Spring Bird on a Tree
This is a tutorial for painting garden birds – especially bluebird. The bird is sitting on a blooming branch. There are 2 main things to keep focused on in order to get a good result: a) drawing a bird carefully making proper proportions of the body/head/wing/tail and b)keeping it simple and not overdetailed! Let’s get started!
Materials: standard letter size paper, pencil, eraser, crylic paints, white and black marker, thin and thick brushes, palette.
1.Show kids some pictures of garden birds.
2. Start drawing the bird in the middle of the paper. Begin with drawing a big smile (half-circle). Don’t make it too small, make it at least a size of kids palm, but not too large to have some space for branches around.
3. Add a beak on one side by drawing an angle or a less sign
4. Add top of the head by drawing a smaller half-circle like a rainbow
5. Make a diagonal line on the opposite side to begin a tail
6. Add another side of the tail and then continue it smoothly to the back and then connect it with head
7. Begin drawing the wing with a C-shape below the head
8. Continue drawing a lower part of the wing by a diagonal line
9. Make a wavy or “jumping” line for the feathers on the edge of a wing
10. Add legs
11. Add an eye, finish a beak, make a line separating bird’s color spots (my bird has head+belly of one color and back+wing+tail of different color)
12. Draw branches or a nest (or a birdhouse)
13. Paint background with any light color. Make sure the color is contrasting with the bird (example: yellow bird+blue background will be a good, contrast, blue bird+blue background is no contrast). Paint over your branches and birds legs (just add some water to the paint so it is partially transparent to see the lines of branches and legs). You can also do the background with a side of a crayon what is much faster than painting.
14. Paint the bird starting with the lighter colors. When the bird is dry use black marker to make legs and outline the wings and tail. Also draw the branches with black marker (or brown crayon). Use the white marker to add feathers and an eye. Paint the flowers – use this tutorial for blooming tree painting.
