Painting "Fashionista": A Moody, Monochromatic Crow in Lunar Black
I'm Valerie Englehart, and this time I'm painting a crow — a monochromatic piece done entirely in Daniel Smith Lunar Black. I don't paint crows very often, oddly enough, considering how much I love them. Maybe that's exactly why. Some subjects feel too precious to rush.
Setting Up: Wet Paper and a Plastic Board
I wetted my paper — 11 by 14 Arteza Expert Watercolor Paper. It's a more affordable option compared to some of the other papers I use, but I really like the quality and how it handles. I placed it on my plastic board, which lets me pick the piece up and hold it at an angle.
I started by painting in the background loosely, working toward a moody atmosphere before I ever touched my subject. This kind of technique takes real patience — once you tilt the board, you sometimes have to hold it for a full minute before you see any results. The temptation is to keep adding more water, but that mostly just washes everything away instead of helping.
This is a cold press paper, so the granulating textures I get are a bit softer than they'd be on a smoother hot press paper. Still lovely effects, though. I've tried this technique on four or five different papers now, and while cotton hot press performs the best, I haven't found one yet that doesn't work — as long as you understand its properties.
Building the Nest
I put in some strokes to establish where the nest would sit, then used a spray bottle at a diagonal angle to get those characteristic drips. For splattering heavy pigment, I reached for an oil brush — a cheap one I picked up at Michael's years ago — since oil brushes are built to hold heavy pigment in a way watercolor brushes aren't. I wanted my water control to come entirely from the spray bottle instead.
I also brought in some granulating medium, just splashing it in to see what kind of texture would show up.
For the eggs, I used a lift technique with an old size six synthetic watercolor brush, pulling out egg shapes while the paper was still wet — that's important, because lifting while wet keeps the edges soft. Most of this painting happened in a single wash.
Bringing In the Crow
With the paper still wet, I moved on to my actual subject. Off to the side, I had a reference I'd built myself in Procreate — copying and pasting together a crow angle I liked and a nest shape I liked, both sourced from copyright-free sites like Pexels and Unsplash, then working out composition and values digitally before ever touching paint to paper.
I blocked in the crow's shape and used the spray bottle again, paying close attention to the direction the water and paint were flowing — that directional movement is part of the composition, not an accident. The oil fan brush gave me more of that organic, bristly texture I love.
Honestly, a lot of this painting happened by just holding the board at an angle and seeing what occurred. That kind of technique means relinquishing control, which I think is a big part of watercolor generally — letting the medium do what it does best while I just respond to it.
Using Procreate as a Sketchbook, Not a Shortcut
I love using Procreate on the side, even mid-painting. Sometimes a piece looks finished, but something's missing, and you don't want to risk overworking it to find out what. So I'll photograph the painting in progress, bring it into Procreate, and test ideas — especially before adding gold leaf, since digital undo lets me push things too far on purpose and learn what "too far" looks like before committing on paper. That way I go back into the actual painting with more confidence.
Feathers are genuinely one of my weaker areas as an artist, so this piece pushed me. Some of the feathering on the left side of the crow happened entirely by accident, and it's some of my favorite texture in the whole piece. When something beautiful happens on its own, the best move is to leave it alone.
Lifting, Values, and Knowing When to Stop Adding Dark
While the painting was still wet, I lifted the top of the beak. Wetting both sides of the paper and keeping it on the plastic board extends the working window considerably. As long as a watercolor painting stays wet, it's still in “play” — though I had to coach myself, almost every few minutes, not to overwork it just because I still could.
Since crows are black, I could technically have painted this in any color, but I wanted that moody granulation that Lunar Black specifically gives. Values became critical here — even with a black subject, I had to leave some areas light enough that the darks would actually read as depth. Once everything goes dark, there's nothing left to create dimension against.
I used small negative shapes to bring the branches (this crow, after all, is wearing its nest like a crown) forward, letting dark values sit next to light ones so the light pops. I like painting loosely enough to leave room for the viewer's imagination, but there's a point where too loose stops giving the viewer enough to piece together — I try to land just shy of that line.
For the feathers, I used the same negative-shape approach, just placing the marks closer together and smaller near the head to suggest that feathers there are finer than the ones on the wings.
A Note on Speed (and Why This Took All Day)
This video is sped up about 250%, so what looks like twenty minutes of work was, in reality, a full day of starting and stopping. I don't want anyone watching to think a painting like this should only take as long as it appears to take on screen — that's an illusion of the format, not a standard to hold yourself to.
At one point I liked the directional flow I'd built but found it a little too uniform, so I turned the paper to send the water flowing at a different angle and softened the line. Then I stepped back and let it dry.
Working the Eye and Learning to Trust Corrections
Once the painting had dried, I moved to the eye — lifting an area of light, then reintroducing dark paint on top of it, over and over. I painted the eye once, decided it was too small, and simply wiped it away and tried again. Watercolor has a reputation for being unforgiving, and it's true that you can't correct it the way you'd correct acrylic or oil. But you can absolutely make corrections — you just need to understand how your paints, brushes, and paper behave, and be willing to let go of the exact picture you had in your head.
I also lifted tiny dots around the crow's eye. Barely visible on camera, but small details like that are often what convince a viewer you actually know your subject.
Stepping Back to See the Whole Painting
Since this piece took me all day in fits and starts, I had a lot of opportunities to step away from it — which I'd genuinely recommend. Prop your painting up, view it from six feet away, then from across the room. Interact with it the way an actual viewer would, since most people won't be standing three inches from the paper the way we do while painting.
Shapes read completely differently from a distance — you see the big picture instead of the individual marks. I thought this piece was finished, since it matched my Procreate mock-up, but looking at it from across the room, I felt like the story wasn't quite complete yet. So don't rush to finish a painting in one sitting. Put it away for a day if you need to.
Adding the Tree, and Then the Gold
After sitting with it a bit, I decided the piece needed a dark value behind the nest. While using my oil fan brush for this, I discovered it's fantastic for abstract leaf shapes — so now this crow isn't just wearing a nest crown, it's perched in a tree. This crow very likely just claimed that nest for itself.
For the final touches, I planned to add gold to the eggs, but after testing options in Procreate, I decided to bring gold around the nest as well, to call more attention to it. I keep my paint in clean, reused jam jar lids for pieces like this that use a lot of one color — cheap, easy to clean, and the perfect size. A little reduce, reuse, recycle in the studio.
The gold mostly ended up on the nest and the eggs, with just a touch under the eye — because she's fabulous. This piece is called Fashionista.
Why a Crow, and Why in July
I love crows, and I love surrealism, and I don't paint either nearly enough. But the real reason for this piece right now, in the middle of July, is timing — galleries and art licensing businesses are always working ahead. There's a gallery in one of the Seattle neighborhoods with an open art call for crow-themed work, and I missed submitting last year because I was too busy. This year, I'd love to submit three pieces, though even one that I'm genuinely proud of would be worth it.
The last piece I got into this particular gallery was a gouache-and-watercolor crow enjoying an old-fashioned soda parlor milkshake, dripping in candy and color — I called it Candy Crow. This one is the opposite: moody, textured, and subdued instead of dopamine-bright.
Final Thoughts
Wet-into-wet techniques take patience — resist the urge to keep adding water before results have time to show up.
Building a reference collage in Procreate is a great way to work out composition and values before ever touching paint to paper.
When something beautiful happens by accident, leave it alone. Don't chase perfection over what's already working.
Watercolor mistakes are correctable more often than people think — you just have to understand your materials.
Step away from a painting and view it from a distance before deciding it's finished.