just picked up a little bit of white and you can see i'm just kind of adding these little these little dimensional streaks in through here to tell the the story of the the shape of the head it i think i need a little bit darker in through maybe here just to or next to the ear i feel like i've lost a little bit of shape because it's all one color so i'm just kind of tweaking it here make sure i've got enough in that ear and then yeah that's looking pretty good i'm i'm feeling it now maybe just a little bit more lightness in through here to give this some more dimension maybe a little bit of the year and i i'm telling you this is one of those steps i could sit here and fiddle with it and fiddle with it and fiddle with it um so depending on how much you want to fiddle with yours it's totally up to you um but i am going to be um using my knife for the next step so once once you've got your your head perfectly feathered up you can take this small brush and put it away take out your knife and you can get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are painting our neck feathers so i'm going to be using my palette knife and i'm going to be using all the colors that i use on yellow so i'm going to it's going to be mostly white and brown probably but i'll also use a little orange and yellow and if i need to i'll use a little black too so the the necks of the owls are they can really turn it turn their head around a lot so you can't really see their neck all too well so it's really um encapsulated by all of these layers of feathers so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to do a similar technique to what i did on the chest and through here and i'm gonna tell myself that all of the feathers kind of are coming out of this as like the central area so i'll have it kind of curving like this i'll have it almost going over the bottom of the face a little bit but it's definitely gonna have these curves to it and then maybe come down into here a little bit so i'll show you how i'm going to do this i'm going to start with just white paint and similar to what i did on the chest i'm going to give myself kind of like a little bit of a road map so i'm just going to sit here and i'm going to kind of tap my tool in the direction where i want these um feathers to appear that they're coming out of so something like this and if you go over your your beak or over something that you didn't plan to it's all right you can you can certainly um modify it in a in a you know in a little correction step if you want to the um again the beauty of these knives is the unpredictability of them so whatever happens just roll with it don't get nervous don't don't lose sight of your of your mission here and i'm just going to kind of keep continuing with my white until i feel like i've got a good assembly which i feel like i'm getting there i've got it going in the directions that i want it to now i'm going to start picking up some of my brown i didn't wash my tulle and i'm going to just start kind of tapping it again in in a similar direction and you'll see that it starts to really work together once you've got these um almost layers upon layers but i'm not blending it in with each other i'm just kind of adding brown in addition to in addition to the white and you know again if you run into trouble you can certainly take a break let it dry for a minute i do want to put a touch of the orange in there too not too much but enough to make everything kind of um look like it belongs together so a little bit of the orange is going to kind of work its way in through here which is great now i'm touching my brush my brush my tool a little bit more into the white and you can have you can just layer upon layer i put my tool in the brown but i meant to go into the white so i'm going to go ahead and put as again as many as i want on here i think i'm going to go back i'm going to put some black on my on my tool in a second here because i want to make sure that i keep some dimensional element in it so i feel like i went a little bit too light in that center so i'm going to in a second put a little bit of black back in there which you could certainly do the same too if you run into an area where like i wish i didn't go that light you can just bring back some of the darker colors so if i went too light i can just bring back a little bit of the black and i'm just going to kind of keep finagling it until i feel like i've got it as represented as i want and then we have a couple more little steps to go the next step is going to be with this uh with the palette knife so once you've got these great neck feathers on here yeah they add a lot to the painting once you've got these on here you can wash this tool and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are doing birch marks on our tree branches so i'm going to use my fancy tool here i'm going to be using mostly black but if i do something that i don't like maybe i'll bring back some of the white or gray so i'm using my small end and really i'm just gonna be chaotic with my birch marks that's what happens on these type of trees they really have a mind of their own some of them have really distinct um patterns almost patterns to their um markings but most of them are just really sporadic in how those um black marks are are visible so you can make as many as you want you can make as few as you want i'm really just kind of strategically well not strategically chaotically placing some of the the black into various areas and you can streak it through if you want or you can leave like a nice clean little mark so whatever works for you is totally fine you can have big ones or small ones they can be oddly shaped they don't have to just go in the direction of the actual tree bark itself so again you could have big ones or small ones um just have fun with it let your tool kind of do what it wants and that's going to give you some really natural uh marks to it and then we're going to use this same tool for the next step so you can just kind of i don't know wash it take a break and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing little branches throughout our tree so i'm going to be using my knife i'm going to be using brown is going to be my dominant color but i'll also use white and black as well you can have as many as you want you can have them just little tiny ones here or there you can have them in front of your leaves or behind your leaves i'm just going to be putting a few just to represent where these leaves are coming from they got to be coming from somewhere right so i'm going to start with some some brown on my tool looks like there might be a little bit of black you can have a wider branch if you want to have a branch that's kind of coming in through the middle of your leaves you can have something like that you can have um little tiny ones just kind of coming out the edge if you wanted to you can have as much fun with this as you want you can tap your um your tool like you were doing on the on the feather area i just added a little bit more white to my brush if you want your branches to look like they're going behind then just skip the leaves and have them come out on the other side so have you know as much fun with this as you want again my dominant color is going to be brown but i probably will at some time use a little bit of black definitely a touch of white that's gonna look like there's little highlights on the branches and again you don't have to put a million of them we're really just trying to give the impression to the viewer that these you know leaves are coming from somewhere and then i'm going to just put a couple more in through here you can see i've got a little bit of white on my tool right now make sure that i've got some little highlights i'm going to go over on this side maybe have one coming out of this part of my tree and i'm not terribly concerned about putting birch marks on these little branches i'm i'm considering these to be just little twigs that are you know holding up these beautiful autumn leaves that we've got throughout the um throughout the trees and then i'm gonna maybe come down here i think i'm gonna go brown and black for a couple down in through here as if these are in the shadow and you can see i'm not i'm not doing anything really fancy i'm just kind of making some some lines here and there just to give the illusion that there's some branches that are sticking out here and there and everywhere and if you run through some wet paint as you're doing this great you know just roll with it have some fun with it and then we have one tiny little step left after after you've got all of your branches on here and it's going to be done with your small brush so once you've done this you can get your small brush out and are ready for the next step alright so we are on to the final step which is the final step of any painting so we're going to sign it i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right this one i think i'm going to be signing the bottom left i'm using my small brush i'm using black paint i do my initials you could do your first name or the date or a symbol whatever you want is totally fine by me it's your identifying mark you you make it the way that you want it to be and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a perfectly placed owl and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again [Music] sometime [Music] you

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 65,518

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, lesson, beginner, simple, easy, artist, painter, Michelle the Painter, michellethepainter, sip and paint, class, step by step, tips, learn to, how to, paint, sky, landscape, realistic, peaceful, beautiful, best, yellow, over, autumn, fall, october, november, sun, clouds, fun, sunset, sunrise, top, instructions, harvest, field, black, looking, at, red, head, sitting, fox, woods, camera, staring, peeking, behind, through, fur, long, eyes, branches, maple, orange, animal, portrait, male

Id: vXK88DWnSe8

Length: 79min 57sec (4797 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020