How to Paint a Blue Jay on a Branch.

Winter is a great time to work on your indoor hobbies, painting is just one of the many things that you can do.

I love painting, looking outside at the awesome spectacle of winter, without the getting cold part.

One thing that I enjoy watching are the Blue Jays flying around outside, they are a symbol of winter, so here you can learn one way of painting this proud, and chilly bird.

To keep this tutorial as approachable as possible, so I tried to keep my colours and brushes simple.

Paint Colours Used

• White
• Black
• Burnt Umber
• Bright Yellow
• Hunter Green
• Tropical Blue (light blue)
• Sapphire Blue (medium blue)
• Navy Blue (dark blue)

Brushes Used

• Large Flat
• Small round

Canvas (Anything you can paint on, I used a wooden board)

• Old Book (optional)
• Glue (optional)

Border

• Sponge

Destroy some of your least favorite pages by ripping them out, getting some interesting shapes.

Cover your canvas in a thick layer of Glue,

Paste the pages onto the Canvas, covering each in another layer of glue before adding the next.

Continue this till you've covered the entire canvas, and your happy with the way it looks.

Fold the edges of the pages over on the underside and glue them down firmly.

Mix together some white paint with a tiny bit of the brown, to get a dirty cream, add water till its the consistency of milk.

Use this to coat the paper, add more white or brown till your happy with how it looks.

Next I used my Paint brush dipped in white paint to spray small white "snowflakes" all over.

Now draw in lines where you want the branches to go, I added one large branch in the lower middle with some smaller twigs scattered around, to add interest.

Remember to leave a place for the Blue jay to sit,

Use the Burnt Umber to paint in the rough sketch lines.

When the paint is dry you can erase the sketch lines you don't need any more.

Now add a bit of black to get a dark brown, but don't fully mix the colours so you get a mix of the brown, dark brown, and Black. this is called double loading the brush. Using your small round brush dab the paint on the underside of the branches, you want to leave many tiny dots of paint leaving a rough texture,

Once you have the shadows in, take the Burnt Umber again and add the Bright yellow, remember to leave it roughly mixed so you get the subtle highlights, follow the same technique as before but this time on the top of the branches.

Don't be afraid to go back over with the Black/Brown mix, keep adding the highlights then the shadows till your happy with how it looks.

Use the hunter green and quick thin lines to put down the base for your needles.

Now add black to get a darker shade, use the same thin lines to start adding some depth to your needles, add more of this darker shade in the middle of your clusters.

Next add a tiny amount of white to the Hunter green and do the same thing, keep layering them in thin lines till you have about 4 layers of needles, try to keep the needle lines as distinct as possible, go slow and enjoy the process.

After this you will need to add a bit of green to the white and roughly mix so that some places the white is lighter then others.

Use this paint mix to add a few distinct needles on top of the clusters.

Here there are multiple ways that you can do this,

I recommend finding a reference picture, ether one that you've taken yourself on one that you found.

Now you can use Tracing paper or freehand it. Both ways are good.

Personally for this painting I traced it off a reference picture.

I then used carbon Paper and a sharp pencil to transfer the line work onto my painting.

I do this because the paint that i'm using is quite cheap so it doesn't have the best coverage, by doing this I find it easier to add the details Later.

I used white, Sapphire blue, and black, to outline the shapes, (see the pictures) Let dry.

Birds wings are made up of many layers of feathers, starting with tiny, downy feathers and steadily increasing in size to the long tail feathers, in this painting we will just be adding three layers to the wings, a downy layer, median layer, and the primary layer.

The best way that I've found to paint feathers is to layer the paint on, first with the dark blue, then the medium, then the light, work fast in short lines, keep layering it on, you want to do this while the paint is still wet. once you have the top covered in tiny feathers, you can add a few darker dashes in the lower contour of the blue jays neck.

Add more light feathers on the top of where the curve of the wing is tucked in.

after you've added the downy layer we move on to the median feathers. basically you do the same thing, start with a dark blue almost black, and layer the lighter colours over, blending then in till you like the way it looks, except this time the feathers are much longer, and end in a white tip.

To pain the with tip you first add dabs of white, then add a bit of blue and add in thin lines to seperate the feathers, blend the blue outward a bit, adding more white dabs when the blue becomes to powerful. Keep layering till yo have it the way you want it.

SInce we want the wings to go over the belly, its best if we shade it first.

This is simple.

First lay down a thick coat of fresh white paint, then using a light blue add short dashes next to where the wings, blend outward in lines.

Now take more of the white and starting at the outside edge blend the blue back, making sure that you leave feathery lines behind,

Keep doing this till you have the belly feathers looking the way you want Them to.

Start on the outside edge of the wings.

First lay down a thick coat of dark, almost black, blue, on the inside edge of the first feather

then work you way to the edge with your medium to light blue colours, try to work fast to keep your paint wet, this will help you blend the colours better.

Add a sharp white highlight on the outside edge of the feather, blending in inward while keeping the outside edge straight and crisp.

repeat this for all the feathers, till you get to the top two, these feathers have black lines so once you have the shading down add very thin Black lines, two on either side of each other. add a slight curve to the lines to suggest the curve of the feathers.

This is the same as before, colour in the feather with very dark blue, add a bit of medium blue, then a light blue highlight.

for these feathers the highlight only goes on the outside edge of the feathers and the rest of the feather you want to leave quite dark.

When you get to the top striped feathers, carry on as usual, Dark, medium, Light, wet blending, but now add the thin slightly curving black lines.

You will also add a sharp white cap to each of the top four feathers.

I then touched up my median feathers on this side, by adding more layers of white and dark blue.

follow the same steps you used for the Primary feathers, just remember that the two middle feathers don't actually have the white cap. as you can see I forgot:(

Work your way from the two outsides to the middle.

when painting the middle feathers don't highlight the middle of the feather, instead leave it dark. add the black lines so they curve slightly in toward the middle to give it some dimension.

Add black lines to all the tail feathers( mix it a bit of water so you can get very fine lines)

first start with the white, add a fresh coat of paint then shade the edges with some very light blue.

when you get the the white around the neck go a bit darker, remember to keep layering the shades.

For the crest add a coat of medium blue paint, then add some darker blue lines, then add some white lines, keep blending and layering till you have it the way you want it.

Try not to get the tuft too messy looking. a few lines is best.

The bottom of the tuft is much darker so use a dark blue base with medium Highlights.

For the beak leave it simple a dark almost black lower half with one light highlight on the very bottom, and a medium blue on the top, fading into white on the edge. (use wet blending)

Go though your painting,

Add shaper highlights on the white edges of the feathers.

Add deeper shadows

Add more layer of feathers in places where you think it lakes depth

Lastly add in a mischievous sparkle into your Blue jays eyes.

I also used a sponge to lightly dab a rough border with dark brown paint to finish it of, I did not add a coat of varnish as i liked the way the matte paint looked on a semi gloss background.