Watercolor Pet Portraits: Siberian Husky

1. Intro : Siberian Husky in Watercolors: M Hello, and welcome. My name is Emily, and I am the artist behind Emily Marie Watercolors. Welcome to my home studio here in Madison, Wisconsin. In this Skillshare tutorial, you'll learn how to paint James, the Siberian Husky using Watercolors. As a watercolor artist, I have found a passion for painting pet portraits. If you already know the basics of watercolor, painting pet portraits can be a great way to turn your hobby into a part time or even full time career. My style is characterized by adding details to the mouth, nose, and eyes, but not getting caught up in painting every single hair or curl. In the Resources tab, you can find a traceable template for tracing James, the Siberian Husky onto your watercolor paper, as well as color reference photos and supply guides to use during this tutorial. Or sketch out your own Siberian Husky and use what you learned to paint your own dog. We'll first look at how to gradually build up layers of gray and to paint hairs following the natural curves of a dog's eyes and mouth. We'll then take a peek at how to paint white fur, as well as how to keep your pets facial features from disappearing in all that hair. We'll talk about how to add a layer of black paint so that your fur doesn't look flat, and then move on to adding a colorful splash in the background. For some final details, I'll also introduce using white gouache to add some fine white hairs above the eyes and mouth. As an added bonus, I've even included a quick guide with step by step pictures so that you have an easy way to see how all these layers come together. So grab your supplies, and let's get ready to paint. Don't forget to upload any questions that you have, and I'll try my best to answer them along the way. Let's get started. 2. Supplies and Painting Prep: Alright, so let's talk supplies for painting James, the Siberian Husky. So starting with paper choice, I am choosing to paint on arches hot press paper that's 140 pound paper. I like to get the ten by 14 inch blocks or sorry, pads. And then I will cut one of those ten by 14 into 45 by sevens. Now, the client ordered this portrait on five by seven. However, if you would like to paint this on an eight by ten, you're more than welcome. You can also paint this on cold press paper versus hot press paper if you prefer cold press over hot pressed. So the next thing that we can take a peek at is our brushes. So you can use a variety of different sized round brushes for this tutorial. Since I'm painting on a five by seven inch sheet of paper, I'll be using some smaller round brushes. So I have a silver limited round size four. I also have some escota brushes. These are from their Perla line. So I've got a size zero, a size two, and a size four round. For watercolor paints, you can use whatever colors that you would like at home. I am using Daniel Smith colors. You can find a link to all of the colors that I use for my classes and tutorials in the PDF attached to this tutorial. For the purpose of painting James, though, we'll be using a lot of grays and blacks. My favorite gray to be using for pet portraits is Daniel Smith's shadow violet. It is a granulating color. It leans a little warmer. I'll also be using a bright blue for the eyes, athalo blue, a quinocraumgenta for the tongue, and I'll be using lunar black, which is another granulating color for the black fur. Around the color splash, I'm going to use a mixture of purple and blue for the color splash. And as we start painting, I might use a few other little colors as well that I will talk about during the tutorial. You will need two cups of water. I like to have two so that I can switch them out. I did tape my tracing down, so I traced this out already on my five by seven sheet of paper. I taped it onto a plastic corrugated board that I found at Michael's and cut into size. And I'm using kiwi hub tape, but any painter's tape will work. And I already masked the teeth and the highlights of the eyes. This is the only section of my painting that I like to mask. I don't like to mask any of the white whiskers for my dog portraits. I'm actually going to be using a white gouache in the very end to add some little white whiskers and white hairs. But I did use some Windsor and Newton masking fluid and a calligraphy pen to mask the teeth and to mask a little highlight in each eye. You can either mask those as well, or you can use your bleedproof white at the end. You'll also need a paper towel or a cloth and the reference photos for painting James, the Siberian Husky. Alright, let's get started. 3. First Layer: Iris, Tongue, and Nose: Alright, so the pose that I chose for James is this really nice, smiling pose. However, it was taken outside. It looks like it was a slightly cloudy day. So the fur itself looks slightly gray. And so I have a second reference photo that I'm also working from to make sure that these sections of the white fur are truly white or are they actually gray? So it's looking like it is truly white. And so I am going to start. Like, I start all of my pet portraits by painting the iris of the eye. So that's the color part of the eye and any pinks. So the color of the iris is this really nice light light blue. And so I am going to do the first layer of this light light blue. I can go over the masking fluid, and I can also go over the pupil here because with watercolors, of course, I'm going to layer the second layer. Now, I did notice with a second reference photo for James that there is a bit of a red coloring on the outside of the eye. It looks like it was some sort of, like, birth mark or some sort of eye condition. And it's in multiple photos. So I'm not actually gonna extend that blue all the way. Now, I'm lifting the blue slightly so that it's not so wet. And then I'm just gonna drop in a little bit of palo blue directly from my pan into the very center. I'll wash my brush and dry it and use a dry brush to soak up that dark blue. I want to have this kind of, like, ring of light blue, but in the center, have it very, very dark blue, so you can get that really nice blue eye effect. Now here I can also drop in additional water to push that darkest blue pigment to the center. So I'm just going to kind of do a combo of lifting and dropping in water until I get that blue where I want it. Alright, now, still using my size two round brush, I'm going to paint the pink of the tongue. So I'm using a quinocrodone magenta. I've already massed out the teeth here, and so I'm just going to do one full layer of quinacredon magenta. Now, if you have time before it dries, you can always drop in a little darker of magenta to the center of the tongue. And then, same thing, dry wash your brush, dry it off, and use your dry brush just like a sponge to lift up if it kind of went all over on you. Alright, the next step that I always like to do when starting pet portraits is the first layer of the nose. I like to let that start to dry so that I can start working on the second layer. For this, I'm mixing water with a shadow violet, and I'm gonna be painting the nose section. I'm going to start around the outer edge because I am noticing quite a big highlight here and the top of the nose. So I'm going to fill in this whole bottom of the nose using a shadow violet, leaving that top section just for now. And then I'll dab my paper towel so that I don't have quite as much liquid on it. And now I'm just going to use a little bit of a stippling technique. So I'll do a combo of tapping my brush if it has too much liquid. I want a mostly dry brush for this stippling because I do want to still leave that highlight. But I want to come along this hard edge, and I also want to come along this little center here and add a few dots. Before it dries, I can also dry my brush. And if I notice some sections under the nostrils that have highlights, I can always pull those highlights. If you don't have time to pull those highlights, it's usually not a big deal because it's gonna be a little we're doing our first layer lighter for that reason. 4. First Layer of Black Fur (Gray): Alright, now I'm gonna switch to a slightly larger brush. I'm just going to switch to my size four brush. And now I'm going to look at the first layer of black fur. To do the first layer of black fur for my huskies, you can still notice at least around the outer edge of my huskies that they still have kind of some lighter fur. And so we're going to want to go over wherever it's black. But then we also want to do some negative painting so that we can show some of those little tiny hairs. So here in the ear, I came around with my ear, and I'm going to pull in some lines inward. So I'm looking at where is the gray in the ear. And I'm wanting to make sure that I keep this section of the ear open since it's very white and light, and grab a little bit more. I'll come down. I'll pull some of that down. And then it also looks like it's a little bit of white tuft towards the base here. So I'll just add a little bit in the center. Now, the same thing at the bottom, I can pull a little bit up and out. Because we don't want this edge where the black is. We don't want that to be a really hard, harsh edge. Kind of went over the pencil line on the ear. That's okay. I don't really need to worry about that all too much. Alright. Now I'm going to continue on with the rest of the face, and I'm going to keep going where this is wet here. And when I get to the outer edge, I do want to be pulling some of these little fine hairs out of the edge. And when I get to the white sections, I do want to make sure that I am pulling some white or I'm pulling some little fine hairs into these white sections. Now, I need to work sort of quickly because, of course, this edge is going to dry fairly quickly on me. I am working kind of section by section. I already have my sketch that's showing where these white edges are. I'm trying to just follow the curves here. I'm going to pause in the center. I can always do around the eye later, but I don't want this edge to dry. So I'm trying to kind of use the natural stopping points, the natural kind of boundaries for my husky here. So now that I kind of have a natural boundary there, I'm going to work on this ear. I think I'm gonna switch to my silver limited size four. This one has a little bit finer of a point. So I can get a little bit finer of these little wispies Whereas my escota is a little bit more of a blunt brush a blunt round brush. I can't get as many fine wispies Alright, now, this is kind of where my black stops. Now, you'll notice that I didn't really do many whiskies towards the top of the head. That is on purpose. The reason why is because I found with past portraits of huskies and other long haired dogs that if I add too many hairs sticking upwards like this, it ends up looking almost like the dog hasn't had, like, a good grooming session recently. So it kind of looks like there's stuff out of place. So I would definitely suggest if you are going to add a few hairs at the top here, that you maybe only think about adding a few coming out of the top, like, right close to the ear, maybe, and not necessarily adding too many in the middle because adding too many here in the middle, it just might look a little bit more unkept. Alright, so let's take a peek at now I've got I still have to work on the eyes, but let's take a peek around this outer edge of James. So I've got my black that is continuing down this outer edge. So I want to make sure that I'm pulling some strands out and then also pulling some strands up. So as I come around, I'm going to do this in segments, so I'll pull some down. And then I'll pause because I don't want this edge to dry, and I'll pull then some negatively in and up. So this is why it's really helpful to have those edges kind of already drawn out for you before you start with this section of your painting, because we want to make sure that we have a good sense of where these edges are. So now it looks like as I come down, we've got a nice black section on the inside. There's a little section coming on the inside here. And then it looks like it's a little bit gray, and then it comes down and around. And there's, like, a little section that's pulled in. Now, this part is not white, so I can kind of go through and roughly connect some of those edges. I don't need to worry about that pencil line. That pencil line is gonna be erased. Looks a little bit more of that shadow violet. Alright, so now I've got kind of this section here, and now this section on the other side is where this black now is going to be coming on this other side. And so I'm going to do the same thing where I'm gonna pull some strands up, pause, and then pull some strands down before moving on to the next section. I just want to make sure that I'm correcting any of these strands before it dries. The minute that it dries, you've lost the ability to kind of change the shape of these hairs. So it's really important that you're doing these steps in a timely manner and that you're making all your corrections before you move on. So I'm going to go ahead and do this lower section right away, so I don't have that hard edge. It is gray. So I'm gonna connect some of them. Then I'll finish going up on the side with the black. It looks like the black kind of starts here 5. Darkening around the Eyes, Nose and Mouth: Oh Alright, so I do want to take a peek at the eyes, but I am going to switch back to my size two. Because the eyes are so small here, I do want to add the black outline first to make sure that I have enough room for the rest of the out like that rest of those hairs around the eyes. So I'm going to start on this right eye. Now, huskies have this really intense kind of black eyeliner, and it's more intense on the upper lid. So you'll notice this whole, little corner of the eye, and then all on the top of the eye, it's quite thick. And it does come down and kind of flares out just slightly. There is a little bit of a line that follows the underside there. And then I'll go to the center of the eye here. I don't need to connect those two lines. I just want to give kind of the illusion that there's there's a line that's coming underneath the eye. Alright, now, while I'm at this and I want to leave that line to dry fully before I go around and add all the little hairs. And so, while I have this nice dark darker, it's still not it's kind of a medium to medium dark transparency of shadow violet. I'm gonna come in and add these pupils to the eye. Now, with a lot of huskies, the pupil tends to be not that big. It depends on the picture that you're working from, but make sure that you do see quite a bit of that iris. So that's the colored part. All right. Now, as I'm letting the eyes dry, I'm going to go in with that darker shadow violet. And I'm going to actually outline my nostrils. The reason I like to do this at this stage is because I just want to make sure that I can see those outlines. I've found that if I add the medium layer, the medium darkness, I tend to lose the nostrils in the medium, like lose that pencil sketch. And so if I can do this darkest shade right now, then at least I know where they are. I can always paint them that medium shade later. And I'll also go in in the mouth. All right now, I still want to go over the teeth here with this shadow violet, and I want to go down to there is a lower lip that you can see in the picture. But then there's also kind of some black hairs that are coming out of the lower lips. I only want to do the lower lip and leave that next section of black hairs until this section dries. I do want to paint black up to the tongue and over the teeth. And I can add a little bit of water to this shadow violet, and I can always paint on top of the tongue on that underside of the mouth. Go to kind of belly that shadow down slightly. No, I'm bellowing it down. I'm following the curve of the tongue. I'm not following the curve of the upper lip. So you'll notice that this curve mimics the curve of the tongue. And then I can pull a little tongue line out of that shadow. Sometimes when I'm painting tongues, I don't always follow the reference photo. If you take a peek at the reference photo for the tongue section here, you'll notice that it is quite dark. You almost can't even see the pink of the tongue. And so in order to make it look a little cleaner, I sometimes will just paint a solid shadow line in that center of the mouth that follows the curve of the tongue instead of following the reference photo. 6. Painting the Gray Hairs around the Eyes, Nose, and Mouth: Alright, so now that I've added some of these darkest shadows, I'm going to switch back to my round size four, and I'm going to lighten up that shadow violet. I'm looking for the shadow violet to be about the same consistency as the black there. Maybe just slightly lighter, if you're nervous about keeping some of these hairs light and thin. So when we look around the eyes and nose and lower nose, we notice that there's a lot of almost grays there, but there's a lot of white fur shining through. So instead of painting, so under this eye, instead of just painting that whole shape and kind of outlining it and filling it all in, we actually want to do some little um, like talies and we're going to be making these little lines to follow the shape of the eye so that it mimics what we're seeing on a reference photo. So if I'm painting this under section, we're just going to practice it a little bit. I'm going to be doing a very light brushstroke, and I'm doing these little like tally marks, but I'm curving my tally marks according to what I'm seeing on the reference photo. Some of them are going to connect, some of them are not. And so I'm kind of having the ones where it's a little bit darker, I might have those connect a little bit more and where I'm seeing it's a little bit lighter, I might have those connect a little less. Now, right around the eye, I can make those connect a little bit more since it is quite dark around the eye. And if I were to continue on, I would come down the nose here and I would follow the shape of the nose, and then it looks like it kind of splays out a little bit and almost fountains in the center of the nose. So it kind of fountains out and then back up the other side. So all of these little tally marks you can practice them if you want. So here's where that darker section under the eye is all connected. And then where it lightens up a little bit under the eye, I would have some tally marks that aren't quite touching. Now, it's okay to be practicing this as many times as you need to. And we want to make sure that we don't have a ton of liquid on our brush. If I totally fill up my brush, my lines might be a little bit thicker. So if your lines are too thick, you can tap your paper towel so that you have some nice, really thin lines. Your brush choice might also matter. So this silver limited brush has a quite nice point to it. That's why I'm still using a size four. But my escoda size four, it still has a nice point, but I have to have a much lighter touch with it, or otherwise, my lines get a little too chunky. So really practice with a variety of different brushes and see which brush works best for you. Alright, so let's start and we will practice then around the eye. So I'm going to start with this lower section around the eye, following the curve of the eye here. And it comes down into kind of this little V almost. And then it comes out slightly. It looks like this section is almost mimicking a smile line here. So whereas this one came down, this one is kind of curving up a little bit more. And then when I look at the bridge of the nose here, it looks like there's a curve of, like, talis along this bridge here. That's kind of talis and curving down slightly. I'm gonna continue with the upper part of this eye. So it looks like we've got some coming kind of around this curve here. It's curving up like this, and then it's curving around. So I'm gonna do the curving up first. And now I'll do the curving around following that eye. Now, where this white patch is, I can always go around the outer edge of this white patch and add a few little tally marks coming in from into this around the outside edge of this white patch if I'm noticing that my edge got a little bit too hard of an edge around this white. Sometimes we can just add slight tally marks around those white patches to just help blend that white in. Alright, I'll do the same thing with the other eye, and then I'll take a look at the bridge. All right, now that I'm ready to kind of take a peek at this bridge here, I want to be really cautious of making sure that the shape matches what I'm seeing here. I'm actually going to start closest to the nose because I don't want to start up here and then all of a sudden have it splay out too much or out to that side. My guide to this central nose area is actually going to be the nose itself. I'm going to start in this right most section here because it kind of almost starts at the very tip top. There's a white space in between, and then it comes around And then from there, it's almost like it comes up. Now, on this side, it's the same where it kind of starts almost up that corner of the nose. I'm going to add some dash marks. It's almost like there's a little white space in between, and then I'm going to jump and add more dash marks up above. Lastly, I left quite a big section of that white there, and that was on purpose because I do notice there's just a little bit of almost like cash marks, just a few at the top of the nose. There's still quite a large white section, though, so just add just a few there just so it's not so white. All right. Let's actually take the same shadow violet. We're going to continue around the nose and down below the nose. I'm going to actually now that I loaded my brush up with a little bit more of this shadow violet, still the same transparency. But I'm going to start on the section between the nose and the mouth. I'm still doing hash marks here. But what I'm doing for these hash marks is I'm leaving a small line of white between the tally marks I'm making and the lip. I want to leave a little bit of white edge to this lip. The reason being is because if we go all the way to the edge of that lip, then suddenly we lose the definition of the lip and it just blends into the mouth. So by leaving a little bit of that white along that lip, it's going to give you a lot more shape. Now as I come outwards here, you notice I wash my brush, I added a little bit of water, and it's coming lighter in color as I come outward. If it gets too dark, tap your paper towel. And then I'm going to add dude that same tally mark out starting in the center, coming out for almost three lines of those tally marks. And then adding just a few extra little spots wherever you're noticing some of those whisker follicles. Now, this is where it might be a little challenging to add details that you see when it's this small. I'm also going to come around the nose, and I'm going to add a little bit of shadow using that color all along the base of that nose there. Now, if things got too dark, I will dry off my brush, and I'll use a dry brush to just zip up if any of those dots got too dark. Now, you notice I only extended these dots to about here. I do see some shadow here, but I'm going to wait for that shadow. I'm going to do the rest of my dots along the base. I'm going to do that same thing that I did here. I'm going to start in the center, do these tally marks where it's going to be the darkest. Leaving that little bit of white in the upper lip, I can always connect the top to the bottom in this very center line, and here and there around the base. So if I do connect in a certain spot, which even I don't like how that looks. So even if you see in your reference photo that it does connect in certain areas, I do feel like it is really helpful to have that white lip stay white. Okay, so I'm going to add water and extend following the curve here of this mouth. Add a little bit of shadow at the top here. A little bit of shadow. There. 7. Painting the White Fur: A Alright, we'll let that dry. Now I want to mix a very, very light shadow violet. So I'm bringing some of that shadow violet up top, adding it to just water. Here I'm still using my size four. However, you can use a smaller brush if you need to. If I check my transparency for now painting the shadows on the white for I'm noticing that that transparency is very light. It's much lighter than what I did for under the nose. And so now we're going to test out if it's light enough by the smile line. So right here where the smile comes up, I've got a little bit of a shadow, and then I'm jumping across, and I'm adding another shadow behind this smile line. And then from that, I can pull a few hairs out. So there's kind of two smile shadows. There's this smile shadow closest to the dark black. And then that shadow can just kind of come down slightly. And then I jump and I pull again. Then we'll leave another little section of white, and here we'll add a little bit of shadow following the same curves and the same lines that I painted. So if your hairs look different, you're going to follow whatever you have on your paper, whatever you painted. So I'm just wanting to add a few lines here into the white fur. That's following the same the same curves. And I want to make sure that I'm not adding too much because if I add too much, it's just going to look like that section of fur is muddy. So what I will do is I will follow for this downward section under the mouth, I'm going to paint using that shadow along the bottom line of the mouth so that I can really nicely differentiate it. And then from that shadow, while it's still wet, I'm going to pull some lines out from that shadow line. I'll try to follow the same curves that I notice on my reference photo. And I'll come underneath. I'm still I'm not pulling them so far down. You'll notice that I'm still keeping these lines slightly small. Maybe a few of them come a little bit longer. And now I still have this big section here of white. Now, in my reference photo, it's showing a lot of little shades of gray. I don't want to add that many. I might add just here or there, maybe one or two hairs coming out up here. In this larger triangle, I'm going to add a few hairs, maybe one, two, three, four, and another triangle shape that's mimicking this other triangle. It's a very, very light hand. This is definitely something that you can practice ahead of time if you would like. And now I'll move on to this right side. So this right side, it seems like, same thing. We still have an outline around that chin. And it seems like we also have a little bit of shadow along this side, too. So I'm going to add a little line of shadow along that side of the mouth and a line of shadow around the cheek. Seems like this is actually darker here at the top, so I'm gonna drop in a little bit of that darker shadow violet. And then from that darkness, now I can pull out, making sure that I'm leaving some of that white to shine through. I don't want to pull this shadow violet all the way to that edge. And I'm still following the curves of this outer curve here that I painted earlier. So even though on the reference photo, it looks like the hairs are sticking out more because I painted them more at a curve, the shadows of the white fur also going to be at the same curve. So here's where we're using our reference photo as a guideline, but we're changing it according to the brush strokes that we made on our paper. Now, as I'm noticing here, I'm going to extend just a little bit on this section here. I almost feel like it didn't come out far enough that first time. And I'll be adding a second layer so I don't mind if there's some overlap there. Alright, now let's take a peek at this section of the mouth. So right here, it looks like we've got I still have a little bit of this shadow violet on my brush. Above this smile line, I'm just going to add a little bit of shadow. And then this edge that's connecting with the mouth here, it looks like it has just some little bit of shadow coming down almost towards the edge of the mouth. Now I'm going to wet my brush. So it's even lighter. And I'm going to do one brush stroke using edge of my brush along the edge here. So it's kind of this upper smile line, and I'm coming up to the top. Now, if it gets too dark, so I use the edge of my brush. If it gets too dark, you can lighten it up, but it's not looking all that dark to me. I'm gonna do another swoop here from the nose kind of inward. Now, this is so light that you might not even be able to notice it. But as it dries, you're gonna start to notice that shadow there. Alright. And the last thing that I noticed is I didn't add anything on this lower lip. Now, it looks like there's some hairs coming out of this little corner here. And then I'm going to grab some of that slightly darker shadow violet here under the lip, if you have space for it, if you don't have space for it, don't worry. We're gonna add some little lines coming out of the bottom of the lip here, and it can be a little bit darker. You do want to make sure that you have a nice chunk of white here under the lip. So if you extended that upper or if you extended that lower lip too much, then maybe don't do this section because like I said, you do want to have a little white lip there. And the last thing that I'm noticing for my white fur well, one I might I kind of don't like how this stopped here, so I might add just a few strokes here in this white section just to kind of help give it a little bit more shape to kind of connect that. And then I also might take a peek at the ears here and add just a few strokes in that white of the ear. So if you section, so this section actually looks nice. I don't want to do more there because I might lose some of the white. This one I had too much white, and so I wanted to add just a little bit more shadow. 8. Second layer of Gray (part 1): Alright, so now that we've done our first layer of gray, now we're going to add more shadow violet, and we're going to do a second layer of slightly darker shadow violet. This time, we're going to look at all of the black sections. So your second layer, it's important that it's darker, but that it's not as opaque as you can get it. So we still want to have a layer of black on top. And so when I test out these two, it still is watered down. It's quite watery. It is slightly more opaque, but it's not quite as dark as taking it from your pan. Now, I want to start in all the sections where it is the darkest. So I'm going to start in the ears here. I'm doing all the same brush strokes as I did for this first layer. Alright, so now I am still the section that I have black, I'm just filling it in. I actually don't want to add that much texture to that black section. I want the texture to really shine on the in between. All right, so I need to be really careful here that I'm not adding my black too close to the eye. Remember, I'm doing a lot of negative painting here. And then I have my darkest coming down and around. Now, here along the outer edge, it seems like there's a little bit of, like, a shine on the outer edge. So I'm not going to extend this second layer all the way to the edge. I'm going to leave a little bit of that lighter color to shine through. Now, I made sure that this edge up here, it's an edge that I can leave. So it's following the curves there. So I'm going to continue onto the neck here. So I'm negatively painting. It seems like the darkest of darks is close right up to to the white here. Now, another thing to remind yourself as you're painting this second layer of black, I'm keeping my brush very, very light on the paper, and I'm keeping it more at a perpendicular angle instead of a parallel angle. I really want that tip of the brush to work for me here. Now, I'm not going to extend all the way to the edge. Seems like this darkest section kind of comes around and then down. I'm still trying my best to leave some of that lighter gray to shine through. On this edge here, I can always add a few little individual of these dark So I added just a few little individual hairs here. Once again, I'm trying to correct all of the edges here before it dries. So Seems like I can now pause, and now I'm going to work on the upper forehead here. Now, the same concept where the upper forehead here is a little bit highlighted. So I'm going to take my gray, my second layer of gray. It's the darkest in the middle of the forehead here. Now I want to make sure that I'm not extending this dark gray all the way to the edge. I do want that lightest gray to shine through. And this darkest section is coming in the center, and it's kind of stopping around the same height of the eyes. I can always change it if I need to, but I don't want this top edge to dry before I have a chance to fan it out a little bit. I can't tell if I like that little highlight that I left. We'll see. I'm gonna keep coming around here. I got to be careful with the eyes. And it seems like this is about where the darkest of those layers is stopping. Same thing. Kind of the outer edge of the ears is nice and smooth. And the inner edge is where we can pull some hairs if we wanted to. And then it's the opposite on the inside of the ear. I'm going to add some of this darker shadow on the inside of the ear because I have not added that yet. Making sure to leave some of those nice highlights in the center of that ear. Alright, and then the second layer, we'll continue down this right side where we notice it to be darker. Remember this is that medium transparency. It starts about here. Remember that we're following the same curves that we made on the first pass. Even if it's slightly different than your reference photo, we still want to follow the same curves along the neck line here. It's the darkest along this edge where the white is on top. And then along the bottom edge, if you wanted to leave some of that first layer to shine through, you can had some slightly longer lines in between here where it's a little bit more gray versus white. And now I'm going to take a peek if I need any darker around the eyes or around the nose and mouth. So I am going to add a little bit of extra darkness in certain areas around the nose. So I'm kind of I'm seeing these, like, two triangle shapes kind of coming down each side of the nose. So I do want to add a little bit darker there. 9. Second layer of Gray (part 2): And then I also notice some darker around immediately around the eyes. So I'm going to add a little bit of darker around the eyes here. And then it seems like it kind of the darkness jumps here, and then it's a little bit darker. And this little patch, there's, like, a little patch under each eye that's a little bit darker. So I'm going to do the same thing on this side. Still using these hash marks, it's the same technique as the first layer with slightly darker pigment this time. And then we've got a little bit darker coming in this triangle under the eye. And then it jumps, and we've got this little like patch in the corner of the eye that's a little darker. Out of the corner of the eye, I also notice it's a little darker around the corner. And there's almost like a little line, like, almost by I know it's not where the eyelid is. Well, maybe it is. There's almost like a little crease here. So there's a little white section in between, and then there's a little darker of a crease. That kind of shows where the eyelid is. All right. And then I'm going to take a peek and see if I need to darken up any sections down here in the mouth, it seems like in the corner of the mouth. Well, that actually seems okay. I might add a little bit of water and then a slight lighter second layer on this shadow here under the mouth. I'm noticing that this is kind of where it's the darkest, and I'm also noticing that over here on the right side by the cheek is where it's the darkest, as well. It's a little darker here. So, the second layer on the white fur is definitely not as dark. I watered it down a little bit, but I'm just being sparing of where this second layer, this darker layer on the white fur is. And I will take this second layer color. And I also want to take a peek at the nose again. So we've got this outer line on the outside edge of the nose. And then we want to fill in. We're using this medium tone on top of the whole bottom section. If you can leave a little bit of highlight under each nostril, great. If you can't, that's okay, too. If you wanted to make that line not so perfect, you can add a few dots on top of that line. If it's not dark enough, you can always drop in some of that darker pigment along the base, although that's seeming pretty good to me. You notice that I went over the other nostrils and that pigment didn't anything. It stayed there. And that's what I was looking for. I was looking for having those nostrils be nice and dark so that I can add that layer and still see it. Alright, we'll add a second layer to the mouth using a shadow violet. 10. Black Layer: On my layer of black, I am using lunar black. I still want to mix my lunar black with water, even though I want a dark color. The reason being is because if you have too dark of black, then you're going to lose a lot of this other really pretty work that we've done so far on the fur. So I do want it to be black. However, it is quite watered down, okay? So when it's watered down like this, it is also really easy to lift with your paper towel. Whereas if you have your black directly from the pan without adding water, it still is going to lift, but you see how much darker the stain was. So we still want to mix it with water so that if we make a mistake, we can lift it up a little bit better. I can always drop in more black in the darkest sections, but it's going to be harder to lift off. So it is genuinely I tend to paint with slightly lighter black. Alright, so we're going to start with our sections that are for sure the darkest. So we're going to start around the ears. Same rules apply as what we did for the first layers where we'll add the same fur strokes as we did in the beginning. This time, though, we do want to take a peek at this dark section, and if we wanted to leave some of this gray to shine through. So I am noticing that it's a little bit lighter towards the eyes here. There's like a little highlight in that black fur. So I'm going to take this hair line here and I'm going to kind of curve it around. And I'll stop here at the white. And now, it's seeming like it's coming up, but then I might not have it fully filled in. I might leave a little bit of that gray shine through in certain sections here. Around the forehead, we're going to do the same thing, we'll come around. And this section here in the forehead is going to be the darkest. But I'm only going to bring it up not super far, and I'm going to bring it up in kind of like an arched shape. And then I will bring it down in between these eyes here and it's going to come down, and it's going to stop about where my eyes are here. Then I can start to curve it around a little bit. So we've got almost like this fountain shape in the middle of the forehead. On this right side will fill in the ears. And then it seems like we've got our darkest pigment along the outside edge and the inside edge. And then they might connect in certain spots, or it might be like, the same on this side, where we just have we can do our outside edge and we can do our inside edge, and then we can kind of connect the two of them together in certain spots if we need to. Alright, now taking a peek at where the darkest around the eyes is going to be. I'm going to actually switch to my size two brush. Before I do the hairs around the eyes, I do want to add the darkest around this eyeliner on the top. So I'm going to use that slightly smaller brush for adding that, as well as adding the pupil. I want these darkest sections to be really nice and neat. And then I can either stick with that two size two or I can go back to my size four, whatever brush you feel more comfortable with doing these little tiny baby lines only now, these are going to be a little bit more sparingly than our dark gray layer, use of course, we don't have all that dark around the eye. So I'm just adding a little bit of that dark these dark lines around the center of the eye here. And then a little bit on the underside. I can always blend those out too later if I don't like how they look. Now, I will add just a few, very brief just a few of these black lines where you're noticing it's the darkest. But it's really sparse cause these black lines are pretty intense. Now, around the nose, I am gonna fill in the nostrils. I can do that little center line of the nose, and then I can do this little almost triangle underneath is where it's going to be the blackest. I'm not going to add anything else to the little mustache there, but I will take a peek at the mouth. I'm outlining this upper lip. And then I'm coming down. I'm outlining the upper line of the teeth as well as the lower line of the teeth. And I'm leaving a little space in between that lower lip. I'm just kind of outlining that lower lip. So then you can see a little bit of that dark shadow violet in the lower lip. I actually didn't can pull a highlight. I didn't leave a little highlight, so I'm using a wet brush and just pulling a little highlight in that lip on the left hand side here. You can always do that when it's dry, too. Alright, and now I'll switch back to my size four. And let's finish the black layer of the neck. Same thing. I can leave some of this lighter gray to shine through. If I need it, even darker, I can while it's wet, I can add a little bit of that darker black where I'm noticing it's quite dark. So there's like a strip here that follows the curve that's darker. H 11. Optional Color Splash in the Background: Alright, so I'm going to clean off a section of my board here of my palette. And I'm going to mix the color splash that is around my husky, and then I'll go back and I'll do some color corrections after I do the color splash. So my color splash, my client had wanted a kind of a periwinkle, this purple mix with just a little bit of indigo. So it was a color that she saw on a different pet portrait that I had painted. And so that's the color that I'm going to mix for her for huskies, um, another great color around huskies would be that nice alo blue to kind of highlight the eye. Now, we've got a lot of fur going on here, and so I want to actually start in the top of the head, so I'm going to turn it upside down. I'm gonna wet the area that I want the paint to go first. And I'm going to try my best because I have a long hair pet, I'm going to try my best to use a very watered down color. I don't want this color to be too opaque, because if it's too opaque, it's gonna go on top of these little fine hairs, and I don't want that to happen. If anything, I want to leave a little bit of white so that it doesn't go on top of those little tiny hairs. I can dry my brush and always use a dry brush to add a little bit of texture. And now I'll come down each side. So like I said, when I'm doing these edges that have some lots of fur coming out, I'm trying my best. I don't want the water to go on top of those little hairs. I want the water just right up next to it. And if anything, maybe a little tiny bit of paper space in between. Like I said, the last thing that I want is for some of this color to go on top of those little tiny hairs. So I'm trying my best to give it a little bit of shape around here to kind of help your eye go around, but also to not keep it a very perfect border. I don't want this blob behind it to be perfect. You see, that went over that gray. I I don't like what it looks like when my outside color goes over the fur. It tends to make that fur darker because it's technically a second layer. And so I try my best to avoid that at all costs. And then, usually around long haired dogs, I'll just add a few brushstrokes using the color of the splash, and I'll kind of follow the curves of the pet's hair. 12. Final Details (highlights, white gouache, color corrections): Alright, so I've let my painting dry overnight, and I took it off of the plastic board. So now I'm ready to take off the masking fluid. You can use either a kneaded eraser or actually make gum erasers that are a little bit sticky, and so it helps to take the masking fluid off that way. So either way. Now, after I take my masking fluid off, I always like to take a peek at the teeth and back at the eyes. So I'm going to switch to my smallest size zero brush. Now, when it comes to painting, pet teeth, you can either use a little bit of a gray, whatever gray or black that you have. And then I always like to add just a little hint of yellow. The little hint of yellow is going to help with that shadow, it's going to make it look a little bit more like teeth enamel versus just black and white. So I've added a little bit of it's kind of like a tan yellow. It's not a bright sun yellow. To my gray, and it's going to be very, very light and transparent. So it's probably even hard for you to see over the video here. But it's just a very, very light yellow with a little bit of gray to it. And sometimes I will reference my reference photo. Other times, I just paint on one side of that canine tooth. So from here, I'm doing just one on the inside. It's kind of a line of that yellow on the inside and then a line along the bottom of the tooth. Now, these little ones below, I might just kind of add here or there, like little dots almost of that yellow in between the teeth. And then I'm going to do the same thing on this other canine. So I've got my line of yellow along the center and along the bottom, the base. Now, sometimes I like to then go back before it dries and I'll drop in a little bit darker of pigment along the base of the tooth there and just allow it to kind of almost blend into the gums there a little bit. It's not a lot. Now, when you took your masking fluid off, if you noticed that you don't have enough black around the teeth, you're going to have to go in with a little tiny brush and then help add some contrast in between the teeth. So sometimes you can start to outline them slightly. Now, you don't want to outline it too much. I don't even like how that looks, so I'm gonna try to take that away. Really, we're just wanting to give those teeth just a little hint of color. Um, just so they're not looking too bright and vibrant. And then you might have noticed that I used a wet brush kind of along the base of these little tiny teeth to just kind of soften up that edge along the teeth line. Alright, so now that I'm done with that, I'm going to take a peek at the eyes. So the first thing I notice is that this highlight is way too big, so I'm going to grab some black. And I'm looking at my reference photo. The highlight is definitely much more in the upper left hand corner. So I'm going to center that pupil a little bit more and already by centering that pupil and giving that highlight more of an art shape, it just really totally changes totally changes the eye. And now I want to kind of almost make this highlight on the right side a little bit smaller, as well. Now, at this stage, as well, you can always color correct your eyes. So here I'm going to take a little bit of that thalo blue. Still using my small detail brush. Now, if you extended the pupil at all on the outside, you would want to leave that pupil to dry just a little bit. And I'm going to add almost just, like, a little coma of that palo blue on this left side and a little comma on the right side. I'm just kind of almost making a little parenthesis around the pupil. And all that's doing is it's just giving me one more layer of color just to kind of depth as, like, added depth. And then the last thing for James here, I am going to add a little bit of red into that corner of the eye. So if you are painting your own husky at home, you probably wouldn't add this, but I do notice that James has a little bit of that must be some sort of condition where it just causes a little bit of, like, bloodshotness, in that right eye, and I'm going to kind of just bleed it into that black. So it's just a hint that it's there. It doesn't detract from the rest of the painting. It doesn't make it look awkward at all. Now, the last few little things that you can do are color correcting. So if you're noticing any sort of browns in the fur, you can always go in. So I'm noticing on a different reference photo that some of the fur around the chest area has, like, this kind of warm brown. So you can always come in and glaze a little warm brown using like, this is a piamintteGenuine, and that I'm just glazing over the black and then I might pull a few strands into that white just so that you can see a little hint of that brown on that right side here. Um, I think that's the only place that I want to add that brown. I don't want to add too much. I just want to add kind of a hint of it. This is also a great spot to be glazing on the nose if you notice a little bit of browning in the nose, or if you notice any sort of browns along the neckline or in the ears, sometimes I like to grab a little hint of magenta and then just add just the slightest bit of pink to the center of the ears, even if it doesn't show in the reference photo, sometimes just adding a little bit of extra color in the ears also helps to kind of bring the shape and bring the painting, give it a little bit more color. If there's no browns in the nose, you can always add a little bit of background color into the highlight of the nose, or you can add a little bit of blue into the highlight of the nose. Sometimes it helps to kind of, like, reflect the skyline and the blue of the sky into the nose. I don't think I want to do that in this case, just because I want to leave that blue, that nice blue in the eyes. And then, lastly, other kind of last little details and kind of troubleshooting here. If any of your edges got to be too intense of edges, you can always come back with a small detail brush, a wet, clean, small detail brush. And you can always come in and kind of soften up some of those edges. So here on the little mustache here, I'm going to soften a little bit and then use dry my brush and then soften up that black just slightly. It almost looked a little too dare I say Hitler Mustache. So I can reactivate that color just using a wet brush and then dry it off. And suddenly it changes that to be just a little less intense. You can do the same thing around the eyes, especially. Around these edges of the eyebrows here, if you got too close with your black and you didn't leave any of that gray in between, you can always use a wet brush, and you can go around the edge and lift up some of that black so that there's a little bit more of a gradient from white to black. So there's little things that you can do to kind of add more details. The other thing that you can always do as well to add a little details to your pet portrait is adding some bleed proof white. Now, you can either use a small detail brush like this round size one, or you can use a very, very small liner brush. Because this is a five by seven, my liner brush I think is going to be too big, so I'm going to try it out with my small brush. But your script or your liner brush can be nice for your eight by tens, where you might want a slightly bigger whisker. So when I take a peek around the nose in my picture, I've got a lot of these little white little white whiskers coming out. And so I'm using this bleedproof white directly from the container, wetting it, though, and making sure that it's really nice and watery. I mean, watery, but also with your pigment. So your brush needs to be completely full. And then I'm going to test it out a little bit on a test strip. Now, when I do line work, instead of holding my brush in kind of the cup of my hand, I'll actually move it up to my first knuckle. This gives me a little bit more stability, and it changes the angle of my brush so that I can have a nice angle at the tip of my brush. Instead of here, I feel like it has more of a side angle, and so I get a little bit thicker of a line. Alright, so I've got my brush loaded up. I'm going to start on this right side just in case they don't turn out, so I'm going to add a few of these little white hairs coming off the right. Grab a little bit more. And then I'll add a few on the left. It looks like there's a few coming out of this corner of the mouth kind of covering that smile line. So if you notice just by adding a few of those little whiskers, although you can't see it on either side, you can see it through the smile line. Now, you could also add a little bit of highlight here to the mouth if you weren't able to add any highlights in the lip area. You can add highlights to the nose if you needed to or to the eyes. I really all depends on how much detail you want to add. And then there's also a few of these smaller lines out of the white of the eyebrows. And so I can always add a few smaller lines out of the white of the eyebrows. And once again, I'm going to be following the curve of the face there. And the reason why once again that I did not use masking fluid for this is that masking fluid just gets too thick. The lines just get way too thick for masking fluid. And so by adding a few lines with guash afterwards, we get a much fiiner little line, much more hair like. Now, I do know some artists who will use much more white gouache, and so they would add white all along this edge. They would add it out of the ears. I mean, you can really go crazy with this. I'm gonna only leave it in those few areas. That's actually all I'm gonna do with my white gouache. I just don't want to overdo the painting since it is so small, and there are so many details in the fur. I don't want to I don't want to have too much going on. So this is going to be my final piece. Make sure to let it dry fully. And then if your painting is a little bent and warped, you can always wet the back after it's completely dry, wet it very, so slightly, and then place it in between a few books. Usually, when I wet it, I'll just use a flat brush and just add just a little bit of water on the backside. Leave it between some books, and you're all set to go.