While watercolors can be used to make realistic, or detailed paintings, the medium especially shines for looser techniques that focus more on vibrant colors and the fun of watercolor painting. The latter is exactly what we’ll use in this tutorial. If you want to follow along, gather your paints, brushes, and a small piece of watercolor paper, and be prepared to have fun.
Here is a reference photo, which we’ll use to know the shape, and general colors and shadows of the hummingbird.
After a quick graphite sketch (keeping the lines visible, but very light) and mixing colors, we can begin painting. Since the painting does not need to match the picture, you can choose to color it differently if you’d like, but I will be using various greens, yellows, and blues that are similar to the colors in the picture. I’ll use Hansa Yellow Light, Phthalo Blue Green-Shade, Phthalo Green Blue-Shade, French Ultramarine, and Burnt Siena (for the grey).
First Layer
Body
With various colors ready, we can start painting with a watery green base color, and drop in other colors before it dries.
There are no “rules” for this project, but I suggest using strokes that are similar in size and shape as the feathers on the hummingbird, leaving gaps that will be useful for highlights. The new colors we add will spread, and that’s fine; the effect is unique to watercolor.
Notice how in the reference, the brightest areas are in the upper middle, while the sides are in dark shadow. To mimic this and give the appearance of form, we can drop in darker blues (with ultramarine) along the edges.
Once the paint starts drying, adding more can cause blooms or remove the previous paint, so at this point, it is better to leave the body to dry and wait to add more color on the second layer.
Tail
For the tail, I started by painting it with water, leaving narrow gaps between the feathers; this will make it easier to keep the paint under control. The gaps distinguish the feathers, and will become highlights. Then I simply added a bit of cool blue, spreading it around in the water.
Head
While we wait for the current layer of paint to dry, we can start working on the head. For now, I simply used a light grey, covering the beak and marking out a few feathers. If you are still waiting for the body to dry, you can add more to the head (look below in the article for suggestions), otherwise, we can paint the second layer.
Second Layer
Body
For the second layer, we do something similar to the first (adding some paint in places and then dropping other colors in), and continue to add depth and a bit more detail. Since my yellow only shows up when layered on white, I painted some of it over several of the gaps from the first layer, keeping those regions as highlights, but with yellow rather than white. I added more blues to the feathers and darkened the shadowed edges further.
Tail
Now for the tail, we want to start giving the feathers form. To do this, we can make the edges darker, and create a transition from dark to light between the highlights. I went about this by painting with the same cool blue on the outer edge of each feather, then (with a small brush) adding strokes up and in to give the appearance of texture, and finally painting a darker, ultramarine mixture on the edges while they are still wet.
We can always add a third layer to enhance the depth further if necessary.
Head
Wanting to keep things colorful, I chose to paint the head feathers with green and yellow, and use a blue-grey as well as regular grey for the shadows, beak, and eye. The amount of detail to include is up to you, though it is generally a good idea to include more detail around the eye than in the rest of the painting, since the eye is a natural focal point.
For the beak, I suggest painting the bottom with a dark grey, and softening the edge to transition to the lighter top portion. I added several layers to make the shadow dark enough.
Similarly, for the eye, I used three layers of dark grey. The main thing to keep in mind while painting it is that you leave the highlight, which makes the bird look alive.
We can give the impression of little feathers close to the beak and around the eye by alternating dark and light colors, with brush strokes in the direction that the feathers point.
Finishing
If you still want to deepen the colors or shadows, you can add another layer, in the same style as the first and second. Otherwise, we can move up to the branch, to finish the painting.
The easy way to do this is to paint the branch with water, then drop brown in along the bottom edge (it will spread upwards, but will be darkest in the shadowed side). I also darkened the portion under the hummingbird and pulled a few streaks of paint out on either side.
I hope you enjoyed this project and had as much fun as I did.
Yes! It WAS fun and easy! Thanks Erik! I thoroughly enjoyed painting this!
Great!
You make it look so easy!
I saw you used a small brush for the second layer of the tail, problem is I had been using a small brush the entire time. So I decided to use a thick brush for the second of the layer intead, I think the results should be the same.
You might get a similar result, but it depends on your paint concentration for each layer. If you started with a watery paint consistency with a small brush, then used a thick paint on top with a large brush, then you will lose the first layer. If instead, you used the same consistency for both layers, the effect will be very similar, it will just be darker in the places where both layers have brush strokes.