In this YouTube tutorial, Christie Renee Hawkins demonstrates how to paint a small, patriotic bird using acrylics, mixed‑media elements, and folk‑art accents. She begins by selecting a filbert brush for the bird’s main shape, mixing white and blue to achieve a lighter hue, and explains the curved “C‑shaped” stroke that forms the body. She then switches to a skinny liner brush for fine details such as legs, eyelashes, beak, and a flag, emphasizing the importance of loading enough paint to avoid streakiness. Hawkins shows how to add a flag, gold stars, and a crown using the same liner brush, and discusses using Mod Podge to adhere scrapbook paper to the wing and to seal the mixed‑media elements. Throughout, she offers practical tips—reusing old brushes with Mod Podge, keeping lids on chisel‑tip paints, and feathering strokes with light pressure—to encourage a relaxed, imperfect approach. The tutorial blends technical instruction with a supportive, enthusiastic tone, inviting viewers to experiment with color mixing, folk‑art details, and celebratory Fourth‑of‑July themes.
Chapters
Now let's paint ourselves a little bird. So I'm just going to use— this is one of the brushes in there. This is just a filbert brush, so it's got that little curve at the top of it. And we're gonna make a little blue bird. I'm gonna grab a little bit of white and a little bit of blue just to make it a little bit lighter. So my basic shape for my bird is like kind of like you're starting to do a C, and you just kind of keep going, and then this kind of swoops down like a hill. Oops, I got some dry paint on there. So it almost looks like a paisley. My dog's name is Paisley. She's probably like, what are you talking about? But it's kind of like a paisley shape. So not too hard. You guys might fall in love with these little birds after we do this one. today. I'm just adding some white to it. You don't have to. I'm just kind of playing with the colors here and blending. But do you see how these brushes glide nice and smooth? I like the filbert because it fills in. It's thick enough and wide enough that it fills in easily. But it's got that curved edges on the bristles, so it makes doing things with a curve nice and easy. So we've got the basic shape of our little birdie down here, and then we're going to switch to our liner brush. Because if I used that same brush or even a smaller round to try to get this point here, it'd be really, really hard to get it as fine as I want it. And the thing you have to remember with skinny liner brushes like this, it may seem— you may be tempted to just get like a dab of paint you really need to have— wrong way, wrong way. I'm getting there. You need to have a lot of paint in there so that it can make the brush stroke that you want it to. If you don't have enough paint, it's going to be really streaky and it runs out fast. See how this is streaky right here? So I'm just going to load back up. And pull down, and then I just kind of feather it in. If you want to go back and re-blend that, you can. I kind of like the feathering look. Okay, what do you guys think? Easy enough so far? Basic shape of the bird, and then we are going to I didn't get black on here yet. You can do the black legs one of two ways also. You could use— if you could use a Sharpie, if you're worried about doing those fine lines, you can use the liner brush with black paint, and I'll go over that to show you guys. But I like my legs on my birds to kind of come out like triangles. Like this basic little shape here, and then I have them have like a little, little line at the bottom. This is a terrible Sharpie that needs to be thrown away, but that's the basic shape. I'm going to use a liner brush and some black paint to put those on. I kind of miss painting on my easel. This is what I use when I taught paint nights. So I water down the black just a little. Just makes it a little bit thinner, easier to use. So we've got the nice liner brush filled up here. Just pull that straight down. Let's give him some little feet. How cute would this be with a couple little birdies walking behind him? You could have a little Fourth of July parade of birds. That'd be cute, wouldn't it? Maybe we'll have— should I have him hold like a little flag? Under his wing, maybe tuck a little American flag under his wing or hers. I'm gonna use this same liner brush and we're gonna give her just a little semicircle there. Now I don't always put eyelashes on on them, but we're gonna give her eyelashes today. And then you can also— so I talked about when we like do those accent marks, I'm gonna go around the outer edge here. She looks so funny without her beak. And again, I am barely putting any pressure down at all. Like the bristles are just lightly dragging across the canvas. And then sometimes I like to come on the outside of the shape. I just think it adds a little bit of movement. We're just gonna give her a little beak here. And sometimes I cut the little beak out of paper. I cut like a little triangle out and put that on there. Today I'm gonna paint it in though. And so I have that wing. Did you guys say yes to the flag? What do you guys think? Maybe like right here and have our flag sticking out here? I'm gonna have to cut this off. I'm thinking like this with a little flag. Okay, so let's— before I put that on, I'm I'm gonna go back and grab my liner brush again, and we'll go ahead and put the little flagpole up there. I want to add a little ground here too. I like making these little scenes. And you can make these birds in all kinds of colors. Okay, so let's go to— I'm gonna scoot you guys back for just a second. So keep those scrapbook papers hanging around. You can cut them out, use them. Like, I could have— I've done some where I cut the whole shape of the bird out scrapbook paper too. And I'm just going to clean off my filbert brush and I'm going to use that again. I'm going to put some of this Mod Podge on the backside of the wing and get it on here where we want it. I want a little bit of the wing. Sometimes I just do the wing in the body, but I think since she's holding the flag, I kind of want it like she's got it tucked under her arm there. So I just want to make sure it's got a good coat, our paper is not gonna peel up on us. She's so cute! Make sure when you use your Mod Podge— now I used that same brush. If you have some old brushes, I would recommend using old brushes when you use Mod Podge because sometimes it's really hard to get out of your bristles. So I'm gonna go in, I've got some bright red here, and again, I don't have to make her beak orange just because normally it would be, because we're doing a patriotic little bird today. And then I like to add paint to my scrapbook paper too instead of just leaving it just like that. Maybe add a little bit of white in there so you still see some of that pattern behind there. I'm gonna give some little polka dots on her nose, and again, I'm using this liner brush that I love. We're gonna come in. I always like to add white and black accent marks. Now we're gonna get our basic shape down of our flag. Do a little navy up here in the corner. Don't forget, we still got to add gold. So I'm gonna do my white first just so I'm not going back and dragging my, my I can't talk and paint at the same time sometimes. So I'm not dragging the red through the white later. Hopefully this ends with odd numbers here. What do we have? I may not. I may throw another stripe up there. We'll see. So I'm gonna tone down my red a little bit for my flag. So I've got the red on my plate, and I'm just gonna take a touch of of black. A little bit. Remember, a little bit of black goes a long way. It just tones it down just a little bit so it's not quite so, so bright. And I'm using that same liner brush, so I've been using the same one the whole time. Since this is more of a detailed painting, and I'm not worried about getting these lines perfectly straight. I think she's starting to come together. She's so cute. So I just want a little bit different color for— I want to do some streaks of color down on the ground. Where I did the black. So I'm making some purple here, mixing my navy and my red. I like to show you guys the color mixing so you can think outside of the box. Just keep playing with it until you get it the color you want it to be. I pulled in a little bit of white to it, and then I'm just gonna streak some— look at that pretty plum color down here. Gold stars, top of the flagpole. Yeah, I definitely want to do the flagpole in gold. Oh, I forgot my favorite part of the legs. My girls think these are so funny that I put them on all my birds. I love the skinny little lines on their legs. I told you guys I really like FolkArt, and this is is what gives it kind of that, like, FolkArt feeling to it. And on a white background, I'm not even having to worry about it going over the sides. Don't you love the little stripes on her legs? So I gotta add some stars up here. I'm flipping my brush over. I'm just gonna add a couple little dots up here. You guys may see this again because I'm betting my graphic designer Allison is gonna take this little image and turn it into a digital one. She's so cute because anytime I paint something like this on a white background, she can take that and do something fun with it. Actually, I want to go over a little black on this edge. Now remember what I said about not pushing down. Like, you can put pressure on it but you don't want to actually like depress the tip or you will have gold dripping down. The other thing to remember, this is permanent. When you need to shake it up, make sure you put your lid on. I've had paint nights where people have needed to get it, you know, shaken up again, and they're sitting there doing this without the lid on and we had gold paint everywhere. So make sure you put your lid on. And because it's a chisel, I'm gonna depress it here, make sure I've got a nice flow. You can use— can you guys see that? It doesn't show up very well, but you can use the pointed side to make skinny lines and then use the chisel side to make big thick lines. Now that she's got a crown, she's gonna need some cute little jewels on the top of it. You could also add, like, a little heart on the end of the tail for the bird if you wanted to. I think she's all decked out and ready for the Fourth. What do you guys think? She's leading the parade. I love her. She's so cute. Get a little bit closer look here. You see some of the detail, but I do want you guys to see when I'm showing you up close too how messy and imperfect things are up close. For you to not get too worried about the details and the perfectionism and just have fun, because look at all how messy everything is up close, but then as you get further away, you don't notice all that stuff. And just have fun celebrating this weekend. Bye!
