Learn to paint an easy Robin bird in watercolors for beginners, step by step. Watch how I layer several layers of colors to make a realistic feather texture using a sketch style watercolor painting. (See Full Transcript Below.)

Full Video Transcript 

Welcome to this watercolor robin tutorial. This is part 1 of 3 where I will show you how to paint easy sketch-style songbirds. So let’s get started.

I used reference photos from Pixabay.com and lightly sketched my birds onto Arches cold press paper. I’m starting with some burnt sienna, and I mixed it on my plate with some water to about the consistency of whole milk.

 On dry paper, using the fine tip of my size 8 Black Velvet round brush, I’m painting these little strokes in the direction of the feathers, as I see them on my reference photo, onto his face and belly. 

By the way, I will have a link in the video description to all of the supplies I used for this study.

While the burnt sienna is still wet, I add some burnt umber into the shadow areas, and let it softly blend out into the wet burnt sienna. I’m just tapping the tip of my brush to the paper.

I rinse my brush and use some neutral tint to paint the gray feathers on top of the head. I am leaving some white space in between the little gray strokes. I do the same around the wing and body, just making sure I follow the direction of the feathers by looking at my reference photo.

For this color under the wing, I mixed some neutral tint with the burnt umber to cool down the brown. 

I use that same neutral brown to paint more little strokes on top of the Robins head. This layer is mostly dry, but if there are some damp areas, it’s ok as this will just slightly blend into it. Try to keep some of the white areas unpainted.

To simplify the look of the wing feathers, I just painted these longer strokes down and away from his body. These are the medium-length feathers that rest on top of the longer pin feathers.

Again make sure to keep white areas in between the paint strokes. I added a little more neutral tint to the top feather, and again making more tiny little strokes along the head with the slightly more concentrated neutral tint brown mixture.

Then I used a stronger concentration of burnt sienna, and did the same thing on the belly. You can see how these multiple layers add depth and some realism to the Robin, even though this is a simplified sketchy style.

Now for those longer pin feathers, I used a darker burnt umber and painted more long strokes. Again make sure you leave some white inbetween, for separation, because you dont want it to be one large brown blotch. Then a darker neutral tint under the shadow side of the wing here.

And I’m using watery amounts of brown and neutral to add more subtle feather layers around the robin.

I painted the feet using neutral tint, and just leaving a white highlight on the left side.

Now Im using a little indigo to really darken the shadow areas, and to paint the first layer of the eye. Im painting around the highlight.

To create the branch texture, I used burnt umber and neutral tint just dotting it around the branch, making it darker under the robin’s feet. I’m also using plain water to drop onto the wet paint, which pushes the pigment away to create more texture.

You can watch this video on an easy way to create branch texture. Just click the link on the top corner of your screen, and the video will be queued up to watch after this one.

Now I’m darkening the eye and the beak with neutral tint.

Now just a few more shadows and brightening the belly and the little Robin is done. When I finish editing the video for part 2, which is this little chickadee, I will link to it on the side here and the video description so you can watch how I mixed some more subtle colors for his feathers. 

If this tutorial helped you please give it a thumbs up, because that really helps small channels like mine, and if you would like to see more watercolor tips and tutorials from me, then please subscribe to see a new video every week. Thanks for watching, and I will see you next time!