Paint a Colorful Cat in Acrylic

1. Class Intro: Hi there, and welcome to the skill share class. My name's Avraham, and I'm a professional artist. I've been giving classes both in person and online for nearly a decade. In this class, I want to do something really fun with you. We're going to create this acrylic abstract painting together. Now, the reason I chose this is because we're not doing something so realistic. In which case, we don't have to worry about so much if the shapes are correct or even the colors. Who sees a cat that looks like this? The most important thing is that we have the eyes and some whiskers, and the rest is gonna fall into place. But what that lets you do is to really let your creative juices go. So this class is really for everyone. At the same time, I want to give you a little bit of a challenge, because to create this painting, I'm only going to be using these three primary colors and white. And then mixing them to create all the colors that you see here. So if you feel more comfortable using a variety of colors, you can totally do that. But if you want to challenge yourself a little bit, I'll be explaining through the class exactly how I mix these colors to get all the different colors that we see here. But as I said before, the goal here is to have fun exploring acrylic painting. So if you're ready to get started, I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. Colors and Palette: To get started, we need to have a palette. So there's so many different options available. But for me, I'm using a simple plate. It's a little bit on the thick side, as you can see, I've been using this many times, and it works great for me. I like to have the reason I like this plate, actually, is because I like to mix colors. We'll be mixing these colors as before. And by having a room, I can place the colors down and then have an area in the middle to start mixing things around. And so I'll show you how I do that. First, we're going to get our colors. So these colors came in a tub, and to get them out, I'll be using these palette knives. If you have a set of tubes, then it's just easy to squeeze them right out. But since I have these tubs, I have to get the paint out somehow. So I take the small palette knife and I go in really deep and get a heaping glob of this and just drop it down over here like that. Maybe I'll do two globs, okay? We want to have a lot of paint here and because just have we don't want to feel stymied or limited by how much paint we have, so I just throw down a whole bunch here. And I use the other palette knife to just shave it off and make it very to try and get anything that remains, okay? And then so you have a little bit leftover. And for that, I'll just use a piece of tissue paper and wipe it off. Clean off our pot knife before we go to color number two. Close this up. I'll get the red. I always like to go from the light to darker colors when I'm doing this. That way, in case there's any color left on the palette knife, the yellow won't really make any difference in this red. But if you have red into the yellow, a little bit of red will make a huge difference in how much red is in the color of the yellow that comes out afterwards. To the blue. So for these darker colors like blue, you might not need as much. I find I go through yellow a lot more just because it takes more yellow to mix with things to get the colors I'm looking for. And I said before, if you're just going to use other colors, just, you know, place them down wherever you want. And then for white, we obviously don't need any palette nie. We can just squirt this on out. So you'll notice the way I lay out my palette is I have the primary colors a little bit separate from each other and spaces between them all. So that way, as I'm moving along and mixing colors, I can say, if I want an orange, I'll take a little bit of yellow and put the red, and I'll mix it over here, the blue and yellow to make green. So I'm sort of making a color wheel as I'm moving along here and I'll have areas that I can start mixing around and just I'll have space to add and mix colors to my heart's content. As far as for brushes, I'll be using these two. I'm planning to use these two. One is a pretty wide brush. It's a bright number ten. Los about half an inch. And then I have a quarter inch one bright number six. Difference between bright and flat is a bright is a little bit shorter hairs than the flat ones. So it gives you a little bit more control when you're laying down your colors. But just feel free to use any brushes that you feel comfortable with and just have fun painting. 3. Initial Sketch: The first thing we're going to do is start off by doing a base sketch of our cat. And to do that, we're going to mix up a little bit of a dark color. I'm going with blue and white. I don't want such a dark blue because this blue is a very dark one, and by adding the white, it will tone it down just a little bit, and we can then start painting with it. So I'm just looking at the reference photo and seeing where the main features that one preserve. Mostly focusing on the darkest lines. That's the easiest. So we have the top of the head and then his nose is obviously very dark and try to indicate a little bit of his paw. So those are the main top to bottom area, but now what I'm trying to think of right now is sort of the dimensions and perspective. The ratio of where to place the other items, like the eye is for sure, the most important feature of the cat. I want that to stand out the most in this painting. And so I want to make sure I get the size right and particularly the angle of a cat's eye is different from a human eye. So I'm trying to be very careful about the angle of the lines that I'm using here. And I'm going to sketch that in. Now, it doesn't matter that the blue isn't as dark as the shadows around the cat's eye are going to be in the end because all these colors that we're putting in are really just reference lines, and we're going to cover them up later anyway. So don't worry about that. It's more just trying to map out where everything sits on this canvas. And then we can start actually adding the colors. 4. Placing the Cool Colors: I'm going to start with a medium cool blue color, which is very close to the color we start off for our sketching. And I'll place down large confidence strokes of color. On different parts of the canvas. I'm trying to put each stroke following more or less the direction of the cat's contour, fur shape, things like that. If you see on the top of the cat's head, the stroke was vertical top to bottom and not left to right because that is for the most part, how the shape of the fur the colors are flowing over there. Then here under the eye is more horizontal and sby under the cat's head where it's a little bit more shadowy, I'm making also this cool color. Initially, I want to start with cool colors on every area that is more or less shadowy or darker, and then we'll switch over to warmer colors as we get to the lighter areas. But for now, we'll continue with this blue and maybe add a little bit of red to it to make it slightly purple. A little on the darker side because the intensity of a purple is just a little bit more deep than blue. So we can add that. We can mix that and put that places where maybe we want a little deeper shadow. For example, on the cat's paw, we want to stand out a little bit from the rest of the cat so we can make that darker. And then go back and have a little more blue areas around since it's now has a purple and a little bit whit. So it'll be a slightly different color than before. And so these small variations just make it a little more interesting. The point here is to have fun, and we're not really going with a realistic coloring of a cat because cats aren't blue, obviously, or purple. So the idea, mix up the colors and experiment, and as long as we have, like, the main characteristics of the cat, which would be its eyes and some whiskers and its nose. So I think we'll have a cat something that's recognizable as a cat at the end, even though it's going to be a little bit more on the abstract side. But that's what's fun about art because you don't actually always have to go for something that's realistic. You can let your personal interpretation take over, just get into the zone, start paying with things and have fun. You'll see here I'm also trying to manipulate the brush to create interesting shapes so that there aren't always just flat rectangle shapes. Here I'm using the tip of the brush to get more of a angle and to make this more triangular shape that's under the corner of the cat's eye. And sometimes I'm going to put down shorter strokes or longer strokes and keep varying the angles and the direction to keep things interesting and variety. So for this area around the cat's eye, it's very dark. And so that's why I'm mixing, again, a type of purple. That's why I'm trying to get a purple type of color here to make it the darkest area, hopefully, of this painting, so that I'll also maybe in that way, it'll attract the most attention and stand out because I have the most contrast. Right now, it's a little hard to see because there's so much white and open area in this painting. But as we fill it in, so every other area is going to be not as deep and dark as over here, so that will leave it with the most I'll stand out and be a unique area of the painting. So these lighter purple areas are a type of a bridge between what we have here is the dark blues and purples, and now we have this more lilac color that will create more of maybe a contour or bridge between the dark and what we eventually will get to the warmer colors. I'm trying to place that in areas on the painting where I seen the source photo that it's slightly lighter but still within the shadowy area of our painting. You really can't go too wrong when you're doing a style like this because this painting isn't so representational to be realistic. It's more whimsical and more fun. So you can basically put down sweats of color wherever you want on the canvas and just continue playing with it and building up the piece as it goes along. And then at a certain point, it'll sort of become more intuitive painting where we're looking at what's on the canvas already and then going from there to see how we can improve and modify the painting to get more look what we're looking for. Now I'm mixing up that darker purple again to go for a nose and try to make that area also quite dark. I'm trying to keep to the sketch lines I did originally of the size of the nose. It's a little hard because my brushes are slightly larger than that area, but holding on the angle like this and just painting with a tip, it's working out okay. Trying to represent where the bottom part of the cat's head is. And now maybe some we have above the eyes. There's also I see a little bit darker hair over there. So let's use our dark color this dark purple to indicate that with some short with some short and sharp angular strokes. Sort of like the cat's hair that goes out at those angles. And now the digits between on the cat's paw to make them also as dark as possible. I think now it's time we can put in where the cat's mouth is. Indicate that with this little few strokes over here. I think now this is more or less where I want to get to with the cooler colors. So now we're going to start adding in a few warmer colors. 5. Placing the Warm Colors: So now we're going to start adding in a few warmer colors. So for that, we're going to take some blue and mix in yellow. So we'll get a green. And I'm keeping it more blue green than actual green. So it's still a little bit more in the cool area. And that way, it works similar to a bridge like we had with the purple, the light purple. So we have this green is also going to be the type of bridge between the very cool colors and the warmer colors. I'm trying to now choose areas where in the reference photo, it's more on the lighter side. Any place I see lighter color, I may be putting down this green. There's a lot of areas where his hair is a little bit more on the white side. Those will all be great candidates for this green. At the same time, I do want to keep things with variety. I'm not putting on large areas of green. I'm putting small patches of green like we did before with shorter broad strokes, sometimes a little bit longer at different angles and always trying to follow the direction of the cat's fur. And Each time I'm mixing a small amount of the green that I need. And what that lets me do is every time that I put down another every time that I mix more green, I can decide if I want to have the same color or if I want to make it slightly more yellow or slightly more blue. And I can add a little bit more variation each time I'm putting down the swatches of color. Something I'm also trying to do is I'm jumping around the page. I'm jumping on the canvas a lot because I want to make sure all the colors are represented in different places so that we have a little bit more balance. So if I'm putting a green on one side, so then I want to make sure there's green in other areas of canvas, as well. And that way, it makes it more balanced and not so heavy in one location. If there's something that I want to be stand out more, so then we can make sure that that color appears in very limited areas. Like me, it comes to the eyes. We want the eyes to be our focus point. So we're going to make them, make them unique. So make them in a way that their colors don't appear at other places in the picture. Now I'm going to switch over to truly warm colors. And for that, I have to clean my brush because I could use a different brush, but I'm going to use the same brush. I'm just going to wash it off with water, and now I'll have a clean brush that I could use to get really much lighter colours because there won't be the blue in it to make it to cool it down. So I'm picking up red and mix it in mix in with the red, some yellow to get a nice orange color. In the ratio of red to yellow because red is much more pigmented. So to get an orange, we need a lot more yellow than red. So right now, this is tending more towards a fiery orange than just regular orange. But we'll get there. We're going to add in more orange later. Right now, we're just going and dropping down some splashes of red in areas that are warm parts of the picture or lighter that I want to come forward and stand out more. So we'll add those with this more orangy red color. We'll mix up a little bit more orange. But at this time, we're going to include more yellow than red, and then we'll push it a little bit more towards the orange color and away from the fiery orange that we were using before. The goal is to try to paint over all the areas that are white. So that way, we'll have very few areas that are white from the canvas appearing at the end of the painting. We do have a white acrylic paint, and if we need to add white in, we can always add that in later on top of whatever we've painted already. Because white, the titanium white is a very opaque paint, unlike yellow. Like if you painted with yellow over a color, so it doesn't show up so easily, and it blends in with what's underneath it. But white, the titanium white is opaque and will cover up and obscure whatever's beneath it. So it's an easy way to redo areas of your painting, or what we'll be doing also is just adding a highlight here or there with the white, such as when we get to the whiskers or the highlights of the eyes. Here's try to lighten up our orange and place it over an area that was before not so bright. Here I'm getting some more white. I'm placing it down here and you can see how actually covers up and obscures what's underneath it. That's a very handy tip if you want to change the color or something, put down the white, and then you can paint over. But it's important to let that white area dry a little bit. Otherwise, you'll just be mushing around moving the white out of the way, and then you'll end up revealing the darker color underneath. So if you give it a little time to dry, and acrylic paint, as we know, dries pretty quickly. So if you give that little bit of time, and then you can start painting right over it and have your new color. So for now, I'm going to move to other areas which don't have any paint and put in this very nice yellow that we're using right now. I see my brush is a little bit dirty, meaning that it's not painting a straight color right now. The yellow does have hints of blue tending towards green in it, so it makes it a little bit muddy, which is a different style. It's okay. It adds a little bit of complexity to the stroke because we're not painting down just a straight swatch of color. And now mixing yellow with white, we'll get a lemon yellow color, very bright. I'll put that in the area around the nose. You can see that I did pick up a little bit of color over there, so it made it a little bit more messy. So I'll go back and get some more white and yellow. Mix that brush mix that color again. Let's see if I can cover up what we did before. So my goal right here is using that lemon yellow color to outline the lightest area of the cat's face under the nose. It's a more muted yellow right now. So that also works as this bridge color, you know, adding something that's not as bright, but it's still on the warm side. And the more you paint with it, you can see it it's actually mixing on the brush to be more uniform muted yellow color. Now I'm going to mix up the color for the tongue. So that's definitely more red. But I'm going to start with this bright yellow because I think it's a good focal point and I want to stand out. So I'm using a large area, a much larger swatch of color than almost every place else we've used in this painting. So both because of its bright color and the fact that it's a large area will make it stand out from the other places in this painting. And now, as I said before, in order to make a little bit to keep things balanced, I'm using that same color, and I'm using a few other places around our painting. But it's adding a little bit white to it so it can actually show up over the darker areas. And using strokes that are radiating out, following the contours of the cat shape. So here, again, it's this muddying. It's got some green in it again. You can see the brush has a lot of different colors mixed into it. So as I paint, so things will start to become revealed. So right now when the paint is very fresh, so it's a lot of that red and yellow orange color. But as the paint runs out from midnight brush, and it gets more to the paint that's inside the brush so that green comes back out again. So if I want, I can wash it off and I could, you know, come back to more true color. But I'm liking the way it mixes in. Like, the green is a little bit muting the color of the orange gives a little more depth complexity, and it's sort of a cool effect. So I'm leaving it for now. If ever gets to be too much, there's always washing it off. Let's go put a few of these peachy colors around different areas of the canvas. It's a really beautiful color. Going for a little bit of a lighter yellow color. And you can see how since there isn't so much white in it that it doesn't always cover up whenever I'm going over a dark area, you can still see the dark underneath it. So let's get a little more white so I can mix it in with my brush and get a little more opaque color. And we'll use that for the eyes, probably the lightest area that we have in the painting. So having the light area of the yellow there and we had that very deep purple on the shadows around the eyes. That's going to make a very nice contrast that will draw the eye. I don't want that same yellow other places because I want to be the lightest area. So we're going to mix a little bit of green here, and then apply this maybe around the tongue. I'm mixing a bit of this orange white mixture. We're pretty close. I mean, if you look at what we've accomplished so far, 6. Final Details: We have a pretty good definition of the cat's face, and you can see the eyes. I just want to add a little bit more shadow on the underside of the on the cat's face. So mixing up this deeper purple, and I'll place that down where we have a little bit more dark to make that shadow. And then also use that purple for the nose, which is also a very dark area of our painting. I'm going to try. Let's use that also. Let's see if we can use that also for the pupil, which is very dark. So it's not coming out as dark as I would like over here. It's almost like a pale twilight color. So let's see if we can add some more pigment, get some more blue. Then we'll get some red and mix the red with the blue to get a dark purply color. See if I can work that around to make it a little bit more circular. I like the one the right a lot. But that left eye see what we can do Try to get something a very dark purple, almost black. So if you mix all three colors together, so we should go get something black. Let's try it over here. It's nice and dark. You can see how that really draws the eyes towards the cat's eyes. We can mix a little bit more of that and use that same color for the side of the cat's nose where there's this more dark shadow or fur. Then also use it for the nose, a little bit more. And that little area where the nose connects to the mouths that little dark line as well. So that'd be a nice color to use for that as well. I think we can also use that dark to add another layer of shadow around the paw and also some other areas where it needs a little bit more dark on the painting. Just where I see some other parts where his fur is darker, so we can use this purple for that. We've got to age. I think we've gotten to a stage now where we have the the blocks of color basically here and now we're going to add a little more of fur texture. For that, I'm using this dark purple and we're going to put in a little bit of the small short strokes to represent the areas where the fur is shooting off in different angles. Trying to be a little sparing here. Don't want to go overboard because it's representational. And if you put a few in so the viewer gets the idea of what's going on here. Now we're going to mix up a darker blue to put in some of the whiskers. Some of the whiskers are dark and some are light. So we're gonna have a combination of both of those. So I'm starting out for the darker ones. Try and make them as thin as possible. And we have similar type of lines on the top of the cat's head. Here, it's not whiskers, though. Here it's representing the dark area, those thin lines of dark right on the top of his head. I'm going to clean my brush and come back so we have a clean brush so I can start putting in some putting in some colors warmer and not have that influence from the cool color here and just add that in a few more areas where I see that we could maybe fill in over here. Now, I think we can put in the white whiskers. I'm cleaning my brush one more time, so we have no influence of other colors. Just dipping it into the white very gently and now going to tap on the canvas to put down the white whiskers. I'm going back to re load my brush with white frequently because I want the white to be very strong and to do that, I need white on the tips of the brush. I don't want if the white seeps into the bristles of the brush, so then it's not going to be as strong or white. I keep going back to dip into the white to get it standing right on the surface of the brush. There are also a few white hairs that come from the top of the cat, let's go add those in as well now. And we can use this white also to put in the specular highlights that are on the cat's eye. So here, I'm just dipping into the corner of the brush because the brush is a little bit too wide. I don't need the whole brush for the specular highlights. Alright, so looking here, I think the one thing really I'd like to still fix up here is the cat's tongue. Right now, we painted it a little bit on the orange side. And as we saw as I mentioned before, it is definitely more more of a pinker color. So let's see if we mix up a little bit of pink and place that on top of the orange that we have here. Another thing we can do is I just think the bottom of the face of the cat is also a little bit lost. We're going to mix up a little bit darker color here and then we can apply that to define the jaw line of the cat. I'm breaking it up a little bit, not putting a consistent, continuous stroke there. I want to keep it in line with the style that we have already, where we have lots of different swatches of color going throughout. But I want to keep these darker so that they sort of connect together. Then maybe we can do the same thing on the other side of the cat's jaw. It's a little more complicated now because I already put down the whiskers. So if it's a dark color, so that's okay. But where it's white, I don't want to be covering up the white with this darker draw line color. So I have to be a little bit more careful about. And then for our last touch, we can also add a little bit more of these darker fur marks by underneath the cat's eyes. And then we can also do something to make the tongue stand out a little bit more by adding a little bit of a highlight to the left side of the cat's tongue with a little bit of this yellowy lemony yellow with a white and yellow mixture. So helps stand out a little bit as well. I think that really wraps it up. I think we've accomplished our goal here of reproducing this cat in this more artistic free style. 7. 07 thank you: Thank you so much for joining me a skill share class. I had a lot of fun exploring and playing with the acrylic paints and mixing up your own colors and coming out with a nice abstract picture of a cat like this. If you'd like feedback on your acrylic masterpiece, I'd love to give it. So please remember to upload your painting to the project and resources section. If you have any comments or questions about this class or want any specific advice related to acrylic painting, reach out to me in a discussion section. You can also let me know about any other paintings you'd like to do with me. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate getting your feedback on it. Reading your reviews is without a doubt the highlight of my day and gives me so much motivation to continue to produce the best possible classes for my students. Lastly, please click the Follow button so you can follow me on skill share. And that way, you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways.