Painting a watercolor toucan was the subject today. Exotic tropical birds are often highly colorful which is very attractive but can pose some problems in paint. Each color needs to be modified as the from turns from the light into the shadow. This means a lot of close observation and a lot of mixing. However, for this reference I decided to simplify the colors a little. There was a lot of pretty bright green and yellow in the reference. I chose to tone down the green and also move the greenish yellow more towards orange. The aim was to have more unified color scheme. I also decided to ditch the jungle of foliage. For another painting this could have been fun to do but I wanted to focus in on the toucan bird and not have anything competing with it.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
First make a plan
The plan for this bird watercolor was to proceed along the same lines as a previous cardinal watercolor painting. I wanted to start by putting down lots of regions of soft edged misty color and not pay too much attention to the edges. As the painting progresses more and more edges are put in until the bird magically appears from the mist. It’s a fun way to paint and I really like the resulting effect. It’s a technique very well suited to bird art and you can end up with an almost abstract painting at the end.
Materials for your Watercolor Toucan
It’s pretty much essential to work on good 100% cotton watercolor paper for this. The paper can take a lot of working and also keeps damp for a fair while. This allows us to work into the paint wet-in-wet and soften edges as we go. It is possible to use cheaper paper but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a lot of experience under your belt. Trust me – I’ve learned this the hard way. My favored paper is Fabriano Artistico 140lb cold press but any cold press 100% cotton paper is fine. Arches can be a good choice for this. It is slightly more absorbent than the Fabriano and so stays damp for longer. This gives us more time to think as we’re painting without that panic that we have to get everything done at top speed.
A couple of good brushes are needed. I use Escoda reserva sizes 12,10 and 8. They point well and hold a lot of water. However a good synthetic (Princeton Aqua Elite, Black Velvet or Escoda Versatil) is fine and there isn’t so much sticker shock.
For paint I use mainly Da Vinci with a sprinkling of Holbein, Winsor and Newton, Daniel Smith and a couple of others. Any artists quality paint is good and some student paint is also fine (Cotman or Lukas Studio work well). My colors are lemon yellow, cadmium orange, vermillion, permanent rose, burnt sienna, cerulean blue, ultramarine and lamp black.
We can work without stress on preliminary sketches
loose watercolor toucan preliminary sketch 1loose watercolor toucan preliminary sketch 2Loose prelinary sketches to see what’s possible
These two sketches were just to get the brushes warmed up and to play with the colors and the shapes. I mostly wanted to see how much detail I could lose but still keep the essence of the bird. It turned out that the chinstrap was a big focal point. A surprise was that keeping the beak too sharp really detracted from the rest so I made a note to be careful about keeping a lot of that beak soft.
Keep the Drawing simple
loose watercolor toucan drawing
As we’re going to be working loosely on this watercolor bird I don’t want too much graphite showing through. So the drawing was kept light and only the most essential lines put in. I lightly outlines the beak, the eye, the rough shape of the body and the legs and feet. For the feet I just drew in the main shape and didn’t bother noodling around drawing individual claws. They’re not the main focus and will just distract the viewer.
First washes – go nuts with those edges
This first bit is lots of fun and is really hard to go wrong here. I took the main colors (mostly lemon yellow for the chest and beak and a mix of ultramarine/burnt sienna for the body) and just sploshed some paint in the rough area they should be. Use a big brush for this – we don’t want little dibby dabby lines at this point.
Paint the yellow areas looselyblend the colors with a damp brush
Once the paint dabs were down I thoroughly cleaned my brush, loaded it up with water and softened all the hard edges of the paint. Don’t be afraid of painting through the edges here. In fact really try and pull that paint through the outline of the bird into the background. Keep loading up with water and soften anything that looks like a hard edge – it should look nothing like a bird at this point!!
Careful of the eye area
The only thing to be careful of is the eye area. We want to keep that area nice and crisp so try and keep dark paint away from that area. If, by chance, you do paint over it by mistake you can probably take a piece of paper towel and lift the paint off while it’s wet.
Slosh in some dark mixes for the body area
Blend thedarks out through the outline.Add some contrasting color into the darks
With my mix of ultramarine and burnt sienna I started putting in marks rough where the body was going to be. Again I pulled that color out through the edges of the bird into the background. Even pull it through the feet – these are fairly dark anyway and we can paint over them later. If you want to splatter some darks inot the wet paint go ahead. It will add some texture and visual interest. Just keep those edges soft! There shouldn’t be a hard line to be seen.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Wait a bit
Now is a good time to take a quick break and let the paper dry a little. It’s probably quite wet from all that sloshing and we need it to be almost dry for the next step.
Now the edges of Your Watercolor Toucan!
This to me is the magical part. We’re going to go in with some thicker paint (ultramarine and burnt sienna) and start putting in some edges. My aim is to put in as few edges as possible but still have it read as a toucan. I’m always surprised how few you really need.
Start to add edges in some areasKeep adding edges so the bird starts to take shape
I start by identifying what I think are the main areas of contrast to put in. The chin-strap around the beak is an obvious one as is the edge of the black feathers next to the yellow chest feathers. But you don’t need to outline the whole thing. Try just putting some paint in a couple of areas (soften the other side) and see how it reads. Our brains will often fill in the gaps. And if you feel it’s too harsh use a clean brush and soften it back again. We can always add hard edges but it’s tough to remove them once they’re down and dry.
More edges – but just enough
The body and face take shape. Keep the eye crisp
I go around the bird adding in edges where I need them. It turned out in this one that it really didn’t need many at all. It can be hard to stop but better to stop too early rather than too late.
Details and Form in your Watercolor Toucan
Add in some detail for the feet and beak
This final bit is where it all comes alive. We can put in the eye (with a little shadow around it), some color and shadow on the beak and some shadow on the yellow chest feathers. A little color and shadow for the feet and we’re pretty much done. This bit looks like the fancy bit but, as with a lot of painting, the main work is done ahead of time. These pieces are just icing and no amount of fiddling at this stage will fix mistakes made earlier.
Stand back and assess
When the details are in then take a breather, stand back and see if the whole thing hangs together. There may be odd bits that stand out too much or don’t stand out enough. But don’t noodle too long. It’s tempting to fiddle for ages but less is definitely more here. It’s so easy to ruin something that’s working with unnecessary detail.
Watercolor Toucan – the Verdict
I’m pretty happy with this toucan watercolor. I like the shapes, there’s just the right amount of definition, and the bird has some dignity to him. It’s very different from my previous work and doesn’t look like a slightly cartoonish illustration.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Watercolor Toucan Video
The full recording is viewable below.
While you’re here
I like to do video demos and classes and if you want to be notified of any upcoming streams please subscribe to my youtube channel or sign up for my mailing list. I also frequently update my shop page with original artwork if you’d like to own a painting for your wall.
A watercolor cardinal bird is a fantastic way to paint loosely and expressively. In fact any bird watercolor lends itself to this technique and is great fun to boot. In this post I will take you through painting this easy watercolor cardinal and I hope you’ll be able to follow the process. If you’re looking for cardinal painting ideas this is a great technique to try.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Draw only the necessary parts
Red cardinal watercolor drawing
Working on 140lb cold press Fabriano Artistico paper (here is my full materials list) I first drew out just the essentials. Some detail in the head and light marks where the wings and breast feathers would be. The feet and perch were just outlined and I was careful not to draw in every claw and wrinkle. In particular in this cardinal watercolor painting I left the belly and the back drawn in very lightly. These are areas that won’t need much definition and we’ll likely leave these loosely defined.
Go nuts and paint through the edges.
Bird art gives us watercolor painters a great opportunity to exploit the sploshiness of watercolor. Whether you’re just painting a study or for fun, or trying to produce an original watercolor painting as a gift it’s a great technique. For the first washes I kept the paint fairly light and made sure I didn’t leave any hard edges. This meant putting down some dabs of paint and then using a clean damp brush I softened those edges and really pulled that paint through the outline of the bird.
First layer loose washesDrop in some different colors
We’re painting a red cardinal and I just adore this color. I mixed my two reds together to get this – some vermillion and some permanent rose. If you don’t have vermillion then another orangey red like cad red light or naphthol red will do. Similarly another pinkish red like quinacridone red can be substituted for permanent rose.
Fight the instinct to keep within the lines
It’s really hard once you have a drawing down to paint through those lines. Try and fight that! Pull that paint out into the background. You should be using fairly light value paint and softening all the edges with water so it will dry back far lighter. In later stages we’ll go back in and define some of those lines but for now you have a lot of leeway. In the end our cardinal watercolor will benefit from this layer as it softens the effect of the edges we will put in next.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
But keep away from the face
The only part of the drawing I keep an eye on is the face. I want the contrast to be nice and crisp in here so I’m careful to not put paint in this area. If it does happen don’t panic! If the paint is still wet a few dabs with a paper towel will lift most of it off.
Put in some face detail
Painting the face – leave some gaps and fill with a damp brushPutting the darks in the face
When doing a bird painting I often leave the face detail to quite late along in the process. For a loose watercolor, however I want to put in some detail quite early. This gives me a chance to assess how much detail I want in the rest of the painting. I want everything to be suggested and soft unless absolutely necessary. If we don’t have some detail to compare to there’s a risk of tightening up everything too much
Some darks to start to define the form
Finishing the face
Now we get to put in some darks on the rest of the bird and define some edges. I want to put in the bare minimum here so I’m not outlining the whole bird. I pick and choose where some contrast is needed and am constantly squinting and standing back to assess each mark. Less is definitely more here! As soon as the form of that bird appears you’ve probably done enough. If you’re experimenting however you can push it as far as you want. In some ways you have to overstep that mark to learn how little you can get away with. Yes, you’ll mess up a painting or two but it’s a great learning experience.
Redefine the body shape
Adjusting the edges to improve the body shape
I wasn’t too happy with the shape of the bird at this point. A cardinal bird has an almost triangular shape to the head so I went back in with some of the darker red and extended the head and shoulder regions. Much better! I also made a slight adjustment to the tail and bottom area so he actually looked like he was perched. Yes we’re doing loose watercolor but it doesn’t mean everything is forgiving. Sometimes those small marks make a difference.
Watercolor Cardinal Final details
Adjusting the details – shadows and formFinal details – adding the tufts!
We’re almost done now. A little more definition went in the head and around the eye. Also a little more shadow under his wing and on the perch. I left the feet pretty loosely defined. I’ve been bitten before on many occasions by putting too much detail on the feet in a bird painting. The feet are almost never the focal point for birds and today is no exception. A final few flourishes on his head with a little splatter for interest and he was done.
The verdict
As always there were a few sticky moments but we pulled through. I almost always enjoy a watercolor cardinal painting. The shapes are so great and the colors wonderful. It had just the right amount of looseness but enough detail in the right areas. Pretty happy! In fact every year I keep meaning to print some Christmas cards from some of my back catalog. Cardinals are perfect for this and, as it’s only February, I might have a fighting chance of doing it before next winter.
If you like this style of painting I have another real-time walkthrough and video of a toucan. Also some more examples of my loose watercolor birds are this kestrel and these bee-eaters.
Watercolor Cardinal Painting Video Recording
I recorded the whole process on my youtube channel and you can also view it below. If you would like to see more demos please subscribe or see all of the videos on the website here. I hope you enjoyed this watercolor bird painting tutorial. If you try it I would love to hear from you.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Today’s class was on watercolor portraits. Portrait painting is probably one of the hardest subjects and when you’re using watercolor there is nowhere to hide your mistakes. Having said that it is enormously rewarding and seeing a face come alive through paint is a magical experience.
A Value Scale is one of the best tools for improving your painting
We were concentrating on values for this lesson and spent the first 30 minutes practicing painting value swatches. An accurate value scale is a necessity for this and the best one I’ve found is this one from Paul Centore. I highly recommend you get one if you’re serious about getting your values right. It’s durable and wipe clean and it’s a step value scale with half values which not many scales have. Even though it’s grayscale you can also use it for assessing color value. Squinting or half closing your eyes will take the color out of a swatch to make it easier to assess value. If you’re really serious about color a Munsell book is the best thing but it’s expensive and you can get a long way with just this. If you want to know more about Munsell see this post. I also have an online tool ChromaMagic to help you see color more accurately.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
The best easy watercolor exercise to get better at mixing values or tones
This is a simple and easy beginner watercolor exercise and of all the watercolor exercises it reaps the most rewards. After only one week my value mixing ability improved 10 fold. Not bad for 10 minutes work a day! Before that it was a mixture of guesswork and luck whether I’d get a value right or not. If you feel your value work needs improvement I highly recommend this. Even a few sessions will have a big effect.
We focus purely on value here. It’s not a technique as such and you don’t have to worry about drawing complex shapes or how you apply the paint. No fancy gradients or washes here – it’s values all the way.
Exercise Steps:
I suggest you start with a mid value 5 and work on that before moving to others. In fact being able to mix a mid value reliably and reproducibly helps you mix all the others.
Draw a 1 inch square box on some practice paper (you don’t need the good watercolor paper for this).
Mix together ultramarine and burnt sienna with a damp brush. Keep the water to a minimum at this point. Only include enough so the paint is fluid but not runny.
Add some water so the paint is about the consistency of light cream. Paint a test dab on your student paper. Wait a few seconds so the paint has time to dry a little (it will lighten as it dries). Then bring in your value scale right next to the test dab and move squares along until you identify the right value.
How close is your value to the value 5 you’re aiming for? If it’s too dark your paint needs a little more water. If it’s too light you need a little less.
Clean your palette and mix again and try another test dab. Repeat until you get it bang on. The first time you do this it will take a few goes but you’ll get a lot faster surprisingly quickly.\
When you feel you have the right value fill in your square box
Repeat with a new box 3 or 4 times.
Another great exercise to improve values is to paint a simple white cube. I describe this on my tutorials page here.
Watercolor Value Scale Exercise
Paint consistency is the key
The key to getting this right is remembering the consistency of the paint on your palette. If you’ve been painting for a while you’ll know that how the paint looks on the palette bears no resemblance to how it will look on the paper. The consistency is pretty much the only thing we can use. When I mix the consistency of a value 5 is of light cream. Not heavy cream (that’s a 4 or a 3), and not milk (that’s a 7), and not water (that’s a 9). When you’ve hit the right consistency try and remember how that paint feels on the palette. Push it around a bit so you get a feel for how it moves.
White paper affects how we perceive value
When you first start to do this you’ll probably be surprised how dark a mid value looks on the paper. As usual we watercolor painters are at a disadvantage here. We work on white paper and pretty much any value you put down looks dark. Try and impress on your memory how that mid value looks next to white paper. This will stop you from having washed out watercolor paintings that are all up the top end of the value scale. (Unless you want to do that of course – but now you can do it intentionally) The paintings and scenes you create will have more contrast and impact and if you work with the full value range from white to black you have more room for the different values to show form.
Practice on values from the rest of the scale
When you’ve mastered the mid value try a few others – a 7 and a 3 are good to have knowledge of. If you can mix those three reliably you can easily modify to get the intermediate values. A little more water (and it can be surprisingly little) to go lighter and a little less (or more pigment) to go darker.
Colors have value too
Munsell Student Color Book
Of course you don’t have to stick to black and white. Colors have value too and you could easily try mixing colors at different values. If you wish to try this I recommend buying a copy of the Munsell student color book. It contains paint chips in a range of hues of different value and chroma. You can use these to mix paint to and exact match. I haven’t found the need to do this too much. Doing the exercise in grayscale also helps you when you move to color – it really sharpens up your perception of what you see in front of you.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Back to the watercolor portrait – identify the value areas
So we’d done some value practice – swatches of values 1,3,5,7, and 9. Time to move onto the portrait. Before even drawing the sketch we did some analysis of the values in the face. I like to print out a reference and draw on it with a pen so I don’t forget what I’ve found. We broke down the face into different value areas. The highest values were on the forehead and the cheek and the front of the nose. The darkest values were in the hair, underneath the brow and under the nose. Other areas were the shadow on the cheek and neck and more subtle values on the temple and the skin around the mouth. There were many other finer values in the details of the facial features and in the hair which we didn’t identify. We wanted to get a broad idea of how the light fell on the form and left these to be dealt with in the actual painting.
Test yourself – guess and check the values
We’re still not painting yet! This may seem like a lot of thinking to do ahead of time and I know we all like to get stuck in and get those brushes moving. However, a little planning goes a long way, and it always results in a better painting. Try it and see!
So for each value area we took a good look and had a guess at the value. This is the most important part. Try not to just use your value scale to measure the values directly. It’s the iterative process of taking a guess and using the value scale to see how close you are. The immediate feedback you get nudges you to get better each time. And you get better incredibly quickly.
After we’d guessed and checked each value area we wrote down the number in each area. The forhead and cheek were around a 9, the cheek and neck shadow were a 4 (surprisingly dark!), the hair was around a 1 and the subtle temple, mouth, and side of the nose areas were around a 6.
Finally some painting
Finally! Well we’ve done most of the hard work now. We practiced mixing the values and we’ve practiced measuring the values. All we need to do now was put the paint on the paper.
First the lightest tones.
Using a size 12 round brush we mixed a gray to the lightest value – 9. Everything else in the painting will be darker than this so we put in a wash over the full face. Even a value 9 looks surprisingly dark on the paper – we were both surprised by this. But we’d done our homework and knew that’s what it should be so down it went.
Next the shadows
We could progress from here to the next lightest value but I prefer to put in the main shadow areas next. Thes)e aren’t the darkest darks. The darkest darks tend to be fairly small regions under the brow and nose and in the corners of the mouth. The main shadow area is the cheek and neck. This we knew was a value 4 so we mixed this up (tested a swatch to check we had the right consistency) and put in a wash over the cheek and neck. We were careful to soften the edge on the cheek to show the form – we don’t want a hard edge there. There was also a little softening on the neck edge. Using this same value we also put in a wash over the brow area and under the nose. In the reference they were darker than this but I wanted to get some color on there so we could see how the face was working. We can always darken these up later on.
Painting the hair to keep the painting balanced
I like to keep the painting balanced as it progresses. By this I mean that I don’t want any area to get left behind. It’s hard to assess the painting as a whole if you can’t see how the different areas relate to each other. The neck shadow was looking a little stark against the white paper so we put in the dark hair to see if the value was working. The hair was mostly very dark (slightly lighter towards the front) and, to my relief, it worked to tone down the neck shadow. Panic over!
Sign up for updates on ChromaMagic
The hard work is over – the final details
Even though the face was appearing it wasn’t looking like real flesh and blood. These last steps are where this happens. However, the real work was already done. It’s tempting to think that these final subtle form modifications are what makes the difference but if the main values aren’t right no amount of detail noodling will bring out the form. This part is definitely the fun part. If the previous steps are done well then it’s (almost) impossible to mess up here. We put in some lighter values on the temple and the nose and around the mouth. All the edges were softened to stop any hard edges and to show the gradual form change over the planes of the face. A little darkening under the brow and nose and a little darkening of the neck and shoulders and we were done.
The verdict
It’s par for the course that half way through a painting I say to myself that this isn’t going to work. The values look wrong, the drawing’s slightly off, I’ve messed up some of the edges etc. However the careful prep paid off and it all came together. It’s a class demo painting so it has some rough edges. I have to stop mid way through things if there’s something I want to explain further or talk about so hard edges and blossoms crept in here and there. But they don’t detract from the final effect and actually add to the painting if everything else is done well. Pretty happy with this.
(Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.)
An easy sunflower watercolor painting. If you want ideas for watercolor painting this is a great choice. Learn here how to do it.
A sunflower watercolor painting is one of the easier flowers to paint. Not trivial by any means but I’ve really enjoyed previous sunflower paintings and wanted to try something a little different this time. Watercolor flowers are deceptively hard. So many forms, intense colors and subtle value changes. It’s a challenge at the best of times. If you want to make sunflower painting easy then the best thing to do is have a plan! A little time thinking is never wasted!
But I always love painting sunflowers in watercolor. Sunflower art looks great on the wall and cheers up any decor. I don’t actually have any original sunflower paintings up on the wall at the moment – must remedy that.
So let’s get started on our easy sunflower painting! Let the watercolor sunflower tutorial commence!
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Materials for Your Simple Watercolor Painting
You don’t need a huge watercolor painting set for this painting. You’ll need some watercolor paper and I usually use Fabriano Artistico but any 100% paper will work well. The paper for watercolor painting is crucial so, if you can, don’t skimp on this part. Brushes are also important and the best are made of Kolinsky sable but there are some good synthetics on the market these days. These include the Princeton Aqua Elites and the Escoda Verstil brushes. Also, recently I’ve been using the Silver Black Velvet brushes which have a good feel to them.
Brushes for watercolor painting
We’ll need some paint of course. I like tube paints and any artists quality brand is fine. The colors we’ll need are :
Lemon yellow
Burnt sienna
Ultramarine Blue
An orangey red like vermillion/pyrrole red/naphthol red
Black.
Other things we’ll need are a mechanical pencil for the drawing, a palette with good areas for mixing, a water pot and some paper towels. Other things that come in useful in my watercolor painting kit are a kneaded eraser, a spray bottle to keep the paint wet and for occasional texture, and some masking tape to tape down the paper to stop it curling.
How to Start a Watercolor Painting
The best way to begin a watercolor painting is to hold off painting for a while and make a plan! Seriously, all the thinking you can do ahead to time will pay off in spades. There is so much to think about when you’re in the middle of some watercolor technique that if we can do some thinking beforehand we should. A little planning should make our sunflower painting easy (or at least easier!).
So our main plan is:
Make an outline drawing of the petals and the leaves
Make some color swatches for the light and shadow side of the petals and leaves. Also make some color swatches for the central darker parts.
Put a first wash over all the petals in the light petal color
Put a first wash over the central parts
Paint all the seeds in the central part
Paint the leaves
Paint the shadows on the petals
Finishing touches.
This layering technique is pretty common in but there are other techniques for watercolor painting. If you want to learn watercolor painting painting in layers is a good place to start. As we only work on one layer at a time we can break things down into sections and concenrate on that. Time is always precious in watercolor as we only have so long before the paint dries and we can’t work with it.
Trying a different painting style
Loose watercolor painting is my usual style. A lot of simplification and lost edges and general sploshiness. It’s not an easy watercolor style (are there any?) and even though it looks free and easy it involves a lot of decisions and good brushwork. But today we’re going to be doing something different. This watercolor sunflower painting is going to be crisp and precise and hopefully result in a sharp focused but still interesting image. If you’re interested in how to paint loose sunflowers in watercolor take a look at another of my sunflower paintings.
I do have a few more sunflower watercolor paintings in the archives if you want to compare this to previous work. This sunflower painting is from a few years ago and I’ve done a couple more in class demo tutorials. Somewhat different in style but they have a certain charm I think. Not as loose in style as one of my favorite painters Charles Reid but one day maybe…
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
More drawing required for a tight painting
I spent a little more time on the drawing than usual. We’re not going for a completely realistic sunflower drawing but I made sure all the petals were outlined and all edges defined. The middle part of the flower (all those seeds!) I left empty and planned to paint freehand. Successful easy watercolor sunflower paintings depend on the lovely irregularity in the petals. They look uniform at first sight but they point out at all sorts of odd angles – we need to capture that.
Planning the colors.
This watercolor sunflower didn’t have too many colors to match. There was the light and shadow sides of the petals, The light and shadow of the central seed part and the leaves. And keeping the colors simple was going to help keep the form in the final painting. Here are my swatches for the various colors.
Watercolor easy painting color swatches
Painting the petals
First a complete wash of the light yellow petal color over all of the petals. Painting straight through all the petal joins and trying to keep the wash even with no streaks or stripes. I softened slightly around the inner edge to avoid any harsh lines later.
Painting the sunflower center
The next step was to put in the lighter color of the central portion. This was a value 6 wash of burnt sienna over the whole central part. I let this dry then spent a good week or so (ok maybe 20 minutes) carefully painting in a mix of burnt sienna and ultramarine to outline the seeds. I left small regions of the underlying wash showing through to show the lighter parts of the seeds. Took forever (have I mentioned that?) and made me remember why I don’t paint like this often. But the result worked – the central part definitely had a look of a sunflower.
The leaves
At this point I had a choice. To go in and paint the shadows on the petals or to tackle the leaves. I decided on the leaves. They have fairly dark portions on them and I wanted something to relate to when the rest of the petals went in. So in they went. Just two colors – the lighter green (black, lemon yellow and a little cobalt blue) for the regions in sun and a darker mix with more black and less water for the shadow portions.
The petal shadows
Now this bit was the hardest and the part where I would be most likely to ruin everything. I carefully looked at the value and the color of those shadows on the petals. They weren’t for the most part all that dark. Maybe a value 7 or 6 in the darkest part. They were also very orange – no blue or grey in there. So I tested a mix of burnt sienna and a little vermillion with enough water to give me a value 7. Yup that seems to be ok.
The shadows went in in layers. I left some regions just with the one layer for the lighter parts and then went in again with another layer of color for the darker parts. It wasn’t the greatest job – a little streaky in places. But the colors were good and if I try this again I’d have a better idea of how to do it.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Final touches and is this sunflower watercolor painting a success?
Only a few things left to do now. A few little dots around the central part for the seeds that were poking out, darkened the leaf shadows a little, and put a few light lines on some of the petals. Fairly happy with the result I think.
Watercolor sunflowers are a good subject if you’re starting to paint flowers. The colors are fairly straightforward and there is a strong contrast between the central part and the petals. Both of these help us get a convincing representation in paint.
Finally…
I hope you enjoyed this beginner watercolor painting and it showed you how you can make painting a watercolor sunflower easy. If you are looking for more lessons in watercolor painting I have more tutorials and some real-time demos on my youtube channel. Please subscribe to my channel if you’re interested to see new ones when they’re released.
And Before You Go…
Here are a few screenshots of a slightly more loose set of sunflowers. The process is very similar though. The early washes go in flat and then more detail and interest is added as the painting progresses. If you’re keen on painting sunflowers in watercolor you can adapt this technique to pretty much any flower.
how to paint sunflowers in watercolor
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
It occurred to me that I hadn’t painted an owl watercolor in a good while. I wanted to do something that was more loose and sploshy than usual. Teaching demos tend to make my painting tighten up quite a bit and I needed to shake things out a bit. I’ve painted a variety of owls before – barn owls, saw-whet owls (a favorite), and this one – a horned owl (eagle owl?).
Painting a watercolor owl (in fact any bird) is often scarier than other paintings. The drawing has to be accurate without getting into much detail and the markings can obscure the underlying form of the bird. Watercolor painting is unpredictable at the best of times and with owls doubly so. But I’d decided on an owl so an owl watercolor painting it should be.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Drawing out
I roughly marked the paper (Fabriano Artistico 140lb cold pressed) into quarters. This allowed me to get the proportions roughly right without having to put graphite grid lines all over the paper. Not really necessary but I wasn’t taking any chances. I lightly drew in the main form but with no detail in the feathers.
Planning and first washes
horned owl watercolor first washes
Before even putting brush to paper I planned out the values. The light was coming from the left so the right side of the bird was in shadow. I mentally made a note of this and kept this in mind as the painting progressed. When painting loosely in layers, and with such a lot of patten in the feathers it can be easy to lose track of the values as you paint.
As I was aiming for a loose painting I started with a very loose wash of mainly burnt sienna with a touch of ultramarine. I kept away from the face but pulled the paint out through the edges of the bird. This is very light and will only show slightly in the final thing. It also takes some of the glare of the white paper away, softening the effect. As the first, very loose layer was still damp I put in a darker wash over the shadown side of the bird. This started to show the form but was still very light and nowhere near the final value.
Building the form
horned owl watercolor building the form
Again while the paper was still damp I built up the form further on the shadow side. There’s a lot of feather pattern in there so my marks were choppy but soft and I took care to leave lighter areas. I used my spray bottle a little to add some texture and dropped in slightly thicker, darker paint to darken some areas. At this point I was chugging along and fairly happy.
Face and Feathers
horned owl face and feathers
The next stage was starting to add some detail. I went into the face and added the eyes, making sure they had shadow at the top where the ‘horns’ were. Adding the pattern to the feathers I started to falter a little. I wanted everything to be loose and soft but probably rushed this piece a little and my confidence started to wane.
Press on regardless
Horned owl press on regardless
Well I’ve started so I may as well finish this. More color in the feathers and more darks to make sure the shadow side really looks like it’s in shadow. I added some color to the feathers and added some more darks around them to make sure they stood out. A little more work on the feet and the rock and I was almost done.
Sign up for updates on classes and free livestreams
Final touches
Horned owl watercolor by Michele Clamp
Still not very happy at this point. Standing back I noticed the shape of the head was a little off. Some softening and modification to the sides of the head and I was a little happier. As a last resort I added some paint splashes. So am I happy with it? Hmm – not really. It does have the looseness I like but I lost something along the way. Never mind – there’s always tomorrow.
As I’ve said on a number of occasions watercolor birds are hard even though I do a fair amount of bird art. A little disappointed I have to say. Some of my best work has been of owls. We have one of my early ones up on the wall and I’m not sure I’ve ever surpassed it.
A deceptively simple watercolor landscape value study was the precursor to this painting. Tuesday is teaching day so decisions had to be made and I plumped for this beach scene. It’s good for practice as there are obvious large shapes and clear values.
First a Small Landscape Value Study
Landscape Value Study
Break the scene into big value shapes
The first thing was to break down the scene into a few large value shapes. These were the sky, the sand, the sea, the trees, and the rocks. A couple of these have multiple values in but I chose the average value in order to paint the study.
Sketch the shapes and identify the values
This is probably the most important part of the value study and it involves no painting at all! First I sketched the rough shapes in a small rectangle – probably about 4”x6”. Then Using my trusty Paul Centore value scale I first *estimated* what the value was for each shape. After taking a stab at the value I then brought in the value scale to check how close I was. If I’m within a step I’m pretty happy. It’s surprising how quickly you get better at this and the key to it is making a guess first rather than bringing in the scale immediately.
Note the values on the sketch
This is only a value study so we can mark it up however we want. I pencil in the value inside the shape so I can remember. So the sky and the sand were about a value 8. The sea was a 6 and the trees and rocks varied between a 5 and a 2. All these numbers went in the sketch.
Finally Paint the Value Study
And now we get to paint something. We’ve done a lot of the hard work here so it’s a case of mixing the value and painting it in the shape. I try and keep the value washes as even as possible so there aren’t stripes or brush marks. It keeps the values separated so we can judge how the composition is working. I usually do value studies in a sketchbook or on cheap student paper but this time I broke out the Fabriano Artistico. It’s not really needed as we’re not doing any edge work or blending but I had a small piece handy.
Some shapes have multiple values
The trees and the rocks have multiple values which show the form as the light hits them. In these shapes I used two values – a wash of the lighter value and then a much darker value on the shadow side to make them appear three dimensional.
There’s not a lot of detail in there. A few brush marks on the rocks brings everything together.
Assess the result
After I was done I stood back and assessed how the composition was working. In this case everything looked good. The value arrangement hung together and I was ready to go to the next stage. In particular I liked the way the sea was a mid value between the sky and the darks of the trees and rocks and tied the painting together. Another thing that I think worked well was the broad treatment of the rocks. I had used just two values and put in the shadows very broadly with a little softening of the edges. This simple treatment was surprisingly enough to make the rocks read well. Also the broad painting gives the study some energy and visual life.
Next Steps
In another post I’ll talk through the next stage which is mixing the colors. There are a couple of surprises in there which can catch you out. I have been caught unawares painting beach scenes quite recently and learned a few lessons which came in handy with this painting.
