Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this
skillshare class on how to paint a black dog in acrylic
paints. My name is Alex. I'm a pet portrait and animal artists specialize
in acrylic paints. I've painted hundreds of pet and animal portraits
in the past from Boxers, Labradors, poodles, Chihuahuas, and I've
even painted a rabbit. In today's class,
we're going to be learning how to paint
a black Labrador. Black dogs are notoriously
hard to paint, hidden amongst all that fur. There are many different
colors other than black. The trick to make your
black animals look realistic is to use warm and cool colors
throughout your painting. I'll be going over all the
materials that you need, how you can sketch out
your reference photo onto your painting service, without the need for
good drawing skills. How to prepare your palette. And also to mix colors, blacks and grays, that
are both warm and cool. I'll also be showing
you how you can use complimentary colors
on the color wheel to improve the look
of your painting. Feel free to grab a coffee and watch these
classes one by one. Alternatively, you
could grab a paintbrush and your paints and your palette
and paint along with me. It's entirely up to you. Without further ado, let's
talk about your class project.
2. Class Project: For the class project. I would
love it if you had to go at painting your own black
dog or black animal, You can use the reference photo that I'm going to be using of B. This is my brother's dog. You're free to use
him. I will link him down below in the
resources section. Alternatively, you could use your own reference photo that either you've taken
yourself or you could go off and find one on websites like
Unsplash or Pix Art. There's loads of photos on
there that are royalty free, so you're free to use them. Once you have finished
your paintings, please please share
a photo of them. You can upload them to
the class project section in the resources down below. I would love love,
love to see them. And I will give comments and feedback on every
single one that I see.
3. Materials: Now I'm going to quickly run through all the materials
that you're going to need. First up, as I mentioned in
the class project section, you're going to need a
reference photo to work from. I'll be using this
reference photo B. I've printed it off
onto a four paper. As you'll see, some grid
lines are drawn on top. This is just to help with the pencil sketch onto
your painting surface. For this you'll need
either a pencil or a bro. I used a bro because it's easier to seal the lines
on a reference image. You're also going to need
a ruler and a rubber. When we get to the
painting stage, you're going to
need paint brushes. What I will say is
that you don't need the best or most expensive
ones to make a good painting. I still use cheaper branded
paint brushes in their work, just as fine as a
general rule of thumb. If the paint brush is becoming misshaped very easily or the
bristles are falling out, it may be too far towards the
cheaper end of the scale, so you might want to invest
a little bit more money. I would suggest
getting one large, one small, and one medium sized. I love using flat brushes. I'll show you an example. I love using flat
brushes like this, but you could equally use a
round brush or a filbert. It's entirely up to you and your personal preference or what you might have
available already at home. Yeah, as long as you
have a large for blocking in large areas
of colors, a medium size, and then a smaller one for
doing fine details like the eyes and the whiskers,
then that's perfect. Next up, you're going
to need some paints. I'm going to be using
acrylic paints. I really love these
brands from La Rowe. They're, they're cheaper
price point paints. There's the Graduate
series which is this one, and also the System
three series. Again, you don't need to buy the most expensive
paints at this point, just buy ones that are
reasonably priced and ones from reputable brands like Dyl Rowe or Windsor Newton. They're going to do
a really good job. Next up we have the
painting surface. I love using stretched
cotton canvas. For this class I'm going
to be using size 30 by 30. Obviously you can
choose a different size depending on what
reference photo you're going to be using. If it suits a
different size canvas, then just go for that. But as long as you're applying the same principles
that I'm going to be teaching you when it
comes to your pencil sketch, then it will still
work just as good. Other alternatives
to stretched canvas can be paper or board. You can also pick
these up fairly inexpensively from
your local art shop. Again, it's just based
on personal preference or what you have
already at home. Then a few other
things you're going to need are a water pot. Now obviously with
acrytic paints, the only thing that you
need to mix into it to make it more workable is water. Just bear in mind
that you're going to need to be
changing your water fairly often because it will get brown and muddy
fairly quickly. You're also going to
need an old rag or some tissue just to wipe your paint brush on to get
rid of the excess water. The last thing is a
painting palette, you're going to need something
to put your paints onto. I love using what's called
a stay wet palette. Other options are things like paper plates or maybe
a pane of glass. Something that works
really, really well is an old picture frame with
the glass still in it. You can just lay it down flat on your table and square the
paints out onto there, and it works really, really
nicely as a palette, because you can move
the paints around and mix them really well
on the surface.
4. Your Pencil Sketch: Okay. When it comes
to drawing out your reference photo onto
your painting surface, you don't necessarily
need to have the best drawing
skills in the world. We are going to use something
called the grid method. If you're not
familiar with this, then in another skill
share class that I have called painting
your pet from a photo, I go through this in detail. There is a class in there
called your pencil sketch. If you wanted to learn
about it in greater detail, then head over to that
class and find that lesson. But I will show you the grid that I've drawn
on OBs reference photo. As you can see, I've drawn
and numbered a grid up to 20, 20 wide and 20 high because
my canvas is square. You want to do this on
your reference photo. If you don't have the
ability to print it out, there are online grid drawing
tools that you can use. I will link to one
below that I used before via a website
called Art Tua. It's a really,
really good one, so I'll link it down in
the resources section. You then want to
draw a similar grid onto your painting surface. Here is the grid drawn
onto my painting surface. I've drawn the same
number of squares across the top and
down the bottom. But because this
is 30 centimeters, I've had to increase
the sizes of my squares slightly
to 1.5 centimeters. Now, that is the key here. You have to have exactly the
same number of squares on your reference image and on your drawing surface.
Otherwise, it won't work. And then once you've got the grid drawn out on both
and you've numbered them, you can then go ahead
and start drawing your outline using the
corresponding squares, and it just makes
it so much easier. It does take a bit of
time, but it's definitely worth it because by the
end of the process, you will have peace of
mind that you've got a very accurate drawing
and it will just make the painting
process so much easier. The final thing I'm
going to do with my pencil sketch is
just use a rubber. I use one of these
putty rubbers. You just want to try
and rub out as much as possible any of the grid
lines that are still showing. Obviously, you're probably
not going to be able to get every single last
bit of pencil off, but yeah, as long as you take the majority and we're going to be painting over
all of this anyway, so it's not vitally important. Next up, I will show
you how we're going to prepare our palette
and mix our colors.
5. Preparing Your Palette: Okay. I'm now going to
show you on here how I mix my blacks and my grays
to paint B's portrait. First up, I'll show you the colors that I'm
going to be using. I'll run through
these one by one. So the first one is
ultramarine blue. I'll just squeeze
a little bit out. Let's move that down so you
can see that's the first one. Then I am going to be
using a yellow ochre. That's going to be my yellow. And the red that I've chosen
to use is cadmium red. Then this is a brown with
a leaning towards orange. So it's a warm color. This one's called burnt umber. Then I also have titanium white as usual,
a big dog about that. At the end, I have
turned my lights off. There's just natural light
coming through the window, which may be why it's not
uniform across the palette. But it's much better to
use natural light because you can see when I
mix up the colors, you can see the hues a
lot better to mix them. I'm going to use
this palette knife. I just got some tissue because I'll be wiping
off the paint when I mix the colors so they don't mix into each other
when they're not supposed to. The first black that
I'm going to mix, I'm going to use
blue and my orange. My burnt umber is my orange, and I've got my
ultramarine blue. I'm going to take them
in equal measures, wiping my palette
knife in between. I think I've got slightly
more blue on there. But if you start mixing, you can see what color you
need to add more of. That's actually quite good, I think as you can see, that's made a very
dark, rich black. So if I can show you on
there, keep mixing that. Now if you wanted to
make that black warmer, you just add a touch
more of the burnt umber. And if you wanted to
make it slightly cooler, you're going to add a touch
more of the ultramarine blue. Now to make my gray from this, I'll just take a small
amount, just we. Then you want to add some of the titanium white that
might have been too. Then mix those two together. As you can see, it's
now making a gray. We've made this gray by not
using any black at all. It's a colorful gray. Again, if you wanted to make
that gray slightly cooler, just add a touch more of
the ultramarine blue. If you wanted to make
it a bit warmer, a bit of the burnt umber white is Titanium white is
a very cool color. It's actually cooler
than the blue. Making this gray color will cool it down to just be
mindful of that. Now the next black
that I'm going to mix, I'm going to use purple and yellow, two
complimentary colors. Now I don't have purple
squeezed down onto my palette. I'm going to make a purple using ultramarine blue and red. As you can see, when I'm
mixing these colors, I'm using compliment the
blue and orange mix. Blue and orange are
complementary colors. I'm now doing a
purple yellow mix and they are both
complimentary colors. Let's those in together. Again, just judge with
your eye if you need to add a bit more of any color, I think that's
actually pretty good. That's made a very dark,
rich purple color. Then into that, I'm going
to add some of my yellow, which is my yellow cat. Maybe a little touch
more as it very slowly, because yellow ochre is not a transparent
color, it's opaque. It's going to slightly change
the color of the black. It's going to make
it a bit lighter. That's okay. So that's my
next black black color. Again to gray. You want to add a little bit of white to make your gray cooler. Just add a bit more
of your purple. And to make it warm, just add a bit more of
your yellow ochre. Now that's a purply
gray, a cool gray. To warm up, I'll just a slight
touch of the yellow ochre. And as you can see,
that instantly makes it a color touch more. Yeah, that's a nice
warm gray there. The third black that
I'm going to mix, the two complimentary colors
that I haven't mixed yet, is green and red. To make my green,
I'm going to use my blue and yellow mix
those two together. That's probably going
to be too much blue. Let's see. So as you can see, we still haven't used any black at all. So these are all very
colorful blacks. Shall we say, A bit more
of the yellow going in. That's still be still too blue. A bit more of the yellow Oka. Move slightly over
into the light a bit more, keep mixing. That is our green. And then into that we want
to our complimentary of red. You don't want to add too much of these strong
colors in one go. You want to add it
slowly and then you can always put more
on if you need to. You can't take the
paint back out again. Okay. And that's
our third black. I don't know if that's
coming out very well. It might be a bit too red, but if you do think
it's too red, you can add a bit
more of your green. So you're blue and your yellow, Then let's just turn
this into a gray mix in a bit of the yeah, I do think that I need to
add a bit more yellow, a bit more of my yellow mix, and a bit more of
the blue as well. That should make it
slightly more cooler. Just added in, my green green
is a transitional color. It can be cool and
it can be warm. You can get blue green, blue greens are
cooler obviously, and you can get more ready
greens which would make them warmer. That's much better. I know that in my
original black mix, I need to add a bit more of the green because when
I added white to it, it was coming up
noticeably redder in tone. Yeah, I will just amend that slightly by adding
some more of the blue and the yellow that's made a
really lovely green gray. You can see that there. Even now I'm looking
back at this one and I feel like I
could add a little bit more of the orange into
that because that's looking like a very blue gray there, just by adding a tiny
bit of that burnt umber. Just knocked it back a little
bit of its blue leaning. You could have a
go at this before you start your painting. It's a very basic palette. We've got our blue,
our yellow or red. We've got an orangey
brownie color and lots of titanium white. Just have a go at mixing up three different types of black using your
complimentary colors, and then adding a little bit of white into this to
get your grays.
6. Starting the Painting: To begin the painting, we're going to start off with just one color and that
is your burnt number. We're going to use
about one, two paint, half water to make a
very watery consistency. I would liken it to
thick water color. And then we're going to
take our medium brush and start the painting. Load your medium sized brush up with some of that burnt
umber and water mix. Then we're basically going to follow the outline of
your pencil sketch. This is to be used as a guide for you as you progress further
into your painting. When you paint on
top of the pencil, you may lose some
of those lines. This is just a way of recording
where the shapes are. You also want to be looking for any particularly
dark areas in your reference image and also painting that in with that
burnt umber color as well. Any light areas either just use a very watery wash of the burnt umber or
leave them as white. For now, with this initial
layer of paint your person on, you might find it quite
difficult to spread it around. That is true in most cases
of the initial layers. Because the canvas is soaking
up more of the paint, you'll probably find
you'll be using a lot more water in
these first layers. Yeah. Just keep the consistency of
your paint like water color, which means that you will
need to keep on adding more and more water into
your burnt umber paint. Just following not
just the outlines of the pencil sketch, but I'm also paying attention to where the darkest areas
are in the reference photo. These could be dark areas because of a
particularly dark area of fur or it could be because
some of the dogs in shadow. Yeah, you really want to start thinking at
this point about the lightest and darkest areas and giving yourself clues for
later on in the painting, just setting down these
light and dark areas now so that when you come
to put color on top, giving yourself a head start, basically where I'm rubbing
the paint brush on like this. This is called scumbling. I don't really want there to be loads of dark
paint and I also, I don't want it to be too
light around this nose area. It's a mixture of the two. Again, I'm giving myself
a head start there by putting in a bit of
texture almost as well. Looking at Ob's reference photo, I feel like the light is coming from this direction and
it's hitting this area. Then this part here to his right side is darker
and more in shadow. I think exaggerate that
lighting slightly. You want to make sure
that you want to try and you want to try and capture the light in your paintings
would just make it look a bit more realistic. You do want everything
to be flat and lifeless. You want to capture that light. Have a look at your
reference image. Now, if you're not painting OB, then just see where you think your light
source is coming from. And start thinking about which areas you're going to slightly exaggerate your
lights and your darks. The real dark area is this, nostril nostrils are mostly always the darkest
area of a dog. All dogs have black
nostrils or actually, I don't know if all
have black nostrils. I think all the dogs
that I've painted have had black nostrils. These bits here, around
the eyes here and here, both very dark as well. This one probably slightly
darker, I would say. Then this area in
the middle between his eyes is fairly
light overall. But again, I might just
do a little bit of that scumbling texture because it's dark flex within the light, but overall, I would say
that shape was lighter. Most my medium sized brush, they've got slightly
larger brush now I was finding that
one was a bit small. I think people when they
first start out painting, are scared of big brushes. But they're actually a lot easier in these
initial stages because they help you to not
paint in too much detail. You physically can't
paint small areas, therefore, it won't allow you
to paint in finer details. Maybe start off this part
with a larger brush. Now this is an example of a brush that is probably
a little bit too cheap. I don't know if you can see, but they're splitting
like that when I paint. That's what I mean when I say
they're getting misshapen. That is making it a
bit difficult for me. But in these initial layers, it doesn't matter too much about the brush strokes
because as I said, getting in those light and dark. But when I come onto
the next stage, I might switch paint brushes
because this one is just not doing it for
me at the moment. Let me just move the
camera down slightly, so I'm just going
to work on here is chin and neck area again. This side here is very dark, this slide here is dark. Let's just put in some
dark color there. Because we're painting
in thin layers, it's going to dry very quickly. If some areas are
dried a bit lighter, you can obviously revisit them, just make them slightly darker. It's a black dog, most areas are going to be dark. You might find that
you want to cover everything in this
burnt umber color, but just add an
extra layer if it's a very dark area here. This is actually quite
light this bit here. I don't want to
touch that too much, just add a little bit here. The darkest area around
his whiskers is this bit, and then it's a bit
lighter on the edge here around the eyes a bit. Grab my smaller brush again
and I'm going to do a bit more around the eye. This bit is very dark and this bit I'm looking a bit
of a mess at the moment. But trust the process
and eventually it will work out right. I think I'm going
to leave it there. And you want to wait for that to dry and then
we're going to do a wash over the whole
surface of yellow ochre. To put our yellow ochre wash
over the whole surface, we're going to use
our large brush. So I've got this
large flat brush and we just want to make up a yellow och mix. We want to make up
a yellow ochre mix. Just take a bit and then
grab a lo of water. Your pallet is probably
going to become very messy. I'm trying to keep it neat
and organized so I can show you in this lesson, but inevitably is going
to end up very messy. Okay, a bit more water. I think that's good to go now. Now, the reason why I love using this color for
my underpainting is that most of the time
because I'm painting animals, they are going to be
slightly warmer than say, if you're painting like a snowy landscape or something
that's particularly cold. In undertone, this yellow acre is a very warm
yellow and it just sets the scene for the
rest of the painting. Also, it's much harder to paint your values if you have a lot of white background showing
on your painting. Obviously, white is very light. It's going to skew
the way you paint values because you'll always
have that lightest area. I basically want to
remove all of the white, then it's just easier to judge
your values much better. Okay, there we go. If you wanted to, you could
do the edges as well. Obviously, that's not necessary if you didn't want
to paint your edges. I normally do, but I'll save
that for the end, I think. Okay, then you want to
leave that to dry again? It shouldn't take too long because it's a very thin layer. Join me in my next lesson where we'll be adding
in some color.
7. Adding Your First Blacks: The first color that I'm taking here is my first
black that I mixed, which was the ultramarine
blue and the burnt umber. After studying my reference
photo, if you're not using V, you might want to do
a little study of your reference image
first and just work out where your
different darks are. You're going to have
cooler darks and warmer dark blacks
with B sport trait. There's quite a lot
of cool color in the highlights around this
area and around here as well, Light equals warm shadows. I'm surmising that
because a lot of the lighter areas in this
photo are cooler in color, that the light is cool. Therefore, I'm going to make my shadow areas a
little bit warmer. I'm just going to use this
same color in the really, really dark areas
areas of his face. This ultramarine blue and burnt umber mix is
a very rich black. It's very nice and dark. I'm going to go in first
with all my darkest areas. As I mentioned when we were running through how
to prepare your palette, If you wanted to make this
color slightly cooler, you can add a bit more
of the ultramarine blue. If you wanted to make
it a bit warmer, you can add some more
of the burnt umber. I'm just going to alternate
between the two now and yeah, just painting those
darkest areas of black. Now, this is going to be the first of many layers,
not the first. It's the second layer, isn't it? It's going to be
one of many layers. Don't worry if you can still see patches shown
for you underneath. Because eventually
we'll cover that up some darker areas here running through
his muzzle area. I just suggest those for now. This area here on his
nose is very cool. I can even see some purple tones along the top ridge here. I might add a little bit more of the ultramarine blue into my mix just to cool
that down slightly. As you can see, that's
a cool blue black. Again, don't be too
precious about anything. This is still very early
when I work on a painting. I don't focus on any
one area at a time. I work my way around. Yeah, there's no rhyme or
reason for it, really, just whatever catches
my eye sometimes I do. A lot of artists do work
in small areas at a time. But I think there's a lot of
benefits to not doing that, especially when you're focusing
on values quite a lot. If you're just
painting one area, it may skew your
values because you'll have a lighter area where you've not applied
that much paint. Yeah, I think it's
good to bring up the whole painting or bring the whole of the surface up at the same time.
That makes sense. Again, this area here
is slightly bluer, just not Let me try to turn
that around a little bit. That's a bit better,
isn't it? The sun was reflecting off there
and it was hard to see. That's better as I'm adding more and more paint on because you're looking at
your reference photo, so much things start becoming more and more C because you
are studying it all the time. I think my warmest area is here. I'm going to keep that brownie black detail on the eye. Now the pupil is very dark. And top of the eye here as
well has dark on there. Now at this stage, don't worry if it looks terrible like mine, it can start looking like a five year old's
done it sometimes. But you got to
trust the process. As I say, we just lay down the foundations
for the final painting. We've still got a long, long way to go now. The lightest area of
the painting is here, so this is going to be your
highest contrast area. It's going to be where
your darkest darks are and your lightest lights. I think that's going to
be in the people because the high light is light. That's often the case when
your painting dogs is the eye area is your
highest contrast area which is good because
that's the area where the viewer's eye is
going to be drawn to because this area here
is very light and cool. I'm just going to do a wash of mainly ultramarine blue
with a touch of burn umber. It's going to be very blue here. I'm now going to
put a layer onto the background
because this yellow is just way too bright. On a dull it down a little bit, so I'm going to
take a bigger brush and I'm just going to make a bluey, greedy, warm color. As always was in most
of my paintings, I use it as the background. Yeah. Don't worry too much if your background blends in that sometimes that can be quite a nice effect actually. That can bring me on nicely
to talking about your edges. You can have what's called
lost edges and hard edges. Hard edges are where
you've got an area of either very dark paint
against the opposite. If it's an area of very
dark paint against an area, or very light paint and you
make a hard line like that, then that's called a hard edge. Whereas if it's softer and
the values are more similar, then you've got what's
called a lost edge. That's when you can't see the edge as clearly
as with a hard edge. It's not really looking very clear the way
I'm painting it now. But as we progress
onto the painting, it will become more
and more obvious. What I mean by that, just
keep working around again. This is the first layer
on the background. You want it to be second
layer, should I say? You want it to be quite thin and it's going to be
patchy? Always is. With acrylic paints, when
you're working in thin layers, it's just the kind of
look that happens. But you can see that now
we've kind of knocked back that yellowy color of
the background is just kind of making values easier to see in the dog
what it will do anyway. Now, with that background
color still on your brush, I'm just going to add a
little bit into the fur. It's good to harmonize
your painting like this. Bring in some of that
background color and we are going
to paint over it. So it will just be a little
flex that are showing three. Yeah. As I say can just help
to harmonize your painting and make it look a lot better. I'm just going to add
it in where we've got those lightest areas around here around the nose using
a scumbling technique. So you don't want to have
too much paint on the brush and you can just rub it back and forth quickly
over the surface. Just kind of working in
those light areas around here quite a lot. On the nose again, don't worry if you
go over the nostril, we can take that back in later. It's a nice high light
here on the neck here, so we can get a little
bit more in my brush. The ear here, back in. Yeah, here between the eyes. This is a lovely,
nice white area here that goes down there. Then around the top as well, a little bit more
around the top here. I'm just going to put
a bit more dark paint here on the neck. I've kind of lost
the paint bit here, so I'll just adding
a bit more black. Yes, now I think we're
going to go move on to using a different black. So I'm going to reach for
my purple and yellow. And I'm going to do some
of the cooler areas. Okay, I want to use this here. This is a bit cooler and here as well. So this area under his ear, I got to bring up here now. I think I'm going to
introduce a little bit of white into this
because it is very dark.
8. Painting with Greys: The first gray that
I'm going to mix will be from my purple,
yellow, black. I'm going to add a touch
of the titanium white, and it's looking slightly warm. I'm also going to add a bit of the ultramarine
blue just to cool it down slightly with that
gray color that I've mixed, I'm going to refer to my
reference photo and just add in some of the
lighter areas. Again, it's hard to explain why I'm
painting certain areas. It literally is because I'm just scanning the reference
image and where something jumps out
with me that I want to add this color. Not really plunk it on because
I am thinking about it. But yeah, add it in where
you think it needs it. You can see there's
still some of the brown showing through here. And you can straight away
see that that's just making it look that area. Then here where
I'm adding some of that cooler purple and more of the ultramarine blue,
it's looking cooler. You also want to think about
your brush strokes in terms of getting texture B's. It has got texture to it, you can see a lot of
the individual has. Now, we don't necessarily
want to paint each of these hairs because that's not really the look
we're going for. But you want to suggest individual hairs in the
way that you add texture. One way to do this is to use
that scumbling technique. What I'm doing
there, just rubbing it back and forth and
then your lines won't be too neat and you won't have
too many straight edges. If you see what I mean, if you scumble the brush, you'll be left with
fuzzy edges which can create the illusion of hair obi's hair f's got a really nice sheen to it. When we come to put even
lighter and lighter colors on, we can create that
illusion as well. I usually work dark to light, but not putting light
colors down too late. Because again, you want to put some lighter areas down to be
able to judge your values. Once you put those down,
you can think, oh yeah, that's now made that
area look to lights. I want to add some
more dark in this bit. Haven't really put this in. That's the light
bit going up there. Okay. I'm going to
add even more yellow. Still coming out very
purple and some white. Yeah, this is a very light mix. Now it's let's bring it
down to our lightest areas. You can see my hands
not in the way too much now. This is, I think,
getting too warm. So I'm going to add just a touch of ultramarine blue into it. Do a little bit more yellow. Oka is a very warm yellow. It's made my overall
mix really warm. So I'll just add in some
of that ultramarine blue. Be, hopefully now you can see slowly but surely
see it coming together. Put that bit, that
cooler mix down here. I just added a lot more
blue and white into that mixture and I'm going to go find my very light areas. Sometimes it's good to use
your finger and rub it like that just to smudge
it over the surface. I'm not putting too much detail into these lights at the moment. I was just trying to get
a feel for the values. So I know that these areas
are going to be my lightest, I want this area here
and this area here. Then I think although
my area around the ear does have some
very light high lights, I don't want them to be
as light as these ones, because again, this
is where I want my high contrast area to be. I think I'm going
to do a little bit of work on the eyes now. I've now actually got a very, very fine brush, and I'm
going to mix that eye color, so it's going to any
bit of orange in a bit. Again, don't be too precise with the color at this
stage because it is the initial layers that's
definitely too red. But the eyes have got
an undertone of red in them as this, Don't
worry about that. As I painted on top of it, that red undertone
will shine through. I'm going to say that
dark purple mix for the pupils, so tacky. That is exactly what not to do. In fact, I think
I'm just going to leave it for 5 minutes
just to all dry off. But instantly, even when I just put that first layer
into the eyes, it just makes them
pop, doesn't it? I love in the eyes. I do them fairly early
on in the painting because they just do make
such a big difference, right? So, yeah, I think I'm going
to leave it there to dry out for 5 minutes now. I'm just going to do a bit
more work on the nose area. The nostrils are going
to be very dark. I've mixed up some of my
orange blue mix for that. That's the ban umber and
the option marine blue. Yeah, just mix it until
it gets to a black color. Just filling in
those two nostrils. If you look around the
rim of the nostril, it's quite dark there, but
it fades into a cool gray. And then I'm just going to
that color in around here. Can even see in this area. Look on the reference photo, I can see a bit of
green coming through. I might even add a bit
of my yellow, och, to make it a bit more of a
green, bluey color here. Okay, here I've already added in some purple. And I can see that this
area here is lighter, so I'm going to,
it's a bluey gray. So I'm going to add
a bit more white. I think I put a little bit more. I can also see that there's
a slight blue tinge as well. So I'm going to add a little
bit of the ultramarine blue. I'm not going to add
red or anything to it, I'm going to leave it as
quite a cool blue here. I'm just adding in the
mid tones to the nose. Working my way up to the lightest areas which will
be across this bit here, there's a very white
high light right here. Dogs noses normally have very white areas on them
because of the texture. So they're very smooth and they reflect light roundabout. Here is probably the
lightest part of the nose. I want my lightest highlight to be in the
reflection on the eye. So I'm not going
to use pure white because I want this area here around the
eyes to stand up. The add a bit more of that
white color under here. There's a bit on
this side as well, on this side as well, Under this nostril
coming around like that. I'm still not being too precise. I'm just adding in any light and dark areas
that catch my eye. I need to darken
up this area here. Through the middle of the nose. There's always a dark line normally to one
side or the other. There's a highlight
where the light's hitting it on Ob's portray. The white highlight is
to the left hand side. I'll add this in and
I need to darken up that line in a second. Now with that color
still on my brush, I can see above Ob's
nose in this area, it's light and I'm
just going to use that same color to scumble
bit over the surface. Then your finger can be a very good paint
brush as well. When you combine some of
the blended brushwork with some of those blocky strokes, it adds a bit more interest and movement into the painting. Just putting that in on the
darkest areas of the nose. Do that under here, referring
back to my reference photo. I actually forgot to put
in this dark area again, just do that a little bit now, just using that same color to add a bit down here
around the mouth. I quite often do that if I've got a color left on my brush, I don't instantly wash
it out to mix a new one. I look in other areas of the
painting where I can use it. That just adds to, as I was saying earlier, the harmonious nature
of the painting. If you're using the same
colors in multiple areas, you don't always want to be new shades for every
color you put down. This area here is slightly, I'll just add in some of this burnt umber mix here
just to warm that up. This immediately then falls
into a cooler area down here. I'm going to use a bit of
my purple yellow mix again. I think I'll just
mix more of that up. My yellow ochre. I've got my red out the freezer. It is still frozen, so I'm just going to add
a bit more cadmium red. Again, you mix your purple
by using red and blue. Just you need to
eye all it, really. If it's looking too red, just
add a bit more of the blue. Then in order to make it purple, I'm going to make my black. I'm going to add some
of the opposite, which is this yellow ochre. Add a bit of burnt
umber as well, because it is an orange. It's a brown orange. And that just helps to mute the purple color
a little bit as well. That makes it look
nice and dark. I'm going to use
that here more deep. That area of paint becomes when you're putting blacks down. Don't just put one layer, you need a minimum
of two layers. I would say three or
four would be ideal. That color runs down his. Okay. Water is refreshed. And now just working on this
right ear a little bit, again, I've made
these highlight areas here, very, very purple. I need to add a bit
more blue into that. Just dark in that area as well. This is actually one of the darkest areas on the painting. So I'm going to add a few layers into this to make sure it's
really, really dark. This comes out a little bit
further here, the dark color. So I'll just pull that across. Anything that does go
over the background is not too much to worry
about because you can always change those shapes with the background
color later on. So I can cut in here with
that background color. Now, I'm going to add some
more dark around here. I've got a blue
orange for this area. For now, I'm probably going to just paint quietly
for a little bit. It's just about adding in your different
colorful blacks and grays by mixing in a
little bit of white. Yeah, just keep working your way around the canvas and
hopefully over time you'll see it developing and just look better and
better as time goes on. I'm going to work
around these bits where the yellow of the canvas from underneath is
still shown for. I'm going to work on those now. You can watch me paint
for a little bit. I'll just move the camera. I'm going to work on this area here and some of the
highlights on the ear as well. Take that color, add a bit
of white, bit of blue, and then it's just put in the
light shapes above his eye. And then this area
directly adjacent to this dark area is
fairly light in color. Favor see was Marilyn was found in the new Seems. You lived life. I'm going to use
this bluey color. Again, choosing somewhere else within the painting to use it. And this area in
between ob's eyes needs that light comes through there and into
the top of the eye. Same to me, just on, but I was just
Again, you can burn. Yeah, I'm using fairly light color for the background now. It's the same mix as before. Ultramarine blue, the yellow
ochre, titanium white. And I've also added in a
touch of the burn umber, just to dull it down a bit. I've made it quite light again, using that same color on
my brush and just working my way around finding
any light areas. For example here, the
areas of ob's fair, where that's got
that sheen on it. I'm just using that
light background color to go over those areas. Again, just adding the
harmonious aspect to it by including the same color in V's head, as in
the background. Anyway, let's get back
to the time lapse.
9. Refining Your Painting: If you've made it to
this point in the class, you should have something
similar to this. If you're painting
B, at this point, I'm going to start
refining the painting. We've now got our areas of darks and lights and
our warm and cools. You want to just revisit those areas and make any
adjustments that you need to just make sure that your dark areas are dark enough and your light
areas are light enough. The majority of your
painting should be mid tones and you should only have one or two
areas where you've got your lightest lights
and your darkest darks. Just go back and just check
those value relationships. Also, I'm going to
take a fine brush at this point and work on
some finer details. I'm going to return to the eye area and just do
a bit more work there. Also, I'm going to start adding in a few hairs
here and there. You don't want to add
every single hair in. Firstly, you'll be here forever. And also, it's not
really the look we're going for
with this painting. I'm going to add them in
in areas of high contrast. They will normally
stand out around here where we've got a
particularly light area against a dark area. Also around the muzzle, you normally get a lot of
whiskers in this area. Just be mindful of that
at this stage as well. If you have a lot of whiskers
on your reference photo, then maybe start
adding those in. I'm also going to
use some of this. It's a glazing medium by golden. If you don't have a need
to hand, then don't worry. It's not essential. You could use water
in place of this, but if you are able to get some, I would highly recommend it. I really, really love it. I use it on mostly
all of my paintings. No, yeah, definitely recommend
the Golden brand as well. Glazing is a technique
where you apply thin, transparent layers onto
the painting surface. And it lets the layers
underneath show through, but it just alters the
color on top slightly. I'll show you how I use
that in a little bit. I thought I was finished
with the background, but I definitely think
it needs one more layer. So I will do that as well, focusing in on those areas of soft and hard edges and also cutting in any
shapes where I need to. Also with the background, think about adding a few
hair details in as well. You don't want a
solid line all the way around because
it is an animal. You're going to have bits of fur and hair sticking out again, rather than adding every
single one of those in, just do a few here and there
to create that illusion. I'm going to start now
using my final brush. And I'm going to take
some light paint mixture, a bit of the ultramarine blue, a bit of the white, and just turn it down with some of the
complimentary yellow. It's going to make a very
light bluey gray mix. Okay, I've got that
light gray color on my brush and I'm going
to start off around the eye area just making some
very quick lines like that. Hopefully, yeah, the camera
is showing that. I think. Yeah, I'm just
going to go around not going to put all
of the hairs in, I'm just going to
put a few in to just imply that there are hairs there Around the top of the eye, you can see this area here, There's some hairs
going that way. I'm going to put
those in. If you look at your reference image or look at the
reference image of V, you're more likely to
see the hairs appearing where the light areas
meet the dark areas. I'm also going to put a few
whiskers in now as well, and so just kind of le, lightly going over like that, It's just very, very faintly. Hello. So I just come back up
to the eye area again. Just put some lighter paint
around that bit of the eye. A few more hairs going up here. This is quite a strong high
light here above the eye. I'll put a few more hairs in. Okay, I'm now going
to put some of the glazing liquid
onto my palette. It's quite runny. You need a little bit like that. Now, I'm just going
to do some glazing. The first I'm going to do is
going to be a dark color. I'm going to take some of
my ultramarine blue burned, then put in a bit of
the glazing medium. Now it's transparent, you want
to do about 2.5 back that. Then I'll show you
on the canvas. I'm going to apply that glaze in the areas that transition
between dark and light. Here, for example, as you'll
start to see as I put it on, it will make your dark
areas go a little bit darker and the light areas go
a tiny bit darker as well. I'm just doing it in
those transition areas just to make the
lines a little bit less harsh around there. I'm also going to put it in any light areas where I think they're a
little bit too light. I don't want to completely
cover up those light areas, but I just want to tone
them down a little bit. I might do that to the
muzzle areas down here because I want the
lightest lights to be up here around the eyes. I'll just apply that to
soften those up a little bit. This bit here as well
might be a bit too light. Put a bit on the there
because I thought that area was a bit too light. And again, here, I hope you can see the effect that this glazing is having
a great medium. If you're going to buy
any acrylic mediums, I would suggest this one. If you're only going
to ever buy one, then I would make it
a glazing medium. Because it's just so useful, especially when you're
doing black dogs like Obi, because quite often have
a sheen on their fur. And glazing just really helps
you to get that effect. I'm now just squinting at my painting and my reference
photo and I'm going back and forth between the two
and just adding in any areas that need to
be lighter or darker, or change the values slightly. And the warm and the
cool temperatures. Squinting can really help because it helps
you to block out detail and you just see
big areas and shapes. It helps you to find any places where you
need to tweak anything. I think I'm nearly
coming to the end now. I could carry on adding layers. Adding more pain. Yeah, you can carry on for as
long as you want. Really, it's all completely
dependent on how you feel you want the painting
to look at the end. Do you want it to be a very
finished detailed painting or do you want it to be
more loose and paint? I was going to add a few
little hairs in there to see a bit of hair detail. I just need a bit more. I can probably put another layer onto the background as well. Still a bit patchy here. A bit more there,
right down here.
10. Final Thoughts: Here's the point, I've
got to with my painting, I'm really happy with it. I feel like I've made
good progress now. I could continue
adding my layers and my final details and also
continue with that glazing, but I think I'm going
to leave it here. I'm quite happy with
the painterly look, but of course you
can carry on with yours and bring it up to
more of a finished style. I hope you've enjoyed
this class and you've got lots of tips and techniques
to put into practice. I would really,
really love to see any paintings that
you've created. Please post a photo
down below and I'll give feedback and
comments on every single one. Yeah, thank you so
much for joining me in this class and I hope
to see you in my next one.
Alexandra Goddard, Pet Portrait and Animal Artist
