Last week my kids' art class did sumi-e bird painting. We also tried our hand at painting from stencil designs. Stencils have clear shapes, but unlike a regular silhouette the shapes are broken down into smaller well defined areas. The stumbling block is that one may get confused and want to turn the white spaces in the stencils into black outlines. But notice the top right painting - this child used a 1/2" wide flat brush after he'd tried other ways. He concentrated so hard at twisting and turning his brush to make those shapes. I am really impressed. You will see it is the goose/duck with outstretched wings from the bottom of the stencil page below.

See notecards of my bird watercolor paintings too.

Update: Another lesson on painting birds.