How to Paint Fur - Photoshop - Wolf Portrait

[Music] you hey everybody Aaron Blais here and today I want to do a little demonstration on painting fur I've done these in the past but it's been a little while since I've done any demos for you guys outside of doing live streams but recently I just got back from a trip to Montana and Wyoming where I went to photograph wolves coyotes and foxes for my latest how to draw animal course how to draw wolves coyotes and foxes and as a matter of fact if you want to check it out go check out my web site creature art teacher comm we just released the course it came out really great and you know one of the things we wanted to do on this one that we haven't done on the other ones in the past which is to go right to these animals and find them photograph them film them all of that so we added a whole bunch of great supplemental material to the course but I thought today it would be kind of fun to take you know one or two photos that I shot while I was there and use that as reference and do a little painting and show you in a demo how I paint fur digitally now what I'm what I want to specify right off the bat I do have brushes on my website fur brushes and you can use them and you can create some really fun fur what I'm gonna do today is I want to show you my method without using fur brushes just how I think if I were to do it with a regular brush digitally now the reason I want to do it like this is because if you wanted to paint traditionally whether it's charcoal or I'm sorry not chocolate pastel or acrylic or gouache the method basically would be the same in the way that I'm going to show you here today so you can follow this method traditionally as well as digitally okay so I'm gonna be doing this in Photoshop let's go ahead and jump over to the screen and I'm going to throw my spectacles on and the first thing I want you to see actually I got to clean my spectacles they're very dirty but the first thing I'd like to show you kind of the reference that I'm using so up here on my other screen I've got this photo of this wolf that I photographed and I I really like the lighting and I want to put them in kind of a dark setting sort of like where he is now where he's in the shade of this tree and I really want to get a nice glow off that light and and there's some really nice shag eNOS to him that I thought you know it that'd be really nice to try to get across digitally and and show you guys how I do it now one of the biggest things that you got to remember is when you're painting fur you're not painting every individual hair that's not the point when you're painting fur you want to get the feeling of fur but put your own artistic spin on it okay so here I'm just gonna go ahead and dive in and start drawing first thing I do as you guys know if you followed me before is I start with that I start with that sketch and so I'm just gonna look at that that piece of reference that I have and very quickly I'm just gonna very very quickly throw in a sketch here now I'm gonna let I might even caricature it a little bit but I'm gonna I'm already drawing it a little big so I'm gonna come back and make some adjustments on that but I really I don't want to draw too tightly I'm gonna stay fairly loose and here we go one of the great things about these wolves eyes what about wolves are their eyes I just love the way they look and they've got this great kind of Egyptian kind of look this mascara this whatever kind of it comes off of them that looks really cool and so that you know if you look at this line coming off of here if you haven't seen my course or heard me talking about drawing wolves this follows the cheekbone the cheekbone right underneath is really like right here so you get a kind of a turn under the cheekbone comes back like this as the eye socket sits like an that thing like that so what I'm doing here is just trying to get some of this mass fur I want to get I want to get this shape I like this shape right here that that's being made by the painting of the of the wolf I like exaggerating in a little bit and his there we go there's teeth are gonna come down right about right about here right about in there with a lip coming down I'm gonna find the thickness of that there we go we'll have a few teeth up here I'm going very loose you know when I do this stuff you always talk and you always hear me talk about going loose well that's what I'm doing now that jaw comes back there we go comes up like so say I'm gonna do this I'm gonna enlarge that just a little bit bring that down maybe just a little bit more right about in their air and here get this nice big mass of fur that comes down like so and we got a lot of fur here I'm just gonna kind of draw air of the everything kind of coming back there's the nose the nose nose and then here it comes that tongue the tongue that's gonna come off of here and basically like that notice I draw very quickly I'm looking at when I'm drawing quickly like this I'm looking at relationships first so that I keep everything proportionately right I look at how the shapes relate to one another and try to mimic that in my drawing and I go I start with the big shapes start with the big shapes first and then I work my way down to the small shapes air I know that there's a break right here and the phase where the nasal cavity is right there that comes down to cartilage and here I always think of where your canines are a nice big opening here this is all fur coming up negative space for keeping all this really loose fur all this fur is gonna be coming out like so I get this a little darker it's all pretty dark a very dark lips these wolves were they were so beautiful so much fun to interact with and photograph it was a really amazing trip that we had doing our research you know with the with the Coyotes the grizzly bear we spent we spent an hour we spent an hour with each animal we spent an hour with a grizzly bear mountain lion which was insane that was just incredible both of them were then we pulled out the Coyotes I spent an hour with them with them and then foxes and then finally at the end of the day we spent our time with the wolves we had three wolves and they were just they were amazing so I'm just very quickly sketching very quickly I want this shape to come down notice how I've got this kind of happening here and I want to mimic a little bit of a feeling there let me bring this shrink that up a little bit I want to get this a little more I want to get it let's see I want to shrink that up a little bit I want to get a little bit more leg in there because I feel I want to feel this coming down the shoulders are here and this creates the shoulder here that comes back now we've got a shoulder here and the leg comes down like that and then this shoulder comes forward and back into that leg that's all for now I'm gonna eventually I'm going to all this is going to be in dark you know I'm gonna play you know you guys a lot of you guys know how I like to play with lighting I'm gonna change up the lighting from what you see in the photograph I'm gonna use a lot of it but I'm also gonna I'm gonna push some shadows and and really just have a good time with with that so there's there's a very rough sketch and for those of you that are wondering I'm drawing on a Wacom Cintiq that you know a tablet pen display and that's the only way that I can draw like this I draw you know enables me to draw as if I'm drawing on paper and that's what I love about and I'm you the brush I'm using is one of my custom brushes it's available at creature art teacher Calm it's my that's from my custom set number one and it's brush number seven I use this brush for everything they use this brush for drawing sketching painting it's my number one brush that I use I basically use about two to three brushes I'm going to using I'm gonna be doing some dry brushing in here today too most of my style nowadays is fairly loose and that's what I'm going to show you what I do today I'm passed you know and I was younger I did a lot of very rendered very detailed work and that that kind of work is very cool but it doesn't really it doesn't excite me anymore I'm not I'm not concerned about creating a photographic copy I want something that for me that has a little bit more I don't know expression in it and for me that expression comes through my brushwork and drawing and I like to let that show through alright so there's our wolf sketched and I think I'm gonna keep that composition it's gonna keep it nice and solid like that now I want to go ahead and I just want to tie it down just a little bit so once again I am I'm gonna push the killer I gotta give it another layer I want to push the character just a little bit and you might hear some traffic going by I apologize for that so I might push the size of his eye just to just add just a touch just a little bit there we'll get those eyelashes coming in like that and I love these brows the way the fur grows up and creates these brows they just create some really great expression on these animals and I like to emphasize I like to emphasize that whoa a big eraser I like to emphasize that break in the nose a little bit right there where the nasal cavity is it just gives it a little bit more character there we go those nostrils kind of come up and curl under so I'm gonna keep that there like that it's nice and clean there we go I'm think here you know you get a lot of a fur kind of breaking in onto the lip there they are like that let's see pull that back a little bit here no fur coming down feels pretty good there's a lot of planes in here that I want this fur to work into I wanted you I went to let the viewer to feel the form you know one of the one of the pitfalls of painting fur is that it can get a little repetitious and you'll lose the form and you really don't want to do that you don't want to lose that form I'm gonna probably end up dry brushing that this here when I get up there later when we get in there with our paint brush but this is you know I always equate doing the drawing as building the foundation or creating the the architectural plans for what your painting is going to be you know I sometimes I'll rush through the drawing and more often than not when I do I end up struggling quite a bit I get that in there I end up struggling quite a bit because I haven't defined all of my forms and you know basically where everything is going to go and so with what the drawing when I sit down and really spend time on that it's helping me it's basically it's I'm creating insurance later on for when I'm painting because it's you know that extra time that I take is gonna help me when I'm painting so I can see the form that I'm trying to describe a little bit better and that's important for me some people they they don't need that a good strong they can do their drawing through their painting and I find that absolutely fascinating and I know guys I can do that and I my hats go off to them because I I have a very hard time doing that another tooth in there there we're getting there and these back teeth you know even even though these are kind of molars in the back they're still made for slicing cutting meat you know wolves are 100 percent carnivorous their teeth are built for ripping tearing slicing meat and then they swallow it whole they don't have grinding molars like we have you know for grinding vegetation there we go and one of the other things too is you know when I was with these animals we spent a little bit of time with them and its really you have to remind yourself that these are not dogs you know dogs descended from these these are wolves these are 100% wild animals and they have dog traits but they are 100% wild and they are not dogs and you know at any moment they could have done whatever they wanted and he really just have to remind yourself we I found myself having to remind myself that's a tongue twister that you know you gotta you know watch over your shoulder don't put your guard down don't be too submissive you know things like that don't look at them in the eye don't be aggressive you know all of those traits that it almost goes back to being somewhat from a primitive standpoint like you're like you're stepping back in time going you know tapping into instincts that have been part of our DNA for you know millions of years so this is our quick drawing and this is all gonna be light colored fur I'm drawing it dark but this will all be done wait almost wait not white it's gonna be warm but I'm just kind of laying it in right now same here and then I'm really gonna make sure that this is the focus I want the head to be the focus right over here writing that kind of third zone and what I mean by third zone I dragged that over just a touch if I if I were to create a grid and I was lying there and aligned there and breaking it up into thirds see where that I landed I landed on the third and basically the center of the head is in this area that's my that's my target zone that's where I want the center of attention is right in that area and so everything is going to be there to support that every everything that I render will be to support that notion okay my lighting by rendering whether or not I make it super detailed or I keep it loose you know I all of those decisions that I make when you see some of my other paintings those are all there in support of the composition what am I trying to say where do I want the viewers eye to go I think about all of that when I'm even something as simple as a portrait like this and the fact that I'm even you know using referencing copying from reference I'm still trying to change it up and make it my own okay so here I've got I've got a nice start we've got the we've got the drawing so now I want to lay in some local color for those of you that would follow me before you know my path on this so local color for those of you that don't know local colors the color of an object when it's not in light and it's not in shadow it's just the color of an object it's like a red apple a green frog whatever it might be and and so I late especially digitally when I'm working digitally I like to lay down the local color first and then I attack my shadows in my highlight areas so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm just going to kind of lay down this base color then I can lock I can lock this layer and add and then very I can vary up the color but right now I'm just trying to lay down a very loose base and once again I want to I want to reiterate the idea of staying loose you know if you get caught up in the details too soon you're gonna you're gonna be working at this for hours and hours and days and days you don't have to and the other thing too you know you don't want to cut up get caught up in the details too soon if it's not right yet so you know I'm always working from the broad which is what I'm doing now to the detailed and as I work long you're gonna see that my brush strokes are gonna get smaller I'm gonna use less and less of this color of that color it's all gonna work towards the final details the other thing I'm going to want to do - after I lay in the shadows I'm gonna want to lay in that background so I can get a nice sense of what the values are gonna be and value meaning light and dark okay so I'm just what I'm doing here is I'm laying this in laying in the whole thing all one color and then I'm gonna go back in and pretty it up I'll pretty it up I'm going to jump over to my other brush a little bit more accurate I'm gonna clean up some of these edges cleaning up edges there we go all right so I've got that late in now I can lock that layer see that checkerboard over there on the right I can lock that that locks everything in so now watch this I can I'm just gonna grab a weird color I can draw and it only draws where I've painted already so that's pretty cool so what I want to do is I want to go in and vary up some of this color I'm gonna go a little warmer and add some of the variations that are in the fur color once again I'm not painting light and shadow right now all I'm doing is painting color on the local color this is just local color I'm gonna go ahead and get this nose there we go a little darker oh there we go err I'm going to go on the lips right on the lips right on the lips once again then keeping it fairly loose you know at this point I'm just pretty much doing like a coloring book I'm painting in the lines painting within the lines trying to get all the kind of color variations that we're going to be dealing with laid down I'll get this tongue it's actually more up in here a little gray we'll go with that color for now now keep in mind all of this is gonna go into shadow I'm really just putting a local color down excuse me just local color there we go boom so already we're getting a nice sense of color happening it's got to drink my water one of the things I love about wolves are those eyes they're amber amber eyes now these eyes are a little dark but I'm just gonna I'm going to go ahead and make them their amber color and go back in on the color of the mascara I always caught the mascara right there there now I'm gonna put down up kind of a base it's a cool gray right along here now you notice I'm not drawing any fur yet I'm just putting in color this is gonna be a base although as I draw it I want to lay it in kind of in the direction that the fur grows there we go just like that and then here they tend to be a little lighter it's gonna be a little lighter in here all of this fur will be a little bit lighter once again I'm not painting light and shadow I'm just painting variations in color on the fur it looks like I'm adding some late but I'm not not yet I don't want to do that yet what I do want to do is get in here a little bit because we're gonna have some gray it comes off of here variations of that gray variations of that coming in here a little bit later coming up in there starting to see how we're starting to get a nice wolf feel go a little warmer oh maybe the little nuts quite as pure get some color up in here what I really like about this reference is the lighting we're gonna have a lot of fun with this lighting I love dramatic lighting really hot with dark shadows it's gonna be really really cool I want there to be a little bit of color change I'm going to add some in here coming down in here now you'll notice as I'm painting this as I get into the shaggy fur you'll notice I'm starting even with my broad brushstrokes I'm using a very broad brush I'm not going you know I'm not using something really noodley meaning you know I'm not painting individual fur but what I'm doing is I'm using a broad brush but I'm still painting in the direction that the fur is growing right this is he's meant to have some dark fur in here it gets lighter up at the top and it's gonna get really light when we add the light right now we're still still flat light there's still no real light to speak of okay I'm gonna go even darker so I get into some of this fur there we go always keeping it as loose as possible I'm going to jump over to my other brush there we go keeping it loose there goes into white there I'm gonna have a little bit of color on the side of the arms I'll have some light dark fur but once again remember this is all gonna go into shadow as well so I'm not getting too concerned about that it just feels pretty good and we add a little bit of darkness coming down in the fur there there's definitely some dark fur growing in here like that now what I want to do oh I want to add some I want to add some darker gonna go even warmer with that maybe down in here add some of this fur color and air and there's definitely some dark fur that grows along the edge right there all of this gets dark notice I'm not writing drawing any shadows in there yet there is some this furred here is kind of grayish we're gonna get some darkness along the edges here like that like that there we go so I've basically got the local color laid in okay I'm going to go ahead and add a shadow layer so let's call this look I want to label my layers local color rough drawing refined drawing drawing oops now up up up up up there we go alright so on top I'm gonna add shadow one my first shadow there I'm gonna set that to multiply and I'm gonna go very loosely I'm gonna go cool I'm going to grab like a cool gray and not quite halfway down through the the value chart I'm gonna keep it up on the on the lighter side and I'm gonna go in and just start defining a little bit where the lights gonna hit maybe have a straight line coming across here like he's stepping out of the shadows right got a lot of shadows coming up in here shadow on the underside of the ear as it turns away from the light the light is up above it's almost straight up noon sunlight all of this is gonna go into shadow this is why I love painting digitally because you know I can I have this ability to go in and lay in shadows on top of local color where you can't do that when you're painting traditionally it's it's difficult although you could guess you kind of could with watercolor you'd be able to but it's difficult and I want to go back to my local color real quick and throw in that there we go and I'm gonna go back to my whoops wrong layer do that every time okay and I want to get a nice little bit of light coming off of this ear notice how loose I'm keeping everything keeping it super duper loose all right I come down here on this whole ear would be in shadow except for the edges I'm gonna follow those edges follow the shadow make it a little big thing there and there we go get that there once again still staying loose because we're gonna have the ability to come in later and really start refining well right now I just want to get a full sense of whoops let me do this I want to get a good sense of just the shadow shapes this is all gonna be in shadow everything here all shadow all the way down through the mouth you'll start to see it starts to pull everything together using you're gonna start to see the form kind of rise out of everything that we're creating right here once that we stay when we get really kind of definitive with our shadow our light and dark areas then we're gonna start to see that form grow out of everything so I want there's a shadow kind of being cast across the nose and then down kind of up into I bring this down we're gonna catch a little bit of light on here trying to get the roundness a roundness of the muzzle there we go and just let that come right up so you can see we're starting to get a nice sense of light on there now let's really push that sense of light and let's work on our background so the first thing I want to do is I'm gonna fill it this is ultimately going to be pretty orange so I might go like a cool blue a darker blue for that background you're also gonna see once I fill this you're gonna see where I overlapped my light colors and where I'm gonna have to clean it up but now you're gonna see them start to pop that looks pretty good now I want to add some variation in there so I'm going to create a layer let me do BG right there and then BG variation and what we're gonna do is we're gonna create some varying shapes varying tones and values in the background you know like where I want more contrast I'm gonna go a little darker you know I want some more contrast back in here like so maybe go a little darker you still and really I'm trying to just create interest back there I want it to feel organic he's stepping out of the light or out of the shadows and into the light and maybe I go a little brighter and bluer up in here ultimately there we go a little have a fade over let's go back and forth maybe getting a little bluer here a dark getting a little reflected light off the ground maybe gets a little bluer down there oh really blue with it I love it I love experimenting with color especially in here maybe we go really blue against that that's gonna be nice bright orange when we eventually play that off but now I want to make sure I maintain my darkness I'm always going back and forth layering that color trying to get it to feel really organic working it working it working it yeah that's feeling kind of nice maybe we go a little brighter off of the shadow area what does that look like that feels a bit contrived I'm gonna grab some of that local color in the background and just soften some of that lighter area that we just put in there that feels interesting and then once again going in here and go even darker with it to create more contrast around where that is maybe it's just up through the air maybe a little bit down in here they're just having some fun with that now I want to go through my local color and I just want to clean up a few areas get some of these edges looking a little better it's not too bad right now want to clean these edges up just I like having that furry Ness up there that feels pretty good so now what I want to do is I'm going to lay another put another layer on top I'm going to Paul that call this light and I'm gonna set that rather than to multiply I'm going to set it to overlay and it's gonna burn in and I want I want the color the light to be a light color like those this orange yellow and I'm going to go in and I'm going to kind of work over the top keeping it loose right into the shadow area ah there we go there so we got a good just a very loose sense of light okay so now that I've got this late in I've got I think that's feeling pretty nice we might ultimately want to go a little darker with that background but I think I'm gonna keep it this way for now and then we'll see what we want to do I'm gonna rotate it just to see how we're looking I think one thing I want to do already is I'm gonna add another shadow layer whoops I want to be on multiply watch what I do I want this to really I want to emphasize I want my values to look right and so I'm going to emphasize this light area by darkening all of this area even more I'm not gonna go too much over the background because I want this to kind of blend into the background I'm adding more shadow and letting it fade going a little darker like so there we go and maybe a little darker right in here when they go into darkness disappear into darkness now we got a nice contrast with that light area and it's popping a little bit better I think maybe add a little bit more in here okay now let's switch it back that feels pretty good all right I'm gonna look at my reference up here see how that looks I want to get some nice fur textures in there alright let's come back in here now I'm gonna start working right on the top of this working right over the top and now it's time to start creating some of these fur textures so what I do is I'll grab I want to grab some of I'm gonna grab that color I'm going to go warmer with it and I'm gonna go brighter with it just a touch I'm gonna grab my brush here and right off the bat the first thing I'm gonna do is just start working over the top maybe go a little darker with it just a touch I work over the top of the drawing layer here I'm just I'm drawing kind of a fur texture following the form that's important and I'm still being somewhat loose with it but following that form here this is supposed to I'm going back into the local color here that's supposed to be dark dark dark dark there we go this is where we start to get reflected light I'm thinking about some of the light bouncing off the ground bouncing up and refracting off of the fur here now because we have a cool background it might behoove us to go a little bluer with it I'm gonna I'm going to start with cool or warm underside and maybe a cool on the top reflecting sky so as we work our way to the top we could either I'm gonna go to the blue maybe just go a little bit maybe not quite as bright there we go it's really this is a this is a lesson is especially working in the shadow areas this is a lesson in gray you're really learning how to use your Gray's because all we're doing are we're playing with warm and cool Gray's so right along here I'm thinking of you go a little bluer with that this part of the fur through here is catching light up in the sky and so it's gonna catch that blue light some of that blue light and be a little bit cooler now it can also bounce and reflect refract off the bottom of the different planes I'm like I'm thinking about you know which way are these planes facing well this part these parts right here are facing upwards going upwards so I'm trying to get some of that fur texture playing off of here looking up you notice how I'm not painting every hair I'm just I'm trying to create a texture that's gonna tell the viewer hey this is there's a texture there that looks somewhat like fur but when you look really close at it you're not gonna see every hair what you're gonna see is a texture that's fooling the eye and to thinking that there's fur there and that's our goal I'm gonna go a little cooler in here I like here I'm gonna get a little bit more detailed because the attention is going to go to that eye and I'm starting to get a little bit away from that plane facing up so I gotta remind myself to go back to that but you can see I'm not painting individual fur but I'm still getting a nice sense of fur individual hairs I should say and here I'm going back to the warm colors along here there that feels kind of nice now I want to go in I'm going to grab some of this color I'm gonna define these shadows a little bit more now look I've grabbed the color of the shadow now watch I'm carrying it out into the light and see how I'm creating a texture the fur texture doing the same thing here I just grab that grab some of that color and here this is a light area here so when I'm gonna grab that I'm gonna go really bright with it there and I'm gonna grab this color I make it feel like it's part of that light I guess part of the same texture now there's that same light fur is on the other side of the nose I can't you catch just a little bit of it here I'm just gonna add little bits of fur that are catching the light see I'm adding pretty minut details in here because this is gonna catch a lot of attention there's a big contrast in here so I want to make sure that I've got this wind up pretty nice now you notice how I'm overlapping the shadow in the opposite direction with the light fur I want there to be a nice transition from light to shadow here I'm gonna go whoops I want to just lay in that light area the top of the nose is catching light like so but then there's some warm light really warmly then it's catching you know the texture of the nose itself is catching some light so let's come up here I'm gonna grab just a few real light areas that are catching light these are kind of our little highlight areas that catching those little sparks of little sparkly pieces of fur here and there there we go I'm gonna do the same thing here I'm going into this blue shadow area and I'm gonna go just slightly brighter and look I can draw a little bits of fur that I will catch they're meant to catch your eye and kind of tell you oh this is all fur now what am I got going on in here this is all turned under so I'm going to grab that tone I want to go warm with it I'm gonna go a little brighter with it and I want to start sketching in this fur and here if drawing the direction of the fur now remember as you go when you get areas like this see how it's getting darker I'm gonna have to adjust my shadow color I'm painting direct right now I'm not painting with blend modes so I have to make sure that I had just as I go so I'm gonna stay in this area because this is all going to be reflect reflecting color off the ground now watch what I do here in this area I'm just flattening out my brush and doing a flat tone you know I don't have to have I don't have to have that fur color or the fur brush every time I'm gonna go a little darker with it as I work into here see I'm still staying the value still saying brighter still staying fairly loose the idea being I want to create the illusion of fur without having to draw every every hair so I'm trying to get this to feel like it's reflecting light its reflect it's about it's catching light reflected off of the ground that's our idea through here all through up in here I'm catching notice how I'm using this darker value that I've created and I'm going back into some of the areas that had the the lighter value and I'm trying to get that to feel like it's turning it's turning in now I'm gonna come in later there we go see I can blend these two together I'm gonna come in later and I'm going to break this up with some slightly lighter values but once again I'm trying to stay loose there we go now as we get up into here the color of the fur is changing actually I want to go back to my later value my later value that I was drawing with there we go so here I'm starting to you can start to feel that fur and it's all about really following the direction you don't have to paint every piece of fur and go a little bit darker I'm focusing on trying to get clumps there we go getting clumps of fur it's kinda you know this kind of this point in the rendering it's it tends to be a lot of fun because this is where you start creating the illusion right the illusion of something that's not really there you know it's not really fur there you're creating illusion an illusion of fur while we're here let's go ahead and do some work on this mouth I know this is a video on fur but I want to get make sure we get this mouth right and that's you know the mouth is going to reflect there's texture in these lips I wanna make sure we get this right there we go and I'm gonna go back to my multiply layer and I'm gonna go fairly dark I'm gonna paint in the underside of that tongue in shadow keep that whole thing trying to create depth within the mouth here so we're getting a little we're getting some nice shadow happening I'm going to go back up well actually now I'm going to stay on there on here and I'm going to keep this somewhat simple there we go there I might come back in later with a little bit on top like right here I'm going to go I'm going to go on top this is uh let's go of details we'll just call that details I'm gonna grab that color I'm gonna go a little brighter with it there we go here it's a little bit different brightness it's catching light in a slightly different way in a different temperature there we go get some nice color in here just working right over the top there some of these areas just go really dark it's gonna get really dark underneath it's like so and then read off the back of the tongue that's all really dark in shadow let it get really dark in that way I can go really dark right along the lip too boom love it keeping it simple now I'm gonna go back into these teeth brighten them up a little bit not worrying about tons of detail I'm keeping it I'm trying to keep it somewhat loose here I want these this to feel like one tooth there we go and we're gonna come right into here there that feels pretty good so let's come in here I'm going to grab some of this sky color reflect the sky color and catch some of it in here that's okay if I might I may have overdone it a little bit when I come back maybe come back over the top of it there now I want to get up into the eye area once again I'm going to grab some of the sky color I'll let that grow out so maybe a little bit of darkness coming up like that just creating texture right now I want to go a little get some darker touches a fur coming off this eye just little bits just little bits and then what I want here is I'm going to go right into the bright fur there we go catching light I go small with this brush there all of this is catching light and once again I'm not hitting every bit of fur I'm just trying to convince the eye that I'm that the viewers eye your eye that there is a lot of further I pick my battles you pick your battles where you want your details to go so I'm gonna leave that like that for now you can see we've got a nice we've got something nice happening that's feeling pretty good let's take that over here now I want to come over here that we're now we're into the this Mane over here I want to continue with some of this some of this color here I've got it I've got to get I'm gonna get a little bit looser as I get away from it as well away from the center of interest even though we're in shadow over here you've got to paint into that shadow right once again I'm not trying to create photo real fur I want something that's painterly but as convincing as fur right see how quickly I'm laying it in we're gonna come back in and we'll add other details as we go later on air it's feeling pretty good now look what I'm doing I'm using the same color but I'm working up into the light and I'm working into some of the shadow areas between the bits of fur the negative spaces like so now we're getting a nice sense to that mean of fur that he has I going to shrink up that even reference there we go I'm gonna come back in here now look how dark this is look how dark that is on my color wheel you see that or not and it's green yeah because it's I've got a combination of some warm and blue and so it's creating this green but look how light this looks when played against different dark values so that's the thing you really want to learn your values because value is it really reacts to what it's laid against okay so I'm just slowly building up some of this fur texture like so still and I'm working over the top of the drawing I want you to remember that work over the top of the drawing when you're at this stage we've got our you know we were laid in our rough light areas and our rough shadow areas and then you can work right over the top and I'll probably go in again once we get this late in and I'll play another shadow layer over the top of this again just to push it back even more because I do feel like I'm getting a little contrast especially in here I might want to go a little darker with it still or even darker with it still there going warm with it now you notice how you know we used our cool colors over here I might do the same here as I get further up start using cooler colors you see that as I work into the shadow areas as a cooler cooler shadow areas right there all right keeping it real there we go let's go bluer with it as we get up into here there will get some sky reflection up in here there we go now I'm gonna take some of this some of this tone that I've created right here it's a little bit lighter actually I'm going to grab some of it here I shrink up my brush I'm going to bring it down into here now one of the other things I'm going to do when we get into this I'm gonna start blending smearing some of these together losing edges and that to me is a vital key to some of this I'll show you what I mean when I do it I'm gonna go a little bit brighter as we get up into here there we go this is all feeling kind of nice now up in here I want to go in and add some texture right through here I want to use that dark know there's dark areas in the in the fur and I want to make sure that it gets in there there we go so this is an area where I would because there's there's a lot of attention in this area I'm gonna I'm actually going to draw fur I'm going to draw a little bit more detail on the fur once again you want to make sure that you don't get too contrasty you want to keep your values in check you know those that light and dark your values are your light dark make sure you're keeping everything in check when I'm staying in the shadows I'm making sure that my values don't get as bright as my highlight areas okay you want to make sure that everything stays in check you've got to constantly compare your darks and your lights making sure everything is balanced it's a big game it's it's tough it's not always easy I'm always going back and forth looking at everything making sure it's right here I'm going to go even darker a couple of areas here to push them even darker maybe even a couple spots there there I'm gonna jump over here completely unrelated jump over to the nose and I want to get a little bit of reflected light off that nose there okay let's jump back here I'm gonna go maybe I'm gonna grab some of that that light fur color I'm gonna let it run right up into here see what I'm doing I'm gonna go right up into their little touches here and there there we go I think that could work right up into there go a little bit brighter with it I can hit some areas along in here this brow I catch a little bit of fur catching light the tips of the fur down in here look at the texture I'm creating so we pull out a little bit you get a nice furry texture there we go gonna add some more shadow you go dark dark dark and here into the negative space of the ear I'm going to go dark on the brown over here well on the details I'm gonna pull those out I don't want that on there there we get a few areas of shadow death coming down I work my way down into the into this area I want it to feel I want them fear you to feel some depth inside some of these areas there now I'm going back up to my details layer and I'm going to brighten that up but notice how I'm not I'm not doing a whole ton of detail in here because this isn't this shouldn't be your main focus of attention so I'm going to put some detail in here but watch what I'm gonna do the ear itself I'm gonna try to make it as fluffy as I can but what I'm gonna do through here is I'm going to create little pockets of detail you know tuft of fur here like so a little tough to fur there you'll get a nice bright area right here that's gonna catch some light so I let it catch some light there I'm gonna go back into the shadow go a little bit brighter and within that I can create some texture just like so do it right here create some texture here create some texture and I'm not the thing the key is I'm not um drawing every hair I'm drawing here where I feel like it needs to be and then the rest I'm just kind of loosely throwing in there now the other thing I can do is I can grab that dark and I could start I can bring it out and create negative space and make it feel like a fur is kind of growing like the dark area comes out further like so there we go just adding a little bit more fur color they're letting this all coming down here and I go a little more neutral with that dark there and that fur to grow you want that fur to grow in the right direction there so now what I want to do is I'm going to come up in here and I'm gonna really work right over the top and paint some light in here see they're just add little bits of detail where you need it you don't have to have lots of fur everywhere I'm just hitting right where I need it there it's all about value light and dark getting those light and dark areas to work right I'm just adding a little bits of little details and look how it really fools the eye and to seeing fur right there those little bits of detail now I'm gonna go in a little brighter here just hit even brighter spots and along here and I'm gonna do the same up here and then when later on once we get to the end of this I'm gonna burn that in with color dodge and you're really gonna see a pop we're really gonna create some nice light there we go I'm gonna jump over here real quick I want to paint in this other ear I want to make sure that I've got it all finished basically there we go I'm gonna go a little more neutral with that color down in here and I can go a little darker right along here there we go and I'm gonna add some nice light color right along in there I've got those ears working fairly nice let's flop it real quick so you can see we've got a nice feel I like I like flopping it because it shows you your image and a new light I like what we've got going I want to I want to get into this light area now in the same way that we did here let's do that so I'm gonna grab this local color my brightest bright right there and let's brighten it even more and now we're gonna start adding details we don't have to add a lot the same thing that we did here I'm going to draw the fur coming right out boom there we go letting that fur come out here we are painting fur digitally now what I'm doing here you can do this is exactly how I would do it in gouache or acrylic you start you know with your you break up your dark and light areas and then you start to refine it I want to keep these clumps consistent there we go maybe a couple of pieces here and there catch light there fur is coming out nice it's really all about breaking it up you want to watch your values start by watching those values and then you work towards the detail you don't start with the detail you work towards the detail I'm going to rotate this around a little bit there we go rotate that back so there's some nice fur here I'm just I want to pick a couple areas where I break up the you know I can run light over dark that's where you really get your your money your money's worth as far as getting that fur to feel like it's fur you've got to let light areas run over dark not a lot just enough err see that I'm getting a nice sense of light on there to which I really like it's coming along nicely let's go ahead and hit it 1-1 nuts brighter so let's get almost up into the white well hit just some of the brightest bright areas don't want to overdo it you want to make sure you're sparing with it you know some of the areas are gonna catch a lot of light like in here so I want to use more of this really bright almost white value remember if you want to learn how to walk draw wolves coyotes and foxes head on over to my website and pick up that course up how to draw wolves coyotes and foxes there's our fur right there really coming together there we go very very nice that's feeling good to me I like it now I'm gonna go down my drawing layer I'm gonna race back some of these areas that I don't want to see the dark pencil line like in here just don't want to see all that don't need to maybe do it on the rough drawing layer as well don't need to see all that air now you know we should do we should save it wolf fur demo there we go now one of the things I want to do is I want to start kind of losing some edges so I'm going to let me see here I'm liking I think I like let me jump to the background a little bit I want to see if I want to push this even darker let's just see if we want to push it a little darker especially my areas of contrast yeah I think I like that very blue I'm gonna bring this down a little bit more we see there he's popping really nice I'm gonna bring maybe some of that up we dropped down some of that percentage now let's go to our shadow layer there it is I want to get rid of this right here that's bugging me and I'm going to put a layer over the top I'm gonna go multiply and I'm gonna grab nice somewhat mid-tone and I'm gonna go to my gradient tool I'm gonna do this stepping out of the shadow now I like that I like that so far I want to pull this together a little bit more turn this off real quick want to grab some of this color right here turn that back on I'm gonna go back into the details grab my brush shrink it up a little bit see if I can pull some of this together turn this off again grab some of that that feels nice now I'm gonna go on the top I do a layer on top I don't want to get this to pop just a little bit not pop but um separate a little bit so some of this color is still going to refer reflect reflect it flip effect there we go that feels pretty good I'm gonna get a little bit of stuff coming down in here but I really don't want I want all the attention to be in the upper left go now there's something I want to try I want to save this I'm going to put all this in its own folder I'm going to repeat it I'm gonna merge that folder so now I want to play with this a little bit I want to play with some edges I want to lose edges I want to blur areas I've got this foliage brush that I use quite a bit it says right here it's this brush it makes it makes like grass and stuff like that but it's really cool when you use it to smear with because it creates this very organic kind of lost edge that I really like so I'm able to go in and kind of just pick certain areas to soften and you'll see that it really starts to feel really nice I just want to make sure that I don't overdo it that's the key so it's like anything else you don't want to overdo some of these things I just want to soften certain areas and get them to come together really long and here maybe maybe along in here see I'm just losing some edges here and it just softens ever so nicely trying to keep it subtle and that's that brushes in with my foliage brushes now watch this I'm gonna be able to soften that border from light the border from light to dark some areas I'm going to keep it strong other areas I'm gonna let it kind of blend I want to lose some edges along the chin along the bottom of the snout there get some nice softness you can do it along here look at the softness I feel I get coming off of that year I creates a really nice downy feel you know there I've softened this up a little bit through here there there we go right in here so now I'm going to create another layer on top and I just want to go back and now just reiterate some of that fur whoops grab the wrong brush go back now I can go back and just lightly add a few details see there so you get this very kind of organic traditional feel to it there and I just want to add a little texture just something - I'm gonna throw I'm gonna throw this let's make this multiply I want to maybe add another little bit of shadow over the top of it just to see how that's gonna look that feels pretty good feels pretty good there we go maybe just a race back a little bit there we go maybe throw a little texture just a touch of texture over the top I'm just gonna experiment this is me kind of playing with the finishing touches I like using brushes that kind of add add interest just a little just a little something maybe to erase some of that back I like a little bit of added texture there that feels good and I want to get the kitten here a little darker I go back to my regular brush I'm really just adding these finishing details now I work over the top getting very close there we go I'm going to do one more layer multiply and just add a little bit of shadow to that I maybe even go a little darker like that and then read over the top eyelashes there that all feels pretty good the body's feeling a little but I like I like what we've got going up in here this feels really nice now what I might do let's try cropping it just want to see how we'll look if we crop it a bit bring this down the hair a hair I'll keep it at that I like that crop we'll keep that there so now I'm going to I'm going to use my filter blur gallery I'm going to tilt shift it I'm gonna come over here this is all going to come out here this is going to come out here right about there I'll let that go there and I want to see how it's gonna look I'm not seeing anything what's going on Oh hold on I'm sorry I just did the wrong way I gotta merge everything again so I'm going to do this layer merge layers whoops Z I'm going to here layer layer merge layers there we go now let's get into our filter blur gallery tilt shift because once again that body over there is bugging me do this to bring this out - hear that - there we'll bring that out to about 29 see how we look that feels pretty good now let's take this these are all the little fitment finishing touches that I like I'm gonna I'm gonna push the saturation let's push that saturation just a bit you get a nice sense of light there now I'm going to come in and actually I want to go in with my smudge tool and I'm gonna grab this little doohickey this brush and watch what I do I'm going to create a little bit of fur don't want that just like so oops there we go we don't want 50% see my little fur there we go just little areas to get a little feel of fur along the snout there right along up here I'm gonna softness in the ears get some nice softness going on in those ears there we go there that feels good save that save that we've pushed the we've pushed the up other the the saturation let's go ahead and try something else want one more thing all right let's see here I'm going to copy that I go to my brush I grab my airbrush I'm going to knock this down to 9% I'm gonna go to color Dodge I'm gonna go to really warm color and I'm just burning in some areas here there we go there we go and a little bit of reflected light underneath every knock that back just a touch yeah I like that pack just to touch and there is our light and our fur there is our wolf portrait done digitally when and how to draw fur so that was a lot of fun I'm gonna go ahead and sign it now I'm just gonna grab a nice light color and let's put this back to normal and let me grab a different brush here never did use any of the dry brush I thought I was going to but I just didn't do it I don't think I needed to well that we can experiment real quick let me blow this up there's my name don't wear it out a wet file let's try something I want to grab this maybe create a little bit of texture and I'm gonna go to my dry brush oh it's not bad I kind of like that grab a little bit lighter color that feels nice there get some nice color in here there just a touch here we go we'll save that so there's our wolf done and uh done in Photoshop done digitally but like I said head on over to my website creature art teacher calm and you can pick up my course on how to draw wolves coyotes and foxes I hope you enjoyed this learning how to draw fur paint fur digitally remember you can also oh you know I forgot some whiskers you can you can do this traditionally as well and you just got to get the right tools you get to do this and uh you can do this in gouache you can do this in watercolor there we go just need a couple little whiskers paint it in there and a little bit of negative space so there we go so there is painting fur there's the reflected light the bright light direct light remember keep your values straight don't mate you know make sure your values and your shadow areas don't get any brighter than the values in your bright areas and vice versa so you want to keep them nice and separate so that your shadow and light areas will read so I hope you guys enjoyed that I really had a great time let's let's get together again at some point I'm gonna I'm gonna get this video out and then we got a few things I've got to do but then I'm gonna try to get some more done very quickly in the next couple of weeks so please stay tuned for that and like I said I hope you enjoyed this go out give it a shot put some Beauty back in the world make the world a better place do something nice for somebody and I'll talk to you next week thanks bye hey thanks for watching if you liked what you saw please hit the red subscribe button down below spread the word and also if there's something that you're not seeing that you'd like to see let us know we'd love to hear from you thanks a lot

Channel: The Art of Aaron Blaise

Views: 399,455

Rating: 4.9589729 out of 5

Keywords: Aaron's Art Tips, digital painting, painting fur, animal art, wolves, Photoshop, Wacom, Cintiq, Painting light and shadow

Id: RX4kB7tqf4Y

Length: 124min 20sec (7460 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018