Painting colourful birds is one of my favourite things to do, and this duck painting was no exception. Mallard ducks have such beautiful natural green and blue feathers, and this makes them so much fun to paint, especially if you like painting colourful animals!
In this tutorial I show you exactly how I painted this duck in acrylic paints, step by step. If you prefer to watch the video process, then you can watch that on my YouTube Channel below
If you want to watch the full length tutorial in real time, then you can join my Patreon and get access to this as well as all of my other full length art tutorials!
I hope you enjoy watching the video! If you want the written instructions then they are below:
How to Paint a Duck in Acrylics
You will need:
- Acrylic paints – white, blue, green, yellow, pink, brown and black
- Paintbrushes
- Canvas
Step 1:
I started out by drawing the outline of the duck onto the canvas with pencil. I then painted a blue wash over the canvas using watered down light blue paint so I could still see the pencil lines underneath. To finish the background I painted different shades of pink, yellow, purple and blue with thick, textured brush strokes.
Step 2:
Start painting the duck using a mix of blue and green paint. Use lighter blues and green where the sun will be hitting the duck’s face, and darker teals in the shadowed areas.
Step 3:
Continue to paint the duck’s face using the same colour paints. Don’t worry too much about the texture at this stage as you can add that in the next layer.
If you want to know the exact paints and other materials I used for this painting I explain all of this and more in my Patreon!
Step 4:
Continue to paint the rest of the first layer of the duck using a mix of brown, purple, pink and white paints. If you want to keep the colours more realistic then stick mainly to brown shades of paint. I like to make my animal paintings really colourful so I added shades of pink into this section too!
Step 5:
Paint the second layer of the duck’s feathers using the exact same paint colours as before, but this time focus on adding the feather texture.
You can also increase the contrast at this stage by darkening the shadows and brightening the highlights.
Step 6:
Paint the duck’s eye using a mix of black, blue and white acrylic paint. I used a smaller paintbrush to paint the eye so that I could add more detail to this part of the painting.
I love painting animal eyes! I have created lots of videos showing you how I paint different animal eyes. These are all available on my YouTube Channel!
Step 7:
Paint the duck’s beak using a mix of yellow, white and brown shades of acrylic paint. Use white for the brightest highlights, and add browns to create the more shadowed areas.
Focus on your reference photo to make sure you are painting the highlights and shadows in the right places.
Step 8:
Finish the colourful duck painting by adding in extra feather details, neatening up the edges and increasing the contrast to create that metallic effect that mallard ducks have in the sun.
I hope you enjoyed this art tutorial and I hope you have fun painting your colourful duck! Sign up below to get my top 10 tips for painting colourful animals:
