WAXBILLS LESSON – Online Painting Tutorial In Watercolour
WAXBILLS – Painting Lesson in Watercolour
Welcome to this month’s painting lesson. I’m so pleased to share a beautiful new bird study with you, exploring the sweet and characterful St Helena Waxbill in realistic watercolour. This lesson offers a gentle but rewarding challenge, and our subject, a pair of Waxbills perched so gently together, brings both visual charm and wonderful learning opportunities to our table.
This course is designed to further develop your bird painting skills, with a strong focus on subtle colour relationships, refined tonal balance, and the softest suggestions of feather texture. With areas that are less contained and more softly defined, this subject encourages thoughtful interpretation and allows you a little more freedom to express your own storytelling within the painting.
Together, we’ll work through delicate layering, timing, and touch, using watercolour’s natural qualities to build form, warmth, and life. It’s a lovely change of pace, offering both technical growth and a calm, immersive painting experience, and of course, I’ll be right here with you, guiding you step by step throughout the process to create your own, beautiful Waxbills painting. I loved this image as soon as I saw it, and Im so pleased to share its beauty with you in this way.
COURSE HIGHLIGHTS
✨ Subtle Feather Textures – Learn how to suggest softness and form with timing
🎨 Refined Colour Balance – Explore gentle shifts in hue and tone to create delicacy, warmth and realism
🖌️ Interpretive Watercolour – Develop confidence working with less defined areas
🐦 Bird Storytelling – Capture a greater character and connection with our paired subjects
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
👀 How to build soft foundations using layered washes and controlled timing
✨ Ways to increase tonal depth while preserving light and delicacy
🎯 How to approach small but important features like eyes, beaks, and legs with more confidence
⭐️ Techniques for suggesting feather form without overworking your painting
WHY JOIN?
If you enjoy painting birds in watercolour and want to refine your touch, balance, and interpretive skills, this lesson is a wonderful addition to your practice. The Common Waxbill offers a beautiful blend of softness and colour, making it ideal for improving your confidence while creating a painting full of character and life.
COURSE FEATURES
✅ Detailed step-by-step video guidance
✅ Learn at your own pace from anywhere
✅ Optional second bird study for extended practice
✅ Share and connect in our supportive Facebook Student Group
Our heartfelt thanks go to My Gouldian Aviary for allowing us to work from their beautiful reference photographs. Please remember that all images and artwork created in this course are for your personal learning use only. If you share your work online, crediting this course helps support our community and keeps these lessons thriving. We hope youll join us for this, and/or so many other online painting tutorials available for you on my Patreon Channel.
Happy painting everyone — I’ll see you in the wash!
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Check out these links for more information
Get started on the WAXBILLS painting tutorial
See this painting in short time lapse on Youtube or a much longer version on Patreon
Watch the course introduction clip
Did you know, the WAXBILLS painting tutorial is just one of a range of bird painting, botanical illustration and natural history studies in my own realistic watercolour painting style on offer? Why not check out what else is available. Theres lots on offer and we’d love to see you there!
dont want to sign up? you can purchase individual painting tutorials now instead!
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