Watercolor Study: Learn to Paint Bird From Photograph

Doing a watercolor study is one of my hobby, it's fun, educating, and therapeutic. Birds are my favorite object to paint, especially chickadees. They look artistic even in a photograph, aren't they?

Few days ago, unlike usual, I was being a little bit productive and painted two of these birds. It's all started with me finding a good, photogenic looking photograph of birds on Google. Normally, I need something 'artistic' to pique my painting mood, otherwise I'd be in art block state for what seems like forever.

Paints and other art supplies are crucial. Having special paints, brushes, and papers will put me in artistic-mood. I love painting with natural-handmade watercolor paints, I also love handmade paper like Amalfi! I'm totally head over heels in love with everything handmade!

I'll be posting and reviewing all of these special art supplies later. I'd get my long-awaited-huge batch of handmade watercolors and papers in less than a week!

Alright now before anything, it's important to know about copyright law for derivative artworks. Read more about that HERE.

Anyway, as a reminder, this is just a study, using photograph as a reference can be a good start for aspiring artist to draw better. Photographs are one of useful tools you can use to improve your artistic sense. Photograph gives a lot of information about the object itself, as well as color value, composition, and harmony.

Paints: Lutea natural watercolor

Paper: Fabriano Artistico, traditional white. Cold pressed.

Brush: Silver Brush-Black Velvet

I've never liked hyper-realistic painting, really. What I'm after is more to the feels, senses, and individuality of the artwork itself. I want something different, something special that only you can create. Just like a signature.

Before this study, I've also never liked Fabriano paper, I was always into Arches! But after I tried Fabriano with Lutea watercolors, I think I like Fabriano!

The most fun part is painting the wings, I love it! 

Talking about birds, there was this random sparrow that got into my house. I named him beguk (beugook). He coudn't fly properly so I let him rest for a few hours before releasing him back to nature.

Moving on to the next watercolor study, I have this small, cute chickadee.

Paints: Lutea watercolor

Paper: Arches, cold pressed

Brush: Silver Brush - Black Velvet

The chickadee is way more fluffier on the photograph, painting on small scaled paper is really challenging as I have way less space for details. Particularly with Arches, the cold pressed one is more texturized and rougher than Fabriano, and painting details is harder on rough surface. I will try painting on the other side of the paper later because it has less texture and see if the end result would be smoother and nicer.

About the paints, I only use three different colors for both paintings. Indigo, Yellow, and Rouge Red. Lutea is a very special paints that also has special place in my heart. It's an all natural paints made from grass, plants, and flower. So exquisite, isn't it?