This lively little warbler often catches insects on the wing like flycatchers. But it also zips around bushes, leaves; here, there, tumbling around twigs in an acrobatical manner. Watch for a fan-tail. If you’re unsure, their tail will tell you quickly that this bird really is the redstart.
You will need:
- Regular paper
- Card stock
- Foam sheet
- Pencil
- Black fine-tip marker
- Soft-lead pencil colors
- #20 fat brush
- #4 shader brush
- #3 round brush
- #0 round brush
- Acrylic paints: dark green, lime green, black, white, yellow, orange, red
- On regular paper, lightly draw 1” grid lines and sketch your bird scene block by block, keeping your blocks in order. When you like what you see, trace over your drawing with a fine-tip black marker. Place card stock over this and trace with a pencil.
- Place on hard surface to outline your bird with the appropriate color. For the eye, use a black pen, leaving a highlight. I used a Micron 5 green pen to outline leaves. Or use dark green pencil color. Use a find-tip stylus tool to draw in wing and tail divisions. Shade this with a black pencil color and watch the divisions snap out!
- Black is your main color. I added a bit of dark blue for highlighting. I confess that I began this with color pencil under-coating, then decided to switch to acrylic paints. It brought about more realism. But the under-coating still helped to provide the first needed coat and showed where the wing divisions were. Then it was easy to fill in with black paint. The wing and tail bars are a mix of yellow-orange and yellow, with reddish tinges and streaking.
- The leaves use dark green, lime green, and a bit of black. Pour out a small puddle of paint with each of these colors. Dip one side of #4 shader brush in black, and the other side in dark green. Blend together a bit on scrap paper. Let the guide picture show you where to place dark areas. Especially note the middle veins. Try keeping leaves in lighter green around the redstart so he “snaps” out. As a final touch, use a #4 shader brush and a mix of white and lime green to swipe in highlights to the leaves.
- The raspberries are a mix of red and black, using #3 round brush dabs. Then highlight them with a tiny bit of red and white. Use a green pen to make tiny prickles along the stems. The raspberry twig uses brown and a bit of cream prickles with your smallest #0 round brush.
- Now finish up your scene with a blue/purple haze-chalking background around the bird scene. I use a #20 fat brush to do this. (Remember to always do the first swabbing on scrap paper to avoid streaks!
There, wasn’t that fun? (Especially when it turned out well!)
