I wanted to paint a Bald Eagle in flight after photographing one that was flying directly towards me. If you want to join me, grab your watercolor paints and let’s begin.
I selected a 9 by 12-inch piece of Arches cold-press 140 lb. paper as a base; looking back, a large paper would have been easier to paint the eagle’s face details on, so I suggest you use as large a piece of cold-press watercolor paper as you can. We’ll use a fairly limited palette of Burnt Umber, French Ultramarine, Azo Yellow, and Raw Sienna (each of these can easily be substituted by similar colors, in case you don’t have the ones listed). Note that we will also be using masking fluid to preserve the white areas on the head and tail; you can complete the project without this, by carefully avoiding those areas while during the background painting stage, but it will be easier with it. Another optional, but very helpful tool for this painting is a natural sponge or two.
Here is the reference image we will be using:
After a practice sketch on a scrap piece of paper, we draw the contour of the eagle with a brown watercolor pencil (or a light graphite pencil), and fill in the head and tail areas with masking fluid.
Background
The background in the reference is an out of focus, winter forest, and we’ll paint something similar, with a unique watercolor touch. We can use sponges filled with watery paint to press, slide, and dot the paper for organic and creative textures. It is up to you to decide how much you want the colors to spread and mix on the paper; I let certain colors dominate areas of the background, while blending them in between for blurred transitions. Fast streaks with one of the sponges gave an appearance of patches of white-bark trees.
When the paper is dry, we can add a second background layer to add depth and darkness to the color.
Bald Eagle
Now we’ll paint the bird. Normally, the eye is the natural focal point, but in this case, the big yellow beak grabs my attention and seems to me like the focal point, so we will start with it. First, we paint a water glaze inside the beak’s diamond-shaped outline and drop a little bit of yellow in. This color should be the lightest that appears in the beak, since we can add the darker colors above, but cannot easily lighten it later. This step does not show up very clearly in the picture below, so if you need a better idea of the outline shape, scroll to two pictures lower.
While we wait for that first layer on the beak to dry, we can paint a simple layer of Burnt Umber over the brown areas of the eagle.
Back to the beak. Using a mixture of Azo Yellow and Raw Sienna (more Sienna for a darker shade) we can start shading. The most important shading on the beak distinguishes the light side from the shadow side. To paint this, we simply lay down darker yellow paint on the left and soften it towards the middle of the beak with vertical brush strokes.
We add another layer or more (as necessary) to further define the beak shape.
Finally, we can paint the nostrils and beak division line with a color formed by adding a drop of blue into the previous beak color. Even with my smallest brush, it was difficult to paint these details with much precision, so I ended up leaving them lighter and less noticeable compared to the reference image.
Next, we’ll move outward and paint the rest of the head. As it is a Bald Eagle, we can get away with leaving much of it white, but we should paint the feathers that are in shadow to give the head depth and a feathery texture. The grey we’ll use is a simple mixture of Burnt Umber with French Ultramarine (more Ultramarine for the cooler tones and less for the warmer ones). We’ll mostly use a warm grey (under the beak, and on the tail), but specifically use a blueish cool grey for the area left of the beak, which is reflecting some of the color from the sky.
When that dries, we can paint the eyes. We start with their outlines in grey.
Then we add pupils. You can add more detail if you are able (such as if you are using a larger paper or smaller brush), but the small size constrained me to leaving the eyes fairly simple.
Next, we’ll define the shadow below the wings and around the belly. To avoid the paint drying and leaving harsh edges before we finish painting this section, we can paint the areas with a water glaze first. The dark brown I used is mostly Burnt Umber, with a small amount of French Ultramarine added.
We’ll then work on the top of the wings. A bunch of short, curved brush strokes can give the appearance of feathers, and we’ll use this effect to quickly paint the wings. I painted the first layer of this with plain Burnt Umber.
And a second layer of the same method with some French Ultramarine added to darken the color. We can use this same color to paint the long wing tip feathers that curve upward.
To finish up, we just need to add another layer to the shadow under the wings, around the body, between the tail feathers, and on one side of each of the long wing feathers. This completes the watercolor painting of a Bald Eagle.
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