Watercoloring a Loose Black Capped Chickadee

 This week Linda is sharing this video Called Easy watercolor Chickadee from Robin Makes Stuff seen here on YouTube. 

I love watching birds and so far I am skeptical about my own ability to get the scale and body correct shapes to paint them but, I did watch the video and gave it a whirl. It was in the back of my mind that I probably have a bird perched like this stamp. but, it would also probably be smaller and have much more detail to it. So, I forged ahead. 

 I did use a water soluble pencil for the sketch and some Artist Loft watercolor paper.

 Right after I started adding a layer of paint to the background hubs informed me that my presence was required for a home depot run. So, this is what I came back to.

I did re wet around the edges of the birds body to add more paint to the background and then gave it a wash of yellow ocher and then let that dry.
 

 Started mixing some greys for the other feather areas.

 Just kept tossing more paint on it, mostly adding slightly shades darker of greys to have some variation in the feathers. 

While the body was drying I started adding some paint to the branch. 

I did add more paint to the background around the branch and under the bird. and that kind of snowballed into more splatters and more paint pretty much across the bottom right triangle of the scene. I flicked out some stray tiny feathers for "fluff" and started adding some white gouache over the grey paint to add to the cheeks and chest but, it dried to a pale gray is muddy look.

I had totally gotten the shapes of the white feather areas wrong so by this point I was on my second layer of White Gouache across his cheek and chest. I also added in some black for the eye leaving that white ring for detail. And this is where he sits at the moment. I am debating about if I will have some daylight after work today to add a little more to him or not. I wish the background had more color as well and I think as for as a practice painting goes this is not that bad. It's only going to get better from here yes? 

 

Well, I could not resist adding more paint to the bird and the shadows under the belly and legs..

 Which ended up leading to some hard edges on my "fluffy" bird.

This last show was taken with a DSLR not my iPhone so, its interesting how the colors change. Its not quite this dark in real life but, it is not as pale as the phone shoots it so, that is interesting. I did try to remove a little of the paint from the top of the head like a highlight which kind of looks strange now that its dry but, I figure this was just a learning bird anyways so, there is that. And that being said that's about it from me, if you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by.