Painting a Tiger and a Lion in Watercolor

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi, I'm Irina Trzaskos, watercolor artist and illustrator. Welcome to my Skillshare channel. Here you'll find a big collection of watercolor classes, for beginners. In today's class, I will show you step-by-step how to paint a lion, and a tiger in water color [MUSIC]. All my classes are filmed in detail so you can paint along. If you are new to this channel, thank you for joining and welcome. Press a follow button on top and let's get started. 2. Supplies: So to paint a lion and tiger, we'll use the supplies we used in most of my classes. It's watercolor paper cold press, a 140 pounds of 300 grams of paint, watercolor paint, paint pallete, a paper towel, water. Also, we need a pencil and an eraser. In the project section of the class, you'll find a template for the drawings if you want to use them. Also, I'll be using a medium round watercolor brush. This is Number 4, a small watercolor brush. This is Number 2 and a large watercolor brush, this is Number 12. Optional, we'll be using wet ink. I'll try not to use a lot of it, and if you are using wet ink, you'll need a separate brush, so you won't throw any of your watercolor brushes. These are all the supplies we'll be using for this class. Let's get started. 3. Drawing and Painting a Lion: For the lion we don't need a very detailed drawing, we just needed to draw a face. I use the template in the project section of a class or you can use your own reference picture if you have one. You can always find some on Splash or any other royalty-free website. Here we have the eye, this part and some lines here and a few lines to show the shape but all of this will be just painting this first part of the head. Again, your drawing doesn't have to be this dark. It has to be very, very light. What do we have here? This part of the face needs to be light, so I will be careful when we will be painting. What we do first, we'll cover the entire face of the lion with water, avoiding only the nose and the eye. It got outside the line a little bit. Next let's take our raw sienna, and start dropping the paint in very carefully so it doesn't cover a wide area. However, we wetted those wide areas, so it'll be a soft transition. Just a teeny tiny bit here and let's soften this line just with water. We can always add more color later, but for now this is good and let's also paint the ears which are also white inside, so we're soaking this line. Perfect. Now, if we're very careful, we can paint the eye. I want the eye to be bluish-green, so I'm taking teal and mixing it with raw sienna we just used. The colors work well together. Let's add plenty of water and very, very carefully with our small brush, let's paint the eye. The eye is going to be a darker art but for that part we need to allow the face to dry. Now I can start painting the rest but let's let the face dry and then we'll get to face with brushstrokes and details. Now when the face of the lion is pretty dry, let's start painting some more details. Add a little more of this color, bluish green, to the eye. Next, let's take some raw sienna and add a little bit of Carmen red sheet and a little bit of paynes gray. With this color we'll paint the nose into later more pink. Let's add some more carmen red. We'll let it dry and then we'll paint the rest of it. Meanwhile, let's make some raw sienna with sepia and paint this part. I need a marker. Let's soften the transition, just a little bit. Nice. The same color, let's make these lines and again soften them. To soften the lines we are washing the brush, drying it in the paper towel and going over the lines one more time. A little bit of dark in here, we'll still decide what we'll do with the ears after we add more fur. Let's take some sepia. Not sure what that is to water. Add some more details to the eye to make it more expressive. Also add this line and this line. The nose is dry, so we can paint this part dark too. Next, what we have to do on the face is to add some rows of dots, also with sepia. Take your time with this, don't be impatient like me. Add the same thing on another side. Here sepia is pretty watery so it will dry and it will be lighter than it looks now. You can see I'm absorbing the excess of water right now, and it already looks lighter. Now I can go and do the rest of the fur, with brush strokes. Take some raw sienna and here we have some dark raw sienna and we'll be using both of them. Just with the brush, let's add some [inaudible] [inaudible] darker raw sienna too. You understand that I'm doing a pretty stylized, not a realistic lion, because the realistic one you can find in pictures. Just with your medium brush, add the brush strokes in any direction you like. Just like this. They of course can overlap each other. Here and there I will add a darker one. Try to be playful and not too careful. Also I'm going to leave some white spots, and our lion instantly starts looking like a lion. King of the jungle, all this fur. I don't want this transition to be too harsh. Let's soften some lines here. I'm adding more and more water to my raw sienna because I want to bring it to a soft transition into white paper here. Let's absorb the excess of water with paper towel. Now I want to adjust a couple details on the ear here, just a few lines and maybe darken the nose on the inside part. This is our lion in watercolor. 4. Drawing and Painting a Tiger: Before we start painting a tiger, we need to draw a tiger. In the project section of the class, you can find a template. I did a fast test, I did a light sketch here. Now, I'm going to outline it so you can see it better and you can draw with me if you want to. Feel free to use your own reference pictures, I'm starting to draw from the nose. Since I was little, I was always drawing the animals by starting from the nose and then going to the legs. Here we have an eye. On a template, you'll find a more detailed tiger with all of the lines. However, I suggest you to use as little lines as possible in your drawing and just try to paint as much as possible to directly when you paint. Here we have ear. Here, I have a really light line showing where we need to leave a white on the fur. So it's here and here and also the front part of the body. We'll have entire body it's a tiger portrait. So this is pretty much, all we need is showing clear whites and having the eye, the nose, and the main shape, and the ear. You can draw as much as you want. You can add more details if you want. So next, what we will do, we will bend the first layer and then you'll have to let it dry. Before we start adding more details to our tech. So what we do, we'll cover the entire thing with water, but we won't cover with water, the eye and the nose. Those we'll avoid. I'm using the [inaudible] brush. So water everything very well. You can even come out assigned to the line a little bit plus please, don't make your sketch as dark as mine. I did it this dark so only you can see it from the camera but if I would be painting on my own, without you, then I would do a very light sketch because it's important you see your sketch you don't need to film it, so make your sketch light. So I covered the entire head with water even the white areas. Next what we will do we will take some red ocher and, add some golden orange chit and we'll start aging the color very carefully. So it doesn't run too much in the wide areas. However, we don't want a transition to be too harsh. We don't want to have a sharp transition. We need this as soft, as you see now. We have a very soft transition into wide area. The ear inside is also white. Let's take some more red ocher and, add darker spots here and there. Especially on the body. So you can see, the tiger does not have any other harsh transitions because we watered the entire area just avoided the nose and the eye. Also want to soften this inch. So I'm taking some water on a brush and softening it like this. Also I have a piece of paint here. I took it out. So this is our very first layer. Let it dry. Our tiger is very bright, so I'm removing some of this paint and everything else looks good. It's important to let it dry. So our tiger pretty dry. Honestly, I was hoping this part above the eye will be whiter and I wasn't careful enough when was dropping the color. So now I'm trying to wash it off a little bit by adding water and rubbing it with a synthetic brush. It usually works, but it depends how staining the pigment is in. One color is so more staining than another one, but we always can add some white ink. We can do it later. Meanwhile, let's paint the nose. So let's take some more carmen red, with some sepia and paint the pinkish part of the nose and the dark part we'll paint Later when it dries, meanwhile let's paint this part around the eye with white ink. If you were more careful than me then you don't have to do this. So I am using a brush I use only for ink. So it's not too covering but it's okay, I just need to lighten it a little bit, so it's not as orange as other parts and I am going with little brushstrokes showing a fur texture. I don't want to wash my ink brush in the water color. Meanwhile, we can start adding the shadows. So let's take some sepia and some red ocher mix a little bit of sepia into red ocher. So we have a shadow right here, and again, let's soften the edge like this. Now let's paint this side of the nose. So I'm using a paints gray. Instead of black, I'll be using paints gray on the tiger. Rest of the nose a little bit, so it's not that much of a difference, like these. Next, let's paint the eye. So mixing some [inaudible] paints gray and let's add some more water to it so it's lighter. So these will [inaudible] Nice. Next one we'll look at the reference. We can see that this part is also dark. However, I want to keep it soft, so I'm watering it down. The eye is already dry now, so we can finish it by adding some dark tint. When the ink will dry, we'll add some more dark around it, like right here. Now I see it's splitting again so maybe it wasn't dry enough. Meanwhile, we can start painting red lines. All the lines will be painted with Payne's gray. Depending on the size of the line, we'll be using a small or a bigger brush. By bigger I mean, the major brush and not the biggest one. Deep breath and let's this. Again, you don't have to be precise. Just use the reference picture as a guidance. But, you can now do different lines too. The most a way time, of course, so about the lines on the face. Let's enjoy some competent brush strokes, and have a way through shaky hands. Then we have the smaller ones right here. That angle starts looking as a tiger finally. Add around the eye. I chose to use Payne's gray instead of black, because it's richer. It will allow also to all this orange just shine from. It's just a richer color than just a flat black. I am looking at a reference picture, and trying to repeat the lines. However, I'm not too worried if some lines are not exactly as in the picture. Here we have a bunch of dots. Because lines in nature can be all harsh shapes sometime. We shouldn't wait for someone to repeat exactly as in that photo. Add some more details to the eye. I think it's looking good. Two dots here. As we move on to the body, we'll have longer lines. They are straighter. Some are going in this way, and some are going this way. Even on a wide we have more lines here. I think I missed something on this part. Yes, this is better. Now we have few more here. Again, another line. Some are weak, small, really tiny like this, appearing and disappearing. On the ears, we have big, dark dots like this. We're almost done. This is our tiger. I think it's looking good. I'll say, if you want, you can add some whiskers of white, but I would want to leave mine just as it is. [MUSIC] 5. Last Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint with me. If you liked the class, please leave a review and upload a project to the project section of the class. If you are sharing your project on Instagram, please tell me so I can see a beautiful artwork. I will see you in the next class. Bye.