Painting a Robin with a Cherry: My Loose Watercolor Approach
The Inspiration: A Lucky Moment on My Deck
Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and today I want to share with you one of my favorite painting experiences – capturing a robin with a cherry snack. This piece was inspired by a magical moment when I was eating lunch on my deck. An American robin suddenly appeared with a bright red cherry in its beak, staying still just long enough for me to grab a few reference photos with my iPhone.
Living where cherry trees grow means we get all sorts of wildlife visitors – raccoons, birds, you name it – all coming for those sweet cherries. But this particular robin gave me the perfect painting opportunity.
Starting with the Eye: Setting the Scale
Why the Eye Comes First
When I paint birds, I usually start with the eye. It's not just because eyes are the windows to the soul (though they are!), but because the eye sets the scale for the entire composition. I have a tendency to paint big, so I make sure to keep that eye really small. If I painted it too large, the whole bird would end up oversized, and the composition might look amateurish.
Since I don't sketch my subjects first, thinking about scale and the relationship of shapes while painting is crucial. You'll often see me using my hands to measure distances and angles – that's my way of keeping everything in proportion.
Color Testing: Protecting Your Expensive Paper
Before I touch my good watercolor paper, I always test my colors on a separate sheet. There's nothing worse than discovering you don't like a color mixture on expensive paper! This simple step has saved me countless times and gives me the confidence to work more freely on the final piece.
Building the Foundation: The First Wash
Working Slowly and Deliberately
Even though I've sped up my video tutorials by 150%, I'm actually painting quite slowly in real life. The majority of the work in this piece happens in the first wash – by the time I finish this initial stage, the painting is essentially complete, just needing details added later.
I keep my paints at lighter values during this foundation stage to ensure my placements are correct. That initial beak might not look like much, but I can always strengthen it later once I have more information to work with.
Embracing Mistakes with Confidence
Here's a confession: the eye ended up too close to the beak. I noticed it partway through, but you know what? I kept going. By the time I realized the mistake, trying to fix it would have made the painting look overworked. Instead, I continued with confidence, and honestly, I doubt you would have noticed if I hadn't pointed it out.
This is an important art lesson: continue with confidence. Often, what we think are glaring mistakes are invisible to others who just see a beautiful painting.
Color Choices: Balancing Realism and Artistic Freedom
The Cherry and Cohesion
While everything was still wet, I painted the cherry using permanent alizarin crimson – a cooler red that I wanted to flow into the beak. This creates cohesion between the cherry and the bird, avoiding that cut-and-paste or paint-by-numbers look.
The Robin's Signature Orange Belly
For the belly, I used quinacridone burnt orange for its earthy, natural quality, but spiked it with Aussie red gold – my favorite orange – because it's much brighter and more vibrant. I'm making art here, and I don't care if everything looks completely natural. I want to translate the essence: robins have dark bodies and orange bellies.
One magical thing happened as the belly dried – those dots of quinacridone burnt orange created a lovely dappled texture that looks just like feathers. I never touched that section again.
The Body: Lapis Brown Magic
For the bird's body, I used Lapis Brown by Rockwell Art. I love this color because it has an earthy look with a purple undertone, and it granulates and splits beautifully, creating natural texture variations.
Adding Story: Beyond Simple Documentation
Creating Narrative Through Composition
Initially, this was just a bird standing on my deck rail – nice, but it didn't tell much of a story. As an artist, I can add whatever I want! I bled the bird's pigment in a swooping, crescent moon composition (I love curved, rounded compositions over straight lines) and used green to suggest foliage, as if the bird plucked the berry directly from the tree rather than flying to my deck.
Color Adventures: Blue and Red Together
I added some Palaiba diamond blue – my favorite blue – because why not? I didn't want this to look too natural; I'm painting for fun! I also incorporated some red, dropping it straight into the green.
Normally, red and green create "mud" because they're complementary colors, but here's the key: they only get muddy if you mix them. By dropping wet paint into wet areas without messing with it, the colors fuse and merge while remaining somewhat separate. They blend without getting muddy.
Working with Gravity and Water
I keep my painting at a slight angle so water flows downward naturally. I love using gravity to help create those lovely, organic marks that would be difficult to achieve by hand alone.
Managing Wetness and Avoiding Blooms
Being careful about paper wetness is crucial. For the cherry area, I waited until it dried enough to drop in stronger color. If I had gone in with a really wet brush on still-wet paper, I would have created blooms – sometimes I want those, but not for the cherry.
The rule is: if your brush is wetter than the paper, you'll get a bloom. For controlled color application, your pigment should be of drier consistency than the paper's wetness.
The Negative Painting Marathon
What I didn't film was the extensive negative painting I did after the first wash dried. This took a very long time – I did it in small sessions between loading the dishwasher or putting my daughter to bed, painting for just five minutes at a time.
All I did was paint little triangles, squiggly lines, and curved lines to create the leaf and twig shapes you see in the final piece. It's methodical but meditative work.
Defining the Beak: Where Story Meets Technique
The Importance of Confidence
The beak is vital to this piece because the story is that the robin has a cherry. I used my liner brush with Aussie red gold (quinacridone colors can be too staining for areas where I might need to make changes).
Even though the beak area started as a light, blob-like shape connected to the cherry, adding hard lines with confidence creates the illusion of definition. That space where the beak opens, though technically painted, still reads as white because of the light values underneath.
Lost and Found Edges
I created warm shadows using quinacridone burnt orange in darker values – not black or brown, but the same color family with more pigment than water. This maintains color harmony while providing necessary contrast.
The key is balancing detail with the overall looseness of the piece. Details help tell the story and show importance, but your level of detail should be consistent throughout.
Final Details: Bringing It All Together
The Face Gets Attention
Since the story happens where the cherry is, the face deserves the most attention. Using a liner brush with Lapis Brown, I added facial feathers based on my iPhone reference photo. Ironically, the photo's lack of clarity was perfect – it forced me to stay loose rather than getting caught up in unnecessary detail.
Adding Shine and Corrections
I used gouache to add shine to the cherry (those things are glossy, especially on a sunny day!). When I added white gouache around the robin's eye and didn't like how it looked, I used water to soften it, then dabbed with paper towel – pressing and lifting, never rubbing.
The Unifying Leaf
One detail I added was a leaf on top of the robin where the belly meets the head. This helped merge the bird with the foliage, making the composition feel more connected and natural.
Lessons in Loose Watercolor
They key takeaways from this painting are:
Start with the eye – it sets your scale
Test colors first – protect that expensive paper
Most of the work happens in the first wash
Continue with confidence – perceived mistakes often aren't noticed by others
Use water and gravity as painting tools
Balance realism with artistic freedom
Consistent detail levels maintain painting unity
Storytelling elevates a simple subject
The beauty of watercolor is that you don't need to rush. Even though it dries quickly compared to oils, you can take your time and let the medium do much of the work for you.