Short Painting Series: Whimsical Dog

1. Introduction: All of my life, I've had a great love for dogs. I've had some great pairs of dogs, some silly dogs, and some BFF dogs. So it's no wonder that I wanted to try my hand at painting them. Since most of my paintings have been on the serious side, I decided it was high time to try something whimsical. I'd love for you to join me in this fairly simple painting. I'll walk you through the entire process, including tips for painting a wet nose and how the breakdown shapes and values to paint a realistic com, this was so much fun to paint. And I hope it's going to be for you as well. The painting itself will only take 30 to 40 min, and it will lead you with lots of tips for painting other animals in the future. I hope you'll come join me in this. 2. Getting in the Drawing ~ Simple!: I'm starting with an eight by ten, just said Canvas. Of course, if you use a larger canvas, it's going to take a longer amount of time. I printed off the picture of our dog. And if you'll look under the projects and resources section on your home screen, you'll find access to that picture. You use carbon paper and a stylus. I ordered this set from Amazon. It came with for solace pins. So I just take the picture of the dog, put a piece of carbon paper underneath, get it positioned on my canvas. I like the fact that the top of the dog goes off the canvas. You can pull that carbon paper back and see how things are looking underneath. I would caution you to make sure on the tongue that you get the lines and where you have different colors and shapes and values. It's not one solid color. I'd also be sure to get that mouth and the teeth drawn in because that could be a little tricky to get that draw them in properly. 3. Color Palette: I use the fairly limited palette for this painting. Mainly it was burnt sienna and raw sienna mixed with white. And I also use mars black for the nose and eyes. If you don t have Mars Black, any black will do. I used ultramarine blue and Alizarin crimson with white for the tongue. And I use just the tiniest touch of Naples yellow mixed with white for the teeth. If you don't have Naples yellow, something like a yellow Oxide will do. I kept my paints fresh by using a Masterson stay wet palette. 4. Eyes, Nose & Mouth: Alright, now that we have our drawing in, we're going to get started. This painting took me 30 to 45 min. Your video is gonna be a little longer because I'm gonna be giving some instructions, but it's pretty quick. And it's actually pretty simple. I'd say the most complicated thing is that tongue and I'm going to talk you through that. But what we're gonna do first is get our blackout and we're just going to put solid black in the OSS. Be sure and get in that little point at the outside corner of HI. Then when we get to the nose, if you'll notice the whole nose is black, but inside the nostrils, it's jet-black. So that means that the space around the nostrils needs to have a slight amount of white added to it. You don't want it to read gray, you want it to look like a black nose that's a little wet. So we're gonna be very gentle with that. We're not going to use pure white. We're going to use mainly black with just a touch of white. In these places where you see it a little bit harder, we'll add just a touch more white, but doesn't work the first time. You can just paint right over it and start again. We're also going to get the black underneath the nose and go ahead and paint in the black that's around the mouth. We're not going to worry about the little highlights on the gums. Just get that solid black painted in. When I did this painting originally, at the bottom of the chin, there was a white fur and I had that at first and it looked odd, I thought so. I just painted all that black. You can do whatever you like if you want to be more true to the photograph, that's fine. But let's get our black and let's get started. Let's take a little bright brush. This is a Princeton summit, 6,100. Be soy sauce for any small, little flat or bright brush will work. I'm just going to go right into my black. I'm gonna do these Rs and we just want to get a nice curve. Try to do it in one stroke if you can. We don't want to be dabbing at this. And be sure to go ahead and get in that little dip that's at the end, that little slant down. Again, try to do single strokes if you can. Okay. Now on this nose, so we know that the nostrils or jet-black. So let's go ahead and put the nostrils. And if you don't feel like you can do that with the flat brush, you could switch over to a round brush. For me. It just feels like when I can do more with the flat brush, I feel like the painting looks a little looser, a little more impressionistic. If this isn't exactly perfect, that's okay. These look different because there's more light shining on this one. You don't really see as much of the nostril over here, the nostrils going to blend into the nose on this side. From this side we're gonna see more of a difference. So let's go ahead and put other areas that are gonna be rural black click down at the bottom. Again, just big strokes. Don't overthink it. I want you to have fun. And I don't want this to take all day. I want this to be something that is kinda loose and happens quickly and I don't want you stress. And of course this is the second one that I've done. I feel like I've already gotten my practice around in. Okay. Alright, so now I'm going to take our black, I'm going to put the tiniest bit of white. I'm going to pull it off to the side. So we don't want this to look gray. We want it to look like a light black. So I'm going to try this amount and see there is very little value difference between these two. This is there other places in this painting where I'm going to ask you to really push the values, get some real light lights and dark, darks. This nose is the place where just the most subtle difference is going to do what you want it to do. We don't want that being to lie. We want that to look like it's black, but it has some light on it. There's a light place right there. Then it gets lighter right here. But with this gray steel right in the middle of the nose, it gets a little bit darker. Someone take our gray. I'm going to add just a little bit more to it, more black to it. So it's just slightly darker. Very little difference here between that nostril and right there. Very little difference here. But it will make it read like a nose. It's just it's pretty amazing. Alright, so right up at the top it gets slightly lighter again, I'm not going to use pure white on that notice at all. But I am going to make that gray a little lighter. I'm going do that. I'm going to put a little lighter piece right there. Make sure that curves. I didn't do a very good job of that. That's okay. I can go back over it. There's a light piece right there. You don't have to do it exactly like your photograph. Once you've done a few nodes as you'll kinda get a feel for where the highlights need to go. I'm going to try that again. Just my widest light is gonna go right here. Going to go right here in a curve. And I might lighten that one more time but see that's too wide. So I'm just going to rub that back-end. This needs to be a curve. I'm want to go back over that if you mess it up, which I just did, I'm just going to put some dark back on my brush and go back over there. I'm going to fill this in. That's too light. Darken that a little bit because we don't want that to look the same. It needs to look a little darker, but it's not as dark as the inside of the nose. And when you get back from that, it will look like a nose. I'm going to darken this up just a little bit right through here. I think I got that a little little too light. Think about like my original painting better where I got where I got that knows a little bit lighter. I added some highlights that weren't in the photograph. So I think I may push that just a little bit. I do like how that looked. So I'm going to go back into this light. My paint is getting a little dry. I'm looking for my sprayer. I think I hit it. Wouldn't show on the tape. Let's just lighten this just a little bit more. Just remember to keep that shape around. So it's obvious that it's going around, that nostril might lighten it just a little bit more I hear. Okay, I think that's all we need to do for the eyes. That's where I would recommend you dropped back to a tiny little brush of some type. I'm going to use this little like size zero. I'm just going to dip in mainly white, but I'm going to put just a touch of gray, so it's not stark white and we're just going to put some marks. You can look at the reference photo. And that's all I'm gonna do. And it will read right, Don't, don't overthink that, don't worry about it. Just just put in some short marks and that's going to take care of it. Now I'm going to put in the black underneath the nose and I'm going to put this black the gums in, just be sure to work around those teeth. I might speed that up a little bit. I'm gonna do the black down in here and look already how, how quickly this is coming together. 5. Block in the Fur: Okay, now we're gonna put in the background of the fur. We're just going to kind of get a underlying that going. I want you to switch over to this, go back to the size eight brush. And I'm going to be taking the burnt sienna and the raw sienna. And I'm just going to be dropping those in. Be mindful that when you're doing for if you don't have contrast between the for, it's just all going to blend together. So I put in some darker coat initially and then I went back over it with lighter strokes. So I'm going to do that up in here. Although the dog does get very blonde and white up through here, I won't have that as much. But down in this part because I want the code to show I am going to just block in some darker. You don't have to be real scientific with this. Uh, you know, what, I forgot, black goes up in this corner to, I'll do that. But now that I've got this, so I'm just taking my brush, I'm going to pick up a little bit of both Paul's and I'm just going to start blocking that in. I'm going to be real loose about it. My brush is a little dry. So we're not painting a wall. We don't want to use one solid color and get this one stroke. We want a variety of color under there. We don't want it looking the same. When we do the hair on top, we're really going to mix it up a little bit, but right now we're just trying to get a combination of color. Again, don't don't fret about it. I'd like you to see how quickly you can do this. I'd like I'd like this to be looking at your reference photo. There places where the coat right in here is much darker. Up in here the code is rule dark. So we're just trying to get some coverage underneath. Be sure and go ahead and do the sides of your painting. I like having the sides done for myself so that I don't have to frame it or if I sell it, I think that's a nice benefit that people don't have to put a frame on it if they don't want to. I might speed this up for a little bit. Keep in mind. I probably got that too dark as we're going up and into the face. And up here it's getting much, much lighter. So I'm going to backoff that this dark when I get up to the top. Just doing this super loose, super-fast. Want it to be fun? Are you having fun? I want you to have fun. There's something about painting a little more quickly with bigger brushes to me. It's just a lot more fun than when I used to paint with the supertype brushes and was just stressing over every little thing. Actually, this is code right through here. Okay, that looks good. Alright, now when we get up to the top, I'm going to start, I'm going to use a little bit on this ear right here. I'm going to use a little bit of the darker. Oops. If you cover that up, you can wipe that off or you can go back with your black. Easily feel spit on a rag and push really hard. You can just wipe mistakes off and start over. But also liked to go back with my black and clean things up a little bit. But there are a couple of well, I've just did it again. There are a couple of places where I'm seeing this dark and I want to have that underneath. We see that around the nose a little bit. That's a great place to help you see that that nose is coming forward. There's some dark right in front of that ear. Little bit right there. Okay, Now I'm gonna go up to my lightest color. So I'm gonna start using quite mixed in with this raw sienna. I'm not going to mix it real well again, because I want to have some variation there. Alright, remember that's black. So I'm just trying to get a relatively thin layer. Down and then I'm gonna go back over it with thicker paint with more definite brushstrokes that will look like hair. But for right now, this is just the block in phase. I just did it again with that. I love acrylics. They're just so forgiving, so easy to work with, but you could also do the same painting in oil. Very easily. He gets much lighter right through here around the muzzle and around the nose. Again, I'm just loosely mixing things. I'm not overthinking it. Trying to kind of get a variety of color there. Keep this circle amount because that does show you That's the muzzle of the dog. It helps with the perspective. So again, you can push back with the paper towel and, or you can go back over this and touch up your blacks, which I did in the original painting. I had quite a bit that I touched up. We're gonna be covering up most of this black with whiskers. But for now, notice I'm painting in the direction of that muscle. I'm keeping that in a circle for now. I called him he earlier, I guess I'll call her she because she does look like my golden hammer east to look. But notice that the, the, the face is a little darker on this side because the light's coming from over here. So you might want to darken it up a little bit on this side just to accentuate that here is the ear coming out. So I'm gonna, I'm changing the direction of my stroke now because I want that to be looked like an ear. And it got a little darker over here as well. Okay, so we've got a nice undercutting now. I'm gonna get back in and do my slides real quick. And I'm gonna put that black corner in before we put the fur on top. We also, I'm leaving the tongue for last. The tongue was probably the most difficult thing about this, but I'm going to show you how to think about it. So it's not so difficult. We also need to put the teeth and the gums. So let me put this black corner in and I'll be right back. 6. Tongue & Teeth: Before we start to tackle this tongue, I wanted to show you some things that I think if you can think about it this way, it'll make this painting process a lot easier. Instead of trying to paint a tongue, if you will, identify shapes and values that are within this space, just forget for a minute that it's a tongue. Just look at it like a jigsaw puzzle. You'll notice this is the darkest if you don't get these values, if that's not dark enough, and if that's not light enough, that tongue won't have the illusion of dipping down. It'll look like just a flat tongue. So if you can just see what this shape is and you can go to your photograph and identify the shapes as well. And you could go back with your carbon paper if you didn't do it already and just mark the shapes onto your drawing. And you can see these different shapes. And so I want you to notice this is nice to look at this in black and white. This is the darkest. Then you have this shade and this shade or about the same, then these are much, much lighter. So I have used Alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue mixed together. For this. This one had a little less of the ultramarine and a touch of white to it. This had no ultramarine. This was just the alizarin with a little bit of why. This was the ultramarine and alizarin with more white, but there were some BlueMix than that. Then this was just the alizarin crimson was white and more white on this part. So it's just really just a matter of if you can identify the shape and get the color right and put it in, in the right space. When you get back from this, it's going to re like a big panting tongue. Unfortunately, right when I started painting that tongue, my camera went out of focus. And rather than making you suffer through a few minutes of fuzzy painting, I decided to just redo this tongue. So that's what you're seeing here. Hello. Alright, next I want us to take your little bitty, whatever your tiniest little brushes. And we're gonna go in and paint in the gums. And I'm going to use pure alizarin crimson. Again, don't know, I rethink this too much. This real simple. Wouldn't keep messing with it. I don't think that's good enough. I'm going to take the tiniest bit of Naples yellow. It's just going to take a tiny, tiny dab. I'm going to mix some white with it. To do those teeth. If you do the teeth to white, they're not going to look realistic. Or dog has a little harder than anyone. So I'm mixing a little bit of white with a little bit of Naples, yellow just go into the side. It needs to be more white than yellow. So I'm just playing on the edge of that till I get something that looks right. And then I'm just going to drop that in a cupboard that black a little bit. That's just a place we're going to have to just go back in. I'm just going to wait till the very end. So it's I keep keep doing it and repair that. Okay. That's all we have to do. Melt the teeth. 7. Hair, Whiskers & Final Touches: Alright, so to put this foramen, I have selected a brush that I had that was just very chewed up, very worn brush. You don't want to use something real smooth. You can also use rosemary and company makes these classic long flats. They have a rough in that are really nice. So you don't want something with the smooth edge, you want something that's got a rough edge to it. And you're going to need lots of paint for this. I'm using the raw sienna and white. And I am going to very loosely mix these together. I'm just going to do, you can even just use your brush. I'm gonna do some polls that are sort of a medium color. I'm going to do some vowels that are lighter. And if you'll notice, I am just barely mixing those. There's a lot of caramelized in there. One pile is a little darker than the other. And then you can also go back over with almost just pure white on top too. So very loose piles of paint. Notice that the top, everything is very light, so I'm going to keep, keep everything light. You want to keep your strokes going in the same direction as the hair. So look at your reference photo. Make sure you don't want to just start going up and down. You need for the hair to go in the direction that it's going in. Notice that it's going to be much smoother through here, but up through here, you're actually going to see more texture. And then when we get down to this part, this is where we're gonna get a bigger brush and we're really going to put some flowing waves of hair. So for up in here, Let's just see, I'm going to load my brush. And I'm just I'm just going to there was a little bit of a streak of the center and try to vary if that like That's looking a little too light. If everything is real life, it just blends together. So if it's getting too light, add in, add in a little bit of something else. I don't have enough paint on my brush and that's why you're seeing that Canvas coming through. Go back to your reference photo. There are some places up near the top where it's darker lips. So again, I've kind of lost that black edge and may have to go back and re-establish that and that's okay. Got a little too much paint right there. Remember this side of the face is a little bit darker. I'm not overthinking this. I'm just trying to keep it loose. Member, there's an ear right here, so you wanna make sure that ear hair is going away from the face. Might want to get back from it, make sure it's looking good. I don't like this white. That's really jumping out to me. So I'm just going to go over it one more time. I think it's fine that it's a lot lighter. I don't like how that I think I just didn't have enough paint on my brush. Someone try that again. I can go back in with my black brush and fix that if I don't like it. So the hair here is fairly smooth. I'm not trying to make any big marks, but it is hair. And we want to make sure that the strokes are going around. It's getting a little bit darker. At the bottom. Remember this is his nose, the muzzle. It's not the long coat, so you need to keep it fairly. Smooth. This black is not solid black. It's got some for over it, It's just kinda peeking through. So try to leave some of that. This is the back part of the dog, the shoulder and it's in a distance, so we're not going to get the close-up. We don't want it to look like it's part of the face. So I would just kind of smooth that in and not try to make too much of that. Alright, now, now that we're getting down into this part of the code, I want you to switch back over to your size eight brush. And this is where we're going to really load the brush with some paint. And I don't want you to Deb. I love how we've got these really long strokes. It's this long hair and that's coming off the ears. And just have fun with it. Remember to kind of go in the direction of the ear. Vary your color a little bit. Vary the size strokes. Notice that down here, things are kind of coming together. In the middle of the coat. I've messed up that black again. Little spit on a paper towel. Takes care of that. And again, or you can go back over it. If it starts getting too light, you can go back in and mix in some of your other colors because you don't want it all light. So I'm just, I'm just pulling from different piles here. You don't have to cover up everything that's there. Let some of that peak through. But the bigger strokes, the more gestural strokes, the more realistic it's going to look. Don't be afraid of a few really big marks. Just be sure to get enough paint on your brush so you don't run out of steam. Again, try to vary the direction of the brush. We've got some of this hair that's coming off the ears and then we have that's coming from up there and then we have other hair that's part of the code that's not fanning out so much. You can pull some of that darker back in. Try this again. Get back from your painting and just see how it's reading, see what it needs. I'm going to step back and don't forget to go back and paint the sides while you've got your paints out. Let me sit back from this and see how it's looking. I wanted to show you one thing that I did after I turn the camera off, I kept playing with the colors of this tongue and this area. It just looked too sharp to me that the difference between the paints, I did not put a slow dry medium. And this is, I think I mentioned because I wanted it to draw quickly, but this area was just looking too sharp. So I took my flat brush and it was damped and I just scrubbed it a little bit around the edges and it just soften that and blurred it a little bit. And I think that helped a lot. So I'm gonna go in and put the whisker said now. And if you have a liner brush, sometimes it's called a rigger brush. And these are designed to be used very wet. So you get a lot of water on it. And you don't want to do these whiskers white because they're just going to jump out too much. So I would do them the same cream color. So I'm gonna go into this poll. It needs to be really liquid so that it can move easily. That's a little too creamy, add a little more white to it. If you've never used one of these brushes before, I would recommend that you try this on a paper plate. Make sure you've got enough water on it. And then it's just going to be a real white quick touch. Think about where you want it to go. And I'm just barely going to put some pressure. I didn't like that one, so I'm just going to see if I can't wipe that off. I would advise. Have no paper towel ready and wait until everything is good and draw underneath. Let's try this again. So getting this real wet, probably wetter than you think it needs to be. You don't want a big drip running down your Canvas, but it's got to be thin enough that it can just flow. There we go. Very fee whiskers right, right here in the middle. They should be very short. You don't really want to draw too much attention to this area. But there are some whiskers there. May need to turn. This will make sure you can still see. So decide how far out they need to come. I think that one's a little thick, a little to pronounce. It just comes off pretty easily. It's kind of hard being left-handed. I'm going to turn this one more time. Make sure you can still see it. Again. I'm just barely, It's nice when it crosses the black, that's where you really get to see it in the whisker start at different places. They don't all start here. Some of them are going to start down in here. So I find it's better to start at the base and then pull out and pull up. And that way you can, it'll be thinner at the point and then it is at the the base. And I think that's probably enough. That's up to you. I did get back and added a little bit more. Why thought the nose was looking a little flat? The last thing I'm gonna do here, this has gotten too small to me. I'm going to just put a little more black in there, make that look a little bit bigger. This is the point where it's really good to just put your photograph away and just look at your painting and see if the painting stands on its own. Because when people look at your work, they're not going to be looking at a photograph. Well, I dropped something that was quite a chain reaction here. Should pan out and let you see what happened. But I'm not. So I'm gonna see if I can just go back in and just build this up just a little bit. It's funny with us. If they're a little bit too small or little bit too big, they can look a little funny. So I think that's probably a little too big. So I will let that dry and I'll go back in. It's a little too big right through there. I'm just going to go back in and add some hair around the top of that. When that gets good and draw this ones. You might want to get back over your blacks and just kinda re-established them. Correct? You're drawing if something needs work. And there's one more thing we need to do. So we want to see the moisture, the SHA1 on the gum. For that gum actually sticks up and it has an irregular shape to it. So we're gonna take our gray, go back into this black and white. You can just keep adding a little white until it gets light enough, but you don't want to make it white. And I'm just going to add a few little wavy marks here and there. Get one back in there. And that's it. There won't be any overhear because that's more in shadow. I'm going to just drop a little more shading right there. Just play with the nose and you can keep adding some highlights until it gets too much, which I did earlier. And then I went back over with my gray and my black again. Just do what makes you happy. I might put just a little bit of a wiggle right there. That's good. Okay. My friends, I think that's it. I am going to get back and fix that. So I hope this has been fun for you. I hope this will give you some skills that you can try with other animals. And again, this principle of just painting shapes and values. You can paint anything if you can learn to do that. I've enjoyed painting with you today. If you don't mind. It's so important on Skillshare to have good reviews. If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if he could leave a review and I would love to see your work. I hope you'll post it below.