A blue Jay has a distinctive crest on its head and bright blue coloring.
The blue Jay is found in the eastern portion of the United States. A common songbird, it has a distinctive crest on its head and a bright blue color. Its favorite food is acorns, and it can hold them in a pouch in its throat to hide elsewhere. Blue Jays are larger than robins with a wingspan of 13.4 inches to 16.9 inches. A blue Jay's feathers are actually brown, and the blue coloring is caused by the scattering of light on its feather barbs. You can paint your own blue Jay, by using blue paint and fine brushes.
Instructions
1. Sketch the contour, or outline, of a blue Jay on your prepared canvas with a HB pencil, a soft-leaded drawing pencil. You can use a photo as a reference.
2. Draw a circle for the head with a thin triangle for its beak. Add a triangle for its head crest. Draw an oblong shape for its body with wings.
3. Draw a thick triangle for your blue Jay's tail and add thin legs. Add a branch just underneath its legs and wrap three claws for its perched feet.
4. Squeeze black and white paint onto your palette. Mix the two colors for dark gray, and paint the beak dark gray. The eyes can be painted black on your blue Jay using a fine-point brush.
5. Paint the area just on top of the beak black as well as area just behind the crest black. The legs and feet are also black.
6. Mix one part royal blue with one part white to paint the face, breast and underneath of the blue Jay. Use royal blue for the blue Jay's crest and back.
7. Paint the lines down the wings with black. Add some light blue, blue mixed with a little white, and darker blue, which is blue mixed with black or brown, on the wing feathers. Create bands or perpendicular wing stripes of black, which make the wings look almost like a grid.
8. Paint similar lines on the tail feathers, black down the tail and across. Add light blue and dark blue on the tail feathers. Add some white highlights on the tail and wing feathers.
9. Mix brown with white for a tree branch for your blue Jay to perch on, and paint any leaves green.
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