Quick And Loose Watercolor Rooster Tutorial

Before i begin this tutorial, i just want to make a quick announcement or a reminder that my new skillshare class is now up in the class i'll, be painting three different, muffin, flavors and i'll. Take you through how i look for references to simplifying the shapes and turn them into a sketch that you can paint realistically from imagination, like usual i'll, be going through the painting step by step with audio instructions. This class is over two hours long and it's something that you can divide up into three separate days, so you can do one muffin flavor per day if you've never been a member. Yet you can go to the link in my description box for a free trial where you can get access to so many classes. Skillshare has to offer, including my many long and detailed food illustrations and watercolor basics. So that's it for the announcement. Let'S get back to the video hi everyone, this is nia and today i'm going to show you how to paint this loose rooster. This was quite a quick painting. It only took me around 30 minutes total, but before we start, let me just show you the reference photos that i used. This is the first photo, i'm referencing the colors from this rooster. I love how clear the sections are for each color, which made it much easier for me to pick out the color palette that i'm going to use. As for the second picture, i love that it's not a static, pose, there's a bit of movement, and i feel like i'll, be able to enhance this with a bit more dynamic from the loose painting style. You can paint this freehand, which is what i did when i was practicing to paint this on a separate sketchbook, but like this here, you can also draw out a rough sketch of the rooster before painting in order to get a more accurate proportion. So the aim of this sketch is to get the right size of the rooster which will fit well for the space that i have or the space that you have for your sketchbook. And i also want to make sure that the head body and the legs are in proportion with each other. I want everything to be kept simple for the sketch and i really want to avoid drawing out details, because that's something that we don't want to get too caught up with for the painting itself. I'M not going to worry about the feathers, the comb on the head and the sickle feathers for the tail. I just want to make sure that i know where they're going to be positioned. If you want, you can also draw the sections very lightly as guidelines to remind yourself but keep this very light and loose, so it doesn't obstruct the final painting. I feel like the sketch has enough information for me to work with, so i'm going to just show you the colors before we paint for this i'll be using my cottman set. This is chinese white cadmium, red deep hue had medium yellow hue, turquoise sap green part. Number burnt, sienna, yellow ochre and paints gray i'll also be using bleed proof white by dr ph martins, okay. So, let's begin i'm starting by wetting my colors to activate them. I do have to apologize beforehand, though, but i didn't realize if i wasn't filming or i must have lost the footage where i was painting the base color for the comb on the head and the waddle. I used cadmium red for this and i just looked at the reference picture to get a rough shape, but it doesn't really have to be accurate. You can also make your own shapes, so here, instead of picking up the cadmium red, i waited for the cadmium red to dry before i paint the head to keep the shape separate, i started by using a mixture of burnt sienna with a little bit of yellow Ochre and i use quite a thick consistency to paint the top section of the head, then i follow this up using yellow ocher by itself still in a thick consistency, but i also use quite a lot of water on my brush. So it's quite a heavy load which makes the paper quite wet, and so it takes a bit longer to dry, which is the main point here. Then i follow this up with cadmium, yellow and i'm just going to work on the still wet surface, so the color. Slowly creates a gradation and before the paint completely dries, i pick up a little bit of burnt umber and i just dot them around the top section of the head and because the surface is still wet, it's going to create a soft transition. While i wait for the hackle to dry, i'm just going to pick up a little bit of cadmium red to fix the shape of the wattle, and i'm also going to mix up a color for the beak from a mixture of yellow ocher and chinese white. As the base color and while i leave that to dry, i'm going to add a bit more cadmium orange around the comb of the head and around the eyes for extra details. Next, i'm going to paint the hackle on the other side of the rooster. This time i just went straight with yellow ochre to begin with, then i'm going to take some burnt umber and just add the pigment on the top portion, while the surface is still damp. Next, i want to work on the breast of the rooster, and for this i started out with payne's gray and a thick consistency, and for this part of the rooster i want to follow the other reference photo, because it has a bit more color on this area. So for that, i'm going to create the bluish green color by mixing turquoise with a little bit of sap green and i'm going to paint it on in a very thick consistency while adding a bit more water. If i feel like the color is a bit too dark, this will also lighten the color and create an uneven surface to make it a bit more textured, which is what i'm looking for in a loose style painting. I want to be a bit more careful when i'm painting around the hackle, so i don't accidentally cut the pointy ends and because that would also make the proportion a bit weird if the hack will end up being too short. So for this area i did take my time, but at the same time i try to not be a bit too over detailed, so it doesn't lose the dynamic of this painting and have a few messy brush strokes here and there, while the surface is still wet. I followed this up with payne's gray. Again, you can take the green a bit further, but i also want to add on a bit of texture from the paint's gray, by adding a bit of water in random areas, just like we did with the turquoise color. So it doesn't look too flat. I tried adding a bit more water, especially around the left side, and also follow it up with a dry brush texture, because in the reference image it looks like that part is lighter than the rest. So i wanted to depict that loosely. I made the leg or the thigh a bit darker here, because that's what it looked like from the reference image, but i followed it up with a little bit of burnt sienna, also to make it less flat. Once i'm done with that area, i moved on to the wings i intentionally made it separate, because i want to leave out a little bit of white negative space to separate those two areas, so it doesn't blend into just one giant silhouette for the wings. I did wish that i had a bit more turquoise there to make it a bit more colorful, so you can keep this in mind as you are painting yours, but it was a bit too late to add on the color now. So i just continued on with the feathers at the tip of the wings, by using cadmium, yellow for the top portion, followed up by yellow ocher and for the very tip i use a thick consistency of burnt sienna. As you can see, i work section by section because i don't want to accidentally cover up an area, that's supposed to be lighter in color with the paint's gray. So here, as you can see, i kind of wish that i pulled the paints gray lower, but i'm just trying to work with what i have here so for the saddle here i use burnt sienna as the base color and i just flick my brush in order To create that texture, it's a similar way as how i painted the hackle, but i did put a bit more brush pressure and while the surface is still wet, i used burnt umber just to make sure that there's a nice variation in color and value. The next thing i worked on are the sickle feathers for the tail. I first used the turquoise color from a mix of turquoise, with a little bit of sap green, the same as the mixture for the body, and i paint this on by using a full pressure of my brush as i slowly curve and flick until i reach the Tip of my brush to create that pointy end. For this part, i did look at both reference pictures to see how long or how certain curves are placed for the sickle feathers. It doesn't have to look exactly the same. I just want to make sure that i have more or less the shapes and the overall silhouette of the tail, and i also like to jump from place to place. So here i'm working on the saddle again using ains gray, and then i followed it up with burnt umber to separate the areas of the heckle and the saddle. And then i move back to the tail again and work little by little in each section. In order to get a balanced proportion, so now that i have most of the body, i try to clean out certain edges. Like the saddle here, i made the pointy edges and, as for the wing on the left, i used a very thick consistency, paints gray and i tried to paint it with one clean stroke and an additional thin stroke. So it doesn't look too bulky here. I'M going back to the hackle again and i'm working on the second layer by adding textures using burnt, sienna and burnt umber with a medium consistency, and i'm also going to mix up a little bit of paints gray with chinese white. And i just used this color to separate the beak. Next, i used a mixture of yellow ochre with chinese white to create this creamy color, and i just tried to follow the really rough shape from the reference photo. It doesn't have to be too accurate, but i still want to keep it nice and loose for the detail of the feet. I swapped my liner brush and used a light consistency to a medium consistency, paints gray, to line one side and as for the texture along the top part, i used the same color with the dry brush load and i flattened my brush in order to create those Uneven line texture, i lined the back feet as well, then i used a mix of paints gray with chinese white and repaint the base color for the top section of the back feet, and i felt that this just adds a little bit more depth to how the Feet are positioned as it's slightly darker in value. I also added a little bit of burnt sienna just to give it a slight change in color here i use the mix of paints gray with cadmium red to create a dark red mixture, and i used this to add textures and shadows to the comb on the Head as well as waddles or extra detail under the eye, i just added cadmium red by itself. So it doesn't look too dark and i want to wait for the paint to settle a bit before adding the cream mix of yellow ochre with chinese white to paint the base color of the eye. Then, for the detail of the eye, i used paints gray using the tip of my brush. Now that all the features of the rooster have been painted, i want to just add loose textures in order to make the painting look a bit more dynamic and i'd like to use the colors that i've already used before or the color mixes that i've already used And do this with a dry brush consistency to either layer on some paint or line the sides, so the edges of some shapes doesn't look too clean and sharp. Sometimes i also like to use a clean, wet brush and pick up some paint from some of the edges and smudges slightly, and i just feel that this creates a bit more movement to the painting. I also decided to add splatters around some parts of the rooster. However, i ended up loading my brush with too much water and with too much of a thick consistency of red. Also, so the splatter on the head was a bit too big for my liking. This was my mistake. I think i would also choose a lighter color. Next time, maybe like a yellow, ochre or maybe to just use a thinner consistency of red, so it's not so glaring, but anyway i tried fixing it by adding water to it. Thinking that i'd be able to reactivate or dilute the paint and pick up the excess pigment, but it was too late and it was already absorbed into the paper. So i just got ta live with that mistake, so just be mindful of that for your own painting. So after adding on the smudge and dry brush textures, i also decided to use bleed proof white to add on the white details of the rooster like below the eye to add a bit of highlights around the cheeks and also the tail that i've forgotten to leave. Negative space for for the left side of the breast, i also decided to splatter on some of the bleed proof white, and then i use a bit of water to smudge it. So some parts are left as those splatters and some parts are smudged as a transparent white to lighten that area. So there's more of a highlight at the end, i also felt like the pins gray was a bit too boring and i wanted to add a touch of color for the cast shadow. So i thought of adding grass, but i also felt like i didn't control my brush well enough here and it'll be better if the lines were a bit finer and more subtle, but again it's okay. Mistakes are bound to happen, especially for these types of paintings, and it's just part of learning. Anyway, this is the finished painting. I actually enjoyed this more than i thought i would, i really loved, being able to play with different colors in a loose way and also creating different types of textures at the same time. So i hope you guys enjoy it as well. Like usual, the list of tools that i used here as well as my social media links, will be in my description box if you're still here. Thank you so much for watching till the end and i'll see you at the next one bye. Do you