Painting a feather in a realistic style.

Hi friends!

I want to show you some steps to remember when painting with opaque mediums, such as oil, pastels or digitally emulating opaque paint.

We start, of course, with a sketch that is as detailed as we want.

Paint the top of the feather with a very, very slightly dark off-white colour, avoiding using pure white.

On the bottom part, use the same white but a little darker, very subtly.

For the feather tip, we'll use a black but slightly light colour, avoiding using an intense deep black.

Add some touches of the same black colour on the opposite side too.

On the dark tip, draw black barbs and also dark-white barbs. Take care of drawing the barbs diagonals and parallels between them.

In the white area, also draw the barbs with an even darker white colour and alternate them with some barbs in pure white. Notice the subtle addition of yellows, ceruleans and greys.

Important, to get realism, is to consider imperfections like these, on the feather edge.

Also, draw imperfections on the feather body and some stains as well.

On the afterfeather, paint downy barbs...

To finish, work on the shaft to make it smooth and round. Blend the colours if necessary.

Finally, paint the shadow to get the illusion of the feather is on a surface.

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I wish you a very nice day!