Misty Grizzly Bear in Beargrass - How to Paint Animals Step by Step Art Class with James Corwin

1. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Introduction: Hi, I'm wildlife artist James Corwin. Thanks for joining me today in this painting class. We will be painting a bear in bear grass. I'll take you step by step through this painting, demonstrating here on the canvas and then giving you time to complete each step before moving on. In the video, you will see a little prompt that comes up that says to pause now. You can rewatch that section and do that stuff, and then when you're ready to move on, press play. To start, we're going to simplify the drawing process by creating a grid here on the canvas and then some reference points within that grid that will connect with lines. That way we draw a bear that's proportionate and accurate, and then we begin filling it in with color. The colors we're using today are raw umber, titanium white, ivory black, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, and ultramarine blue. We're using acrylic paint for a couple of reasons. One, it dries quickly, so we can let those layers dry before adding new layers on. Also, it's a forgiving paint. Meaning if you make a mistake, it's easy to fix by taking your paper towel, dipping it in some water, and wiping that paint away. Or because the paint dries fast, you can just wait a few minutes, let it dry and then paint over the mistake. You're also though, welcome to use oil paints if you'd like. I also have a cup of water for rinsing the brush, a paper towel, and the brushes we're going to be using today is a large flat brush and a small pointy brush. The canvas is 11 by 14 ". Great. Well, let's begin. 2. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Drawing out the Grid: We are going to start by drawing out our grid on the canvas using our small pointing brush and just the ivory black. We're going to make a line that cuts down the center of the canvas, a vertical line. This line is just very light and faint. It's a reference line. We don't want it showing through in our final painting. We're going to come to this first half and divide that in half with another vertical line. This half in half as well. Now we're going to come here doing a line cutting the canvas in half horizontally. In half again in this upper half the canvas. And this lower half in half again. That's all we need to do with our grid before we start drawing in our bear. So go ahead now and finish that and then in the next step, we'll begin drawing our bear within that grid structure. O. 3. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Begin Drawing the Bear using the Grid: Continuing to use our small pointy brush and our black. We're going to come to this point here and just make a little.in the center of these two squares here down here, we're going to make a circle that touches upon these points. It doesn't need to be a perfect circle. If it doesn't quite reach that point, that's okay. We don't want to stretch. Just want to circle that rests on the bottom here and touches up here like that. Now we're going to come to this halfway point here and our destination is down here on the corner of the canvas. We just want to draw a diagonal line that goes all the way down to that point. There. Now we're going to come to this section down here and find our halfway point. We're going to draw a line that connects up to this point here. Our destination is halfway now into this box on the bottom of the canvas and another line down. Now we're coming to this center vertical line. We're going to just follow up this line as it gets to this first line here, it's going to bow out slightly here, and then back up to this junction of lines. And then back up to this point here. Then we have another destination where this line will end up. It's this line here. We're going to divide that in half and then each half and half, we get quarters, one, two, three, four, and we'll go to this bottom line here. This is just an arc that comes down going around to this point and then back into that circle. Rwatch that section if you need to. There's a lot of reference points and lines to connect in there. Then in the next step, we'll add some more to finish at there. 4. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Continue Drawing Bear Body: Okay. Let's finish drawing our bear. We're going to come from this first line and go three sections down, find the halfway point in that section, we're going to mimic this curve by going around outside that circle up towards the top of our first circle. And again, on this side, going around up to the top of this circle here. Then from there, you're going to come off the side here and do a big old bare ear and this side here your best bare ear there. Now we're going to come to this last column, the last square down here and cut that in half with a little mark. This line is going to come up up up up until we reach this line. You can see there's a very slight bend to it. And this is going to curve up all the way to this destination point here. We can just finish that slope of the bear's back there and finish with the last leg. We're going to come to this point here. Bow it down just for bit of bear belly and then it slopes down. This is our destination here. Lastly, there's just one line that comes here. This will be a bit in shadow, but it's the back leg coming forward. I'm going to build this up just a hint here because I think it means a little less slope in the back. There. Then I'm going to actually round out front of this leg too, just so it's not so boxy. Great. The next step will put the facial features into our bear. 5. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Adding Facial Features to the Bear: Let's add a face to our bear now. We're going to find the center of our circle here and make a dot. Then if this were a clock and this being 6:00, this would be five and this would be seven. We just want to make those marks at five and seven. And then draw a line going straight up from either point up to the top of this line here. I arced it a little bit there. Then down here, we are going to draw a little rectangular box. That's where the nose will be. Round out the top of that box a little bit. Then for the eyes, you're going to come up from these lines here and then just do a circle there and a circle there. We'll be able to fill in our eyes a little bit more when we add paint, which we'll begin to do in the next step. Finish up your bear now and then I'll meet you in the next step. 6. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Adding First Layer of Paint to Body of Bear: Take out your large brush now. We're going to make a light gray for our first layer of color by taking our white and mixing it with some black. I said light gray, but actually think we should go a bit darker because we're going to be working dark to light here. This is a medium gray color here. We're just going to paint this right into the body and paint over those black lines now that you had for drawing out that bear. You can still see those lines in there, which is good because I don't want to lose these legs to this color. I still want to be able to see where one leg begins and the other ends for the future when I put more colors on. Bring this color into the face. Again, I want to see these lines in here that I've drawn so that I know where to add some of the darker colors later that we'll do. We're going to leave the eyes and the nose unpainted. We'll do those next and let that body dry before putting more paint on. Finish that step and then I'll meet you in the next step. Sure. 7. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Painting the Nose and Eyes with Initial Color: Let's get some color into the nose. Take out your small or brush. We're going to take that raw umber and mix some white into it to make a more light tan color. I'm going to make that just a little bit lighter with some more white. It's always good to test your color on the canvas because I promise it looks different on the canvas than it does on the palette for whatever reason. It's always nice to make sure that color is accurate before you mix it all up and then just put it right on the canvas. Go ahead and test it and see, okay, I need to add a little bit more of this or that to make it the right color. Now I'm going to rinse my brush and make a darker gray with my black and my white and fill in that nose box right there and also my eyes there. Great. Finish up that step and then we'll move on to the next step. H. 8. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Painting in the Background: Take out your bigger brush again. We're going to fill in our background by making a light gray, lighter than our bear, taking our white and just a little bit of black. We're going to paint this all in around our bear, getting rid of our white canvas and also getting rid of those black grid lines. We don't want to see those anymore. Get a little bit more weight on the pallet. Okay. Great. So finish the background. Our bear should be dry now too, so we can add some more layers of fur into our bear in the following step. O. 9. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Adding the First Layer of Dark Fur: In this step, we will use our small brush again. Again, we're going to make a darker gray by taking her white and mixing it with a little bit more black. This is a dark gray that's considerably darker than the gray we have here for the body. We can begin to get in these shadowed areas. Let's start by painting in this back leg all into shadow there. And now we're going to go up the shoulder here. This is a shoulder. We're going to bring that area out by adding these shadowed furry brush strokes here. How do I do these? Well, I'm very lightly touching the canvas and just making light brush strokes in this direction. As you're watching, take note of the direction of my brush strokes because that will bring out the natural form and curves of our bear. If we go straight up and down or horizontally, it flattens our bear and doesn't make it three dimensional. I'm extending these out now. They go down this leg here. You can even add just a little bit of water to your paint. That can help it flow a little more easily if it starts to get sticky as it's drying on your palette. I'm just going for coverage right now to get this texture started in my bear. But there will be more layers of color that go over that bring out even more furry details. That's all I'm going to do in this area. Just going to do a few along the back here. Now I'm going to come in around this first line here and do some shadowed fur underneath. Again, take note of the direction I'm taking these brushstrokes. It's very important. And I'm going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth very quickly to get these brush strokes down. A little bit more black. Okay Let's see. Just continue going around. We'll leave this leg unpainted for right now. And we're going to add some more shadow right here behind the ear. Okay. Here above the head, of course, inside here. Another similar to how we did this in this inner circle here, but leaving this little strip unpainted for right now. And then finally here in the face around our bare nose up into the cheek area, leaving a little bit of it unpainted on the side around our eyes. Again, up the side of the cheek, there isn't really any fur texture that I'm bringing out here. Instead, I'm just scrubbing this color in to my bare face so that I can get some more three dimensional shapes within there it will make more sense to you when we add in the next layers, but we're working dark to light, so we want to put in the darkest layers first. There is a lot in that step. Rwatch it if you need to and take your time with it. When you're ready to move on, press play. 10. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Bringing Warmth to the Fur: Rinse off that small pointy brush, we're going to continue using it. We're going to take our brown this time and mix a little bit of white into it to make a medium brown color. And similar to how we did this dark gray in the last step, we're going to add some brown here into some areas that are bare just to not make it so gray. This color is going to go right here into this layer. And also into the face ever so lightly. I'm going over this gray area, but very lightly because I still want to see those dark gray colors in the face without pinking them away entirely. But you can see it's starting to warm it up a little bit. A little bit more down here into the body. In a little bit in the back a little bit into the back here. Very light application of paint. To warm it up a little bit. That's all we're going to do with that. In the next step, we're going to add some more fur now into these other blank areas that it's a bit lighter. Do that step now and I'll mention the next step. No. 11. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Adding a New Layer of Mid-tone Fur: Keep using that small pointy brush. We're going to make a lighter gray by taking a white and mixing it with some more black. We want this color to be it's about the color of the first gray I'll be put down. But actually, we want it just a bit darker, forgive me. But not as dark as this. You can see it's darker than the first gray but not as dark as this gray. You can test that on your canvas by just putting a little swatch of it down and see, do I need more black or do I need more white? Once you have that color, using that same feathery brush drop texture, going to fill in that last bit of area there. And we're going to start to work this color up into the other colors that we have down. Also being mindful of the direction of my brush strokes. Naive just a bit darker in these areas here. And continue around to this lake. You can see how just adding another layer of color starts to bring even more depth to our fur making it look even more bear like this continues up the shoulder. Now starting down the back, I can begin to integrate this color into those other colors still leaving it darker behind the shoulder. Don't worry if you lose some of that darkness, we'll be able to bring it back out in some more layers later on. Can see as I move back towards the back of the bear, I'm not as focused on getting those feathery brushstrokes in because it's a bit more in the distance, out of focus. So getting that detail in isn't as important. It just makes it easier on me and I don't have to do all these fine details back in here. But as I come forward, more, that's when I bring out more detail. I'll let you get caught up with that step. Then in the next step, we're going to add some more of this color into the face. O. 12. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Painting Detailed Fur into the Head: Okay. Let's add some more color to the face. So starting here in this section, we're going to do our furry little brushstrokes here, going all around, leaving it dark up in here. And around the ears uh, a little bit inside the ears to just to get some texture. Of course, up along the back. Then here in the face. Just going around the circle. Much smaller brush strokes now. In the forehead. And eyebrows. Perfect. But better. Great. Really starting to see that for texture and nerve. Pause now and when you're ready to move on, cress play. 13. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Adding Highlighted Fur to the Head: Rinse off that small pointy brush. We're going to take some white and mix just a little bit of that raw umber brown into it to make a very light off white color. It's like a little beige, very light, sandy color. We're going to place it right here in the bridge of the snout, just to give it a little bit of highlight. A little bit here in the size. There. I think that's all I'm going to do. But I'm going to keep using this color because this is going to be some highlighted fur here in the back. Go ahead and put that up in the back of the bear. Also here in the head, just a little strip across the top and up the ears. Going around the top, the head and down the sides. Very similar to what we just did in the last step. Little light tick marks. Now we're going to come into the face of our air. H bring out the brow, a little bit here in the forehead, very lightly. Painting this color down, very lightly. Bringing it around the face. Bring out this highlight area just a little bit more. Little tick marks is all you need a little bit more here. And then on the outer circle. Me down there. Beautiful. We're going to continue with this color over here, but I'm going to let you get caught up in that step and then we'll do some more in the next step. Okay. 14. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Bringing the Highlighted Fur to the Body of the Bear: I need some more of that color with the white and a little bit more brown to continue going around in the body here, bringing some highlights into the ears. Now, bringing this highlight of fur down the shoulder. It's a little bit over here where the light hits this leg. Letting that color just fade into the gray as I get that residual paint off the brush. Somewhere on the back here. Okay Great. Do that step now and then I'll meet you in the next step. Two. 15. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Creating Contrast in the Bear: Print off your small brush, give it a good dry. We're going to use our pure black. We're going to come right into the nose here and do two little dots here on the side for the nostrils and then little black line underneath for a mouth. I'm going to just shadow it above the mouth ever so slightly smudge it with my finger, so it's not too noticeable. That's my cat begging for some attention as usual. Then we're going to take a little dot of this black up into those eyes up there. We'll be able to put in a glint of light into it later. Darken these ear areas just a little bit. Then show a hint under here and a hint here into the shoulder, but not very much at all. I notice I have a little bit of black here that I don't want, just going to paint that out with my brown but I do want to bring some dark shadow right underneath so I can see a little bit more of a chin there and then let that dark color just fade out into my other colors. Like that. Beautiful. In the next step, we're going to do another layer of background and we'll be able to do some mist over our bear before we put in our bear grass. 16. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Adding Background Mist: Take out your big brush again. We're going to make that light gray again, like we had in our background by taking our white in just a little bit of black. We're going to do one more layer. Is nice because we will finally get rid of all those grid lines in the back that we can still slightly see I mentioned that we're going to be doing mist over our bear. I'll show you how that works as we get into the legs here, so I'm going to wipe off most of the paint off my brush. So I don't have very much to begin with. And then I'm very lightly pulling this color into my bear. There isn't very much pressure from my hand through the brush so that I can begin to very lightly pull this color in using just whatever residual paint I have left on the brush. Bringing it up into the body. Little heavier down here and dissipates as it goes up into the body. You can see I'm shifting the direction of my brush strokes so that I can layer this mist without it showing or revealing my brush strokes. Every single brush stroke I go down is laid in a different direction than the one before. Finish putting in your miss now in the next step will be drawing our bear grass. 17. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Painting Beargrass Stems and Leaves: Pull out your small pointy brush again. We're going to take just a little bit of our blue and mix it with the black, and then just a little bit of yellow. I'm going to bring in some more blue into that. I'm looking to make a very dark green. You can mix blue and yellow together with a little bit of black as well to make a dark green. Starting from the bottom of the canvas, I'm going to pull up these very light stems for where my bare grass will be. As I put these stems in, they're going to be varied in height and also varied in the direction that they move or are placed. So bend and some lean and some are short, some are long. Some are closer together and some are farther apart. The more random you can make them, the more natural it's going to look. As humans, love patterns and are drawn to them, which means we naturally create patterns when we paint and draw without even knowing, which is why we have to be deliberate about being random. Otherwise we will be drawn to creating a pattern. H Then once I have those stems in, I'm going to pull some very light grassy blades off of these stems just to make it look a little more bare grass like. This can be easily overdone, so I don't want to do too much. Just enough to suggest to the eye that there's some of the grasses coming off of these stems. Again, I'm changing the direction that these blades of grass fall so that it looks natural. Nice. Do that step and then we'll add the bare grass flowers in the next step. O 18. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Painting Beargrass Flowers: Rinse off that small brush, give the good drive. We're going to make our flowers by taking a white and a hint of yellow into it to make a off white light popcorn color. Only need just a teeny bit of yellow to tint that white down. Then the anatomy of this flower starts with little dots going up the stem and then it gets wider and bilowy towards the top. I like to put this paint on thick so that I can get some texture from the little petals. I guess, they're just a cluster of little flowers that make up one big flower. So have different shapes to them. I You can also start with a big ball and taper it down into the stem too, if that's easier. Um. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, kind of peaceful creating these flowers. Just making them up as I go. H. Beautiful. Finish painting in your flowers, and then I'll meet you in the closing. Mm. 19. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Bringing Life to the Eyes and Nose of the Bear: Before we close out, I forgot there was just one step I wanted to add using that white and our small pointing brush that we used for the bear grass. That's just a tiny dot of that color. Into the black of the eyes to give a little more life, and then just a little buoyant on top of the nose to bring it forward. Now it's complete. Love that. Do that step and then we'll close out the class together. 20. Bear in Beargrass Step by Step Art Class - Closing Remarks: And that brings us to the end of this class. Thank you so much for painting with me. I would love to see the artwork you created, so please share it with me. And if you enjoyed this class, I would love to paint with you again, follow along, subscribe, and I'll see you in a future class. Bye.