How to paint an acrylic budgie

Print the template out to A3, shade the backside with a 6B pencil, flip the sheet shaded side down onto the canvas, and retrace the outline. Obviously, you can draw this up directly, but if you are not to confident with your drawing you can use this method.

Once the outline has been transferred onto the canvas squeeze out some black onto the tear off paper palette. Using the smallest brush, paint in the eye and the eye ring. Remember to dip the brush in water before charging your brush with paint. Next, we can paint in the stripes that emit out from the eye. We will be painting yellow over these lines and will need to paint them in again at the end, but if we don’t first lay in the black first, we would lose any linework under the yellow paint.

Now, lay the background in with Pastel Mauve using the largest brush.  

The green of the chest can be laid in with Pastel Pear. Some Pastel Turquoise can be mixed with the pear to darken it and the wings can be painted in.

Then, create a golden yellow from a touch of pastel marigold and Pastel Lemon and paint this over the entire head. While this is drying, paint Pastel Iris over the background leaving some of the darker pastel Mauve show through in areas.

The beak can now be painted in with Pastel Apricot.  The area that covers the top of the beak is called the cere and we paint this in with pastel turquoise.

To create some interest on our budgies chest we paint some Pastel Chartreuse over the chest again leaving the darker colour beneath show through in areas.  We also paint Pastel Pear over the wings at this stage.

Pastel Yellow can then be painted over our budgies head.  As we do this, we concentrate the colour on the front and decrease the amount as we move to the back of the head.

Next, we can relay in the black linework on the head, the eye and the markings on the throat.

And with that our cute little budgie is finished!