Hi everyone happy new year. I don't get a lot of time to paint lately because I've
been so busy making tutorials but last week I took some time off and I
painted a little Willy wagtail in watercolor.
Hi everyone i'm Louise De Masi and welcome to my channel. Before I start
with this tutorial I just want to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has
contacted me from around the world about these terrible bushfires that we're
experiencing here in Australia. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that you are
thinking of us over here. We are safe where we are but we did have a scare
back in November when the fire department advised us to leave our home. It was shortly after I filmed this video for YouTube you can see the orange
colour outside and the ash falling behind me the air quality here was
terrible for weeks after but we were lucky because the fire went in a
different direction to our home. My heart is aching for all of our amazing
wildlife so I'm going to be teaming up with a few other artists and we're going
to be raising some money for wires which is a wildlife rescue organization here
in Australia. So keep an eye out for that if you follow me on instagram. This
little bird is one of Australia's most well known fan tails. We call it a Willy
wagtail. They're active little birds that flit around the garden fanning out their
tails as they hunt for insects. They're only about 20 centimetres long but
they've got loads of personality. I've painted them before but I just wanted to
do a quick study to demonstrate how I mixed black using three colours.
Pre-mixed black water color can be a bit flat and dead looking so it's good to
know how to mix your own. If you've done some of my tutorials you know that I do
use pre-mixed black sometimes. I have used it in the past when I've painted
some zebras and I've also used it on my crows and also my Magpies.
I blend the black with other colors. Sometimes I'll work wet on wet with it
and I'll mix it with other colors on the paper
and other times I'll glaze a transparent wash of it over another color.
For this little painting I mixed my own. So let's take a look at that. This is a
Winsor & Newton watercolor journal. it's been a while since I've painted in it so
today I'm going to paint this little Willy wagtail. I'm going to use just
three colors for this painting. This is permanent alizarin crimson some
French ultramarine here and some quinacridone gold and these are three
Winsor and Newton colors.I place these paints around the outside rim of
the plate just so that the watery paint will fall down into the middle. Now
I can use these three colors to mix a black. So I just mix the three of them
together and I keep mixing until I get a color that I like and I try to avoid
washing my brush out when I mix the color just because if I do I'll keep
diluting the mixture and I want it as dark as I can get it. Now I can adjust
the color temperature of this black I can make it warmer by adding more of the
alizarin crimson or I can make it cooler by adding more of the French ultramarine.
So we just test it out on a piece of scrap paper until I get a color that I'm
happy with. I think I'm going to lean towards the cooler color so I'll add
more of the blue. I'm just going to start wetting the bird's head here. I'm using a
DaVinci maestro brush this is a series 35 and it's a number 5 and I want to
work on the damp paper here so I'm just putting some water on the black parts.
Now in my reference photo there's a shine that runs down the side of his
head so I'm going to just paint some of the French ultramarine where I see that
lighter color and then when I put the black on it will just blend with it
because the paper's wet. This is French ultramarine that I'm
using and all I'm doing as I paint is I'm just looking at the reference photo
and I'm just putting the paint where I see that lighter sheen on the side.
Ok so my paper is still nice and wet so what I can do now is just put the
black paint on there and it will blend with that blue that I've just put there.
Now I've picked up the black that I mixed up. I'm just painting that
onto the damp paper here. I paint carefully around the little
white markings that are on the side of the head and also around the eye and I
just use my brush right up on its tip so that I can get into those little small
areas. I paint around the eye carefully
around the beak and there's a white patch on the side of his cheek here that
I have to avoid as well.
So then I just keep going around I'm not going to put the paint over the top of
that blue area that I painted. I want to try and reserve that so I'm just
painting around it and the black will just blend with it.
Because the paper is wet it keeps all those painted edges soft so now I can take
this color down the back and here I'm painting on the dry paper. I take it around
the front of the wing here because the paper's wet the colors just blend
together. There's no hard paint edges showing anywhere so now my brush is just
damp and I'm just running it along the edge of the paint there just to allow
some of that paint to bleed onto the white feathers. That just softens that
edge where the black meets the white
and now I've got some more of that dark color and I just want to put it on the
back here. I can paint a few flicks off the side just by pulling the damp paint
out onto the dry paper and I'm just going to speed up the next section. Just
putting some water on the paper here at the front and I'm going to use a really
pale wash of that color that I mixed up just for those white feathers there.
So everything has dried and I can see that I've been a bit heavy-handed with
the blue so what I want to do is just tone it down and make the color look a
bit more black. So I've wet the paper and I've adjusted my mix so that I've
got more of the alizarin crimson and quinacridone gold and less of the blue
and now I'm just painting this over the top of that first wash. Now the first
wash had dried but I recoated it with water just so that I can work on the
damp paper and keep all those soft paint edges. I still want the blue to show
through but not as much as I had it. I'm just wetting the top of the wing
here with some water because again I want to work on there damp paper. so I
put the black on and then I use my brush just to paint those feather separations
that are there so they were on dry paper I've just pushed the brush into the dry
paper now you might be noticing as I put the black on the paper that it's a
different colour in different areas sometimes it's darker sometimes it's
lighter sometimes it looks a bit more blue other times it looks a bit more
yellow or brown I'll show you why soon as I finish this little feather here so
while the color sometimes varies is because the colours in the plate will
separate from one another so it just depends where I put my brush into the
puddle as to what the color is going to be so if I pick it up here there's my
car but if I pick it up in a different spot so over here the colors slightly
different it's got a bit more yellow in it sometimes I might want the color to
be a bit cooler or more blue so I'll run my paint over the blue paint pick up the
puddle of black and then I get that cooler color other times I might want a
very pale grey so I'll just use a wet brush and I'll just pick up a tiny bit
of paint at the side here and that's when I get that really light to color so
that's why you'll see the colour differ as I paint
okay so back to the tail I'm painting this on the dry paper I want it to be a
bit cooler at the top here so I've just wiped my brush over the blue paint there
and now I'm dropping some water in just to disturbed a pigment and create some
texture I paint the next one and up here I'm just going to use a damp brush just
to take a bit of paint off so I'm just using my brush like it's a sponge and
I'll do the same thing here I'll just take a bit of paint off so now I'll just
paint this tail feather in the middle of those two just run it down the center
it's a slightly different color to the other two as well now with these wing
feathers here you can see that the black has got quite a bit of that quinacridone
gold mixed into it it's almost a brown so I'm just painting that on the dry
paper and then I'm going to come back over the top of it with some really
thick dark paint to add the detail but before I do that I just want to change
the color of one of them so I'm just going to pick up some of the blue and
wipe it into the mix I'm going to paint over the top here just to change the
color so that makes that feather at the back a darker color and now I'm just
going to use my brush to take off a bit of paint here as well so for the legs
now I just want a soft grey so I'm just going to use my damp brush just to pick
up a tiny bit of paint here at the side there's not a lot of paint on my brush
it's a fairly light in color and that'll give me that light gray that I can paint
the legs on with
okay so back onto these other feathers I'm just filling them in just on the dry
paper so this is the light gray again so I just picked it up from the side of the
pallet and I'm also going to drop some of the quinacridone gold on there while
that paints damp it's just a bit of reflective light gives it a bit of a
glow in those lighter areas I'll do the same thing on the front here I'll just
wait it with water now I'll drop some of that quinacridone
gold on there so now I want some really thick paint to paint the detail on those
flight feathers so I'm just mixing up a new patch with not a lot of water in it
so it's fairly thick pigment and I just pick it up with a damp brush and that
gives me that really dark paint there that I can paint that detail on with so
I'm just painting over the top of the dry paper here
I'm just gonna take a brush too and smudge a bit of it so it's not 11 okay
so just on this feather right here I don't like that light patch so I'm just
putting a bit more paint over the top of that I think it was too light okay so
now for the eye I'm just going to paint that with that really dark thick pigment
just with my liner brush I put some of their darker paint on that top of the
beak there I'm going to use a damp brush just to soften that paint äj-- so now
got a damp brush you can run it along the paint edge and that just softens it
it's not such a hard line there and then when that's dry I campaigned in the
bottom beak
so now I've got some Winsor & Newton white ink on my liner brush I'm just
going to run that run that outside edge of the eye because I've lost that I just
want to bring it back in and I'll also put a bit of that white ink around the
white spots the white patches a little bit here just to extend these feathers
as well and now I'm just using my micron pigma pen just to tidy up the shape of
the eye and I've got a scrubber brush here that I'm just taking off a few
highlights with so the brush is damp but the paper is dry it's just a stiff brush
and it just takes a bit of paint off and creates a few more highlights
and to finish off I'm just darkening this back section of the heavy edges
with a bit more of the darker color it's got less blue in it now just painting
that on the dry paper I can soften away any edges that I don't like with a damp
brush so there's my finished painting I
hope you enjoyed the video and thank you for watching please hit the subscribe
button if you haven't already because I make tutorials like this one all the
time thanks again and I'll see you soon