uanpatrickhedges
Tutorial
These two paintings explained step by step
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I have been working in a few different mediums including soft pastels, acrylics and pen. Below are two different pictures in two different mediums.
"Watching Over". Tigers in soft pastels. I used a sheet of Art Spectrum Colourfix paper which has a sort of sandpaper finish to it, and comes in a variety of colours. I chose this green because I could use the background colour in the background greenery, and also as a base to the tiger's fur.
I start off with working out my composition. This can sometimes take a long time, but it's worth getting right. If your composition is wrong, no amount of technical expertise will raise your finished work to its fullest potential. In this, I wanted to tell the story of a tiger in it's natural environment, stalking its prey, with another tiger watching its back, showing the power of a tiger, but also its vulnerability in its current environment.
I sketched the compostion with a white pastel pencil which I then fixed so I didn't smudge it all over the place.
Next, working mostly with Conte pastel pencils, I worked on the stalking tiger and background to get a feel for the overall colour scheme. As can be seen by the back leg of the tiger, I find things a bit easier if I underpaint the body in white. This seems to help with laying fur down and I get better control of my pastels if they are going down on a moveable base. Just my own style but it seems to work.
I needed to create some depth in the background so I broke it up a bit with some bushes and grasses of differing lengths.
I then started on the face of the watching tiger. It's sometimes good to get the eyes done as they are the things that can make or break your painting.
The finished work. Basically, I wanted to blend the face in and over the background.
And finally a close up of the face. With all animals, it's important to get the eyes correct as they can tell a huge story. Eyes require careful observation. Generally they are lighter at the bottom, and successive glazes can create that reflective quality.
Talking about reflective qualities, here's an example of just that. A serval cat's eye on velour paper with pastel pencils
Keeping the 'eye' theme mentioned above, the following zebra has been painted in acrylics on board.
Yet again, I worked out the composition first. Zebra's eyes are interesting. If you zoom in close, you have the opportunity to use the rule of thirds and also get some nice diagonals into the composition, which always makes things more interesting.
I painted a blue black wash on the board which would make my job much easier later since a zebra's skin is very dark.
Then it's on to the blocking in of the basic colours, paying little or no attention to detail. That will come later.
A bit more refinement
And finally, all the hairs are in and the eyelashes finished to give it that extra punch. As you can see, I've used light hairs on the dark stripes and dark hairs on the light stripes. I also go inbetween the light hairs with darker ones to give a feeling of reality to them.
Note the positioning of the eye, a third from the top and a third from the right, and also the diagonal stripes under the eye. Diagonals are good tools to use in compostional elements, as long as they are used well.