How to Draw and Paint an Adorable Little Duckling

Paint a duckling that’ll waddle right into your heart. It’s the perfect Easter — or springtime— project!

Watercolor Duckling

Level: Easy

What You Need

Instructions

1. Sketch the Duckling

Make a few rough sketches of ducklings in different poses so you can determine your composition. Look at the duckling’s features as an overall shape — an oval body, a circle head, a triangle beak, etc. This helps you get the basics down first.

If you’re struggling with getting the shape right, use a reference photo and make a grid so the proportions are more accurate. Go block by block to compare where each line should be.

Pro Tip: If using the grid method, make sure to draw your lines very lightly so you can erase them once your drawing is finished.

2. Define the Details

When you’re happy with the sketch, take your time adding the details, like the webbed feet and downy fluff. Make light pencil marks in the areas that will require shading and depth — this will be important when you start painting.

3. Paint the First Wash

Add a water glaze on the duck’s entire body, leaving the feet, eyes and beak dry. Mix cadmium yellow with Naples yellow on your palette to make a pale, buttery shade. Drop in the color until the body is covered. Don’t worry about making the wash even — the areas that will require shading should be more saturated.

4. Add Texture and Shading

Saturate more color to add texture and shading while the paper is still damp. To make a deeper yellow for shading, mix a small amount of burnt sienna into your yellow.

Continue building layers of color and adding shading, using your reference photo as a guide.

Good to Know: For the wild duckling in the center, we added stripe markings when the paper was damp so it still spread a little, but not too much. This helps the stripes keep a fuzzy edge, making them look more natural.

5. Paint the Details

Using a pale orange shade, paint the feet and beak. Paint ivory black for the eye and finish it off with a white catch light.

Pro Tip: You can use titanium white watercolor paint or white gouache for the catch light. The gouache can be painted directly over the black watercolor, but you won’t be able to see white watercolor over black. If you choose to use watercolor, leave a small space for the catch light unpainted when adding the eye.

Your duckling is done!