Learn How to Paint ARCTIC WOLF with Acrylic - Paint and Sip - Winter Animal Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint and sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today i'm going to be painting arctic wolf and i'm going to be sipping on some eggnog and if you enjoy this process i do hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you're going to find additional painting perks so let's get painting and let's get sipping all right so for my materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and primed 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'll be using i'm going to be using acrylic paint today my colors are titanium white burnt umber which i will call brown cobalt blue and mars black and of course you can switch up those colors too if you like but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have a nine inch paper plate that we'll be using to draw a circle i'm going to be using oops a white piece of chalk and then i have two brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush and then i have a number one round synthetic brush and i will refer to these as small and large as we go through the painting process and of course you can switch those up if you'd like if you're painting along with me you'll probably want to have a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying your brushes and down below this video i will be providing you with a couple of additional resources that can help you throughout your painting process one of them is a link where you can purchase the same exact paint kit that i'm using from the large canvas to the same type of paint and i'll even throw in the paper plate for you and there's all kinds of other goodies in there that's down there for you there is also a link where you can download a free image of the final painting so you can print that and use it as visual reference as you go through the painting process and there's also written step-by-step instructions down there for you as well and that's all we're going to need today all right so we're going to do for the first step is we're going to be painting our background i'm going to be using a large bristle brush the colors i'm using are white blue and black and what i'm going to do is i'm going to pre-mix myself a soft kind of grayish blue and i'm going to be using that for the majority of the background but i'll get it to go a little bit lighter at the top and a little bit darker at the bottom so i've magically pre-mixed my blue so you can see where i'm headed but i'll show you how i got there so this is the blue that i'm going for it's a real nice soft neutral type of a blue what i in essence did was i took my cobalt and i added gray to it or black and white so there's my blue i'm going to add a little bit of white and a little bit of black into my blue and you might want yours a lighter or darker than mine like that's still kind of too too blue for me so i'm going to add a little bit more white to it and a touch more black to it so what i'm in essence doing it is desaturating or taking out the extra vibrancy of the blue and just adding gray to it so this is looking pretty darn good for me so it looks pretty similar to the other batch that i made so i'm just going to mix them all together and then what i'm going to do i'm just going to wipe my brush off on the side of my palette i'm going to use my dirty brush and pick up some white paint i'm going to start up at the top with my um with my grayish blue and white on my brush and then as i come down the canvas i will start picking up just the the gray blue that we made so i'm just going left to right you can use kind of a crisscross type of a brush stroke or you can just go fully across whatever works best for you so now that i've done that now i'm just going to pick up my grayish blue and i'm going to come down quite a ways with this just making sure that it blends into that lighter area that we did um first so i kind of back it up into that lighter area and i'm just going to pick up this this blue for a while as i come down the canvas i will start introducing black to it in a little bit but i'm just kind of getting a real nice coat on here i do know that because we used white and black in the color combination of mixing this blue that it will give us really good coverage the opacity of it's going to be pretty high you won't really be able to see through it and you're going to get some good coverage so you most likely will only need to do one coat with this but if you feel after you're done doing this that you want to make it any darker or do another layer on it if it has any streakiness to it you can feel free to do a second coat so now that i'm about three quarters of the way down my canvas now what i'm going to do is i'm going to start picking up my pre-mixed blue plus black on my brush so i want the bottom of my canvas to be a little bit darker so it looks like it's kind of going down deep into the forest and i bring this all the way down to the bottom and then i will back it up into the mid-tone blue that we have so just kind of getting this on here and then i just kind of blend it back up into that other section just so they all kind of work together feeling like i need a little more paint on my brush here so i can make sure that i get this all nice and colored in and then you can if you want to do a second coat you can certainly do that but i feel like mine's going to be pretty good here i'm just going to go back and forth like this make sure that i've got a pretty good blend and do any little tweaks that you feel are necessary we're going to be utilizing our piece of chalk for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your large brush away take out your piece of chalk and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're going to be drawing an outline for the wolf's head i'm going to be using my chalk i do recommend that you make sure that your canvas is dry before you start this step so this is the time where you get to take that extra long break if you'd like to or you can find some kind of fun fanning method to get it dry or you can do as i did and just whip out a blow dryer and get it dry that way so what i'm going to do is i'm going to be using my chalk oh and my paper plate for this step so i'm going to be starting with a circle and then i'm just going to give you a couple of markers we'll make a couple more shapes of sorts and we'll have the shape of a wolf's head by the time we're done so i'm going to take my paper plate and if you don't have a paper plate that's okay you can just draw yourself a circle that's about nine inches wide by nine nine inches tall i'm going to put it about center in my canvas but up a little bit so i'm maybe about i don't know maybe about four and a half inches from the top of my canvas and about three and a half or four inches or so from the sides of my canvas and then i'm just going to draw a circle around my paper plate so this is not a very tricky part but this will definitely help us just kind of start the shape of the head and give us a great place to work from so once i've got that done i can just discard my paper plate somewhere and now what i'm going to do is i'm going to create the rest of the shape of the head so i need a couple of little ears so i'm going to have my ears out in this direction they're going to be maybe about two or three inches out from the edge of the head so i'm going to be up at the top of my head in through here i'm going to start disconnecting from the head right up right about here and then i'm going to just kind of give myself a little bit of a pointy-ish type of ear and then just bring it down back in and meet my circle in through there and i'm going to do something similar over on this side so just kind of disconnect it in through here and then just kind of give yourself a little bit of a curved type of tip to it like that and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to in essence create the side sides of the face coming down into the muzzle area so what we've in essence done is the circle that i created is going to be the width of the fluffy fur that's on the sides of the face but we're going to kind of give some contour marks where the where the cheekbones are and into the muzzle so this is as far down as i'm going to have that muzzle go so if this is about the center of that muzzle i'm going to go about an inch from one side to the next and that's where i'm going to kind of start to have the nose or the bottom part of the muzzle kick up and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to connect here to all the way up in through here with a kind of a continual curved line it's going to come out a little bit and then kick back in to my muzzle so you can start either at the top or the bottom whatever is most comfortable for you so i'm going to start right about in through here going to give myself this line like this and then back down and gradually go into this little curve here and i'll do the same thing over on the left hand side so i'm starting somewhere around the bottom of that ear get my hand out of the way here so we're going to go something like this and then just kick it back in a little bit like this and you can certainly adjust it to you know make it look any which way that you want but this is going to give us a nice kind of contour to the shape and that's all we're going to be doing for our initial outline we'll be using our large brush for the next step so you can just get ready all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're going to be doing the base coat for our head so i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors i'm using are black and white so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pre-mix myself a gray color and then we'll do a couple or a variation there up so i've magically pre-mixed my my gray here so i'm just going for like a a mid-tone gray it doesn't have to be too light or too dark so how i got there was i used a little bit of black and a little bit of white and just spun them together this is i think i'm going to need a little bit more white in that equation so just adding a little bit more white we're going to be adding a lot of details on top of the wolf later on top of the first so you don't need this to be anything super fancy so that's looking pretty good to me so i'm just going to mix those two together and then once i've got my gray color what i'm going to be doing is i'm going to be doing longer fur on this exterior portion of the circle and shorter for within here so i'm going to be using two different brush strokes i'll be using a longer more pulled type of brush stroke on the long fur and then a dotting or stippling type of technique on the shorter fur i do want a couple of darker areas so i'm going to have my ears a little bit darker and the fur underneath here a little bit darker i'm never going to go too much wider than this exterior part of the circle even if like i'm noticing i have a little bit more space in through here than in through here that's okay you can just kind of equalize it with the fur that we're going to be doing in a minute so what i'm going to do i mixed my gray but i don't need a lot of gray on my brush right now so i'm just going to kind of wipe it off on my paper on the side of my palette and i'm going to pick up with my dirty brush a touch of black paint as well i'm going to start in the fur that's underneath this muzzle into here so i've got the black and the gray on my brush and i'm just going to kind of pull it down into here i feel like i have a lot of paint on my brush so i'm going to a lot of gray i want less than that so i just wipe my brush off picking up a little bit more black paint i want to have control over what i'm doing so the less paint i utilize on my brush especially for a beginning step like this the more control i will have because i'm using black in the equation this fur down underneath the chest is going to look or underneath the head is going to look like it's more in the shadows and i'm going to work my way up here with this longer fur so i can have the exterior of the face having that longer fur but i'm not going to be using as much black as i move up the head so i just reloaded with a little bit of gray and a touch of black and i'm going to overlap my my chalk mark just a little bit this is really just giving us the the first layer of the of the fur so you don't feel like you have to go hog wild and make this really vibrant and really thick we're really just looking for the exterior portions of this fur to have some softness to them and we will add all of the other information on top of it so again i'm not going much farther than where the exterior of here was but you could certainly pull this bottom part out a little bit wider if you felt like you wanted that chest of the wolf to look like it's got a little bit more width on it now i'm going to put my ears on because i know i want those to be a little bit darker so i very little bit of my gray and i'm going to put a tiny bit of black as well and i want my ears to be a little bit darker so i'm just going to um they're going to have a little bit of longer fur on them but you don't really need to do a whole heck of a lot just kind of getting a little bit darker of a color on them um a little bit darker than the gray that i'm going to be working with in a minute and then i'm going to just pull a little bit of this out at the bottom of the ears and then i'm going to do the same thing over here i'm really looking to have soft edges on all of this so i'm not going for anything that's really firm or having a lot of paint on it i will be adding additional layers like i said with more fur but all through this process i i want this animal to look like it's got some softness to its fur so i'm going to be utilizing just very little bit of paint on my brush to accomplish this especially these longer pieces of fur as i work my way in towards the middle i'm going to be using gray plus black right up the center of the head so gray plus black on my brush and i'm going to be dotting it i'm doing a stippling type of technique in through here and i'm going to get it to be the darkest right here in the middle and then it will get it to go lighter as it goes farther away so something like this we'll be putting the eyes on in a little while but right now just kind of getting this started and now i'm just going to pick up some of my gray and just get the rest of the head colored in in through here so if by the time you're done this step you can still see some of your blue behind it that's okay because we're going to be utilizing that tone underneath it to create this nice gray color to to the animals so i am just dotting the rest of the head all the way out to the edges when i get near the longer fur i will transition into the longer fur with a little bit of a dot kind of pulling type of brush stroke but right now just kind of going all the way to the edge of that outline that we had so that outline in essence is kind of telling you the difference from the long fur to the short fur so as i go into these areas let me just get down towards the front of the muzzle in through here just utilizing that gray all the way to the edge and if you end up with little ruffled edges along the the where the mouth is going to be that's great it's just going to look like a little bit of fur in through there so we can totally work that out and again just going right up to the edge in through here so now that i've got that on there i want this to transition a little bit so i'm not going to wash my brush i'm just going to kind of pull that little bit of paint right cross it over that line just a little bit just so we don't have a firm edge between the face and the side fur so something like that you can have kind of a firm edge in through this mouth part into it but in through the face it would it would benefit you if you just kind of let those two work together a little bit and then we're going to be utilizing our small brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your large brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're going to paint our facial features so that's going to be our eyes our nose and our mouth i'm going to use my small brush the colors i'm using our black blue white and probably some brown too so we're going to use all of the colors on the palette so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to first just put the eyes and the nose and the mouth in place with black paint and then we'll do some details on top of it so i'm going to load my small brush with black paint i'm going to have my eyes they're going to be right about here so these are kind of i would say in the corners the inside corners of your ears coming down and if if this is where if this is the the big circle that you made it's about halfway between the bottom and the top of that so somewhere in through here i'm going to make myself two almond type of shapes so something like this and like this and i'll go ahead and do the same thing on the other side in a similar type of shape they don't have to be exactly the same but if you can get them pretty darn close that's good i'm gonna then paint just paint them in with black paint and we'll make some additional kind of shape markers on the outside of them so once i've got them colored in black what i'm going to do is i'm going to pull down that inside corner of the eye so pull this down just a little bit it can these wolves they can have very um different style type of eyes in through here so you can pull it down far or not far whatever whatever works for you i'm going to do the same thing over on this side just kind of pull it down a little bit this little kind of triangle type of shape and then what i'm going to do and just make sure i got this down pretty far and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to extend the outside corners of the eyes so this is going to in essence kind of be the start of the the markings on the side of the face into the fur so i'm just kind of using a little bit of paint on my brush kind of giving it a downward type of arcing type of motion we will be adding a lot of additional information on top of this later and i'm using like a soft line just so i can have that information in there the way that i want so as that is or so i can soften it as as i go through the um fur making process so as this is drying what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go down to the nose so the edges of my nose are right about here so they're kind of in the corner of where we made that initial almond type of shape and it's down pretty far i would say maybe about an inch up from the bottom edge of that face so somewhere about in through here and it's going to be a little oval type of shape so something like this is going to give me my shape of it i'm going to leave it maybe about a quarter to a half of an inch away from the bottom of my um of my face and through there and then i'm just going to paint it in with black paint so we've got this just painted in with black paint you can also and i always recommend this especially when doing animals with a lot of fur and stuff leave the edges soft so right now i have pretty firm edges i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and then i'm just going to kind of ruffle them up a little bit along those edges so this way i don't have a really firm edge to it i've got a nice soft edge so it looks like it's starting to blend in with the fur itself i'm going to bring down a little bit of a center area in through here where it's going to meet that mouth so something like this and then i'm just going to give myself a real gentle kind of line for where that mouth is going to go somewhere down near the bottom we'll put a little bit of little fur down below that mouth but this is just putting it kind of in place with just the hint of the opening of the mouth so something like that will work and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to go back up to those eyes i'm going to wash and dry my brush wash and dry my brush i'm going to put blue and white so you could utilize this pre-mixed color for the color of the eyes if you want but i think i want mine to be a little bit bluer so i'm going to use the cobalt blue plus white so you can see it's a little bit more of a vibrant blue that's going to be a pro a personal preference on your part if how blue you want them and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to do a crescent type of a shape within the eye i'm going to leave black at the bottom and a little bit of black at the top i'm going to leave um the pupil part a little bit of a pupil part in through here i'm gonna do that on this side and of course you can make yours lighter or darker however you feel it looks the best and then i'll go ahead and do the other eye in the same manner so bringing that blue close to the top of that section and then just kind of giving it a curved line leaving for that pupil part to show and then before i'm done what i'll do is i'll put a little a little sparkle in it and you could also make the top part a little bit darker i'll show you how to do that in a second but i'm going to put a little bit of white paint on my brush i'm going to give myself a little sparkle down at the bottom of the color part of the eye just kind of give myself a little curved line down there i'm going to wash and dry my brush and i'm going to put a little bit of brown up at the top of that eye so just a little bit of brown is going to make this eye almost look like it's in the shadow up at the top of the eye so this is just a good little trick to make sure that that eye kind of has a little bit of extra dimension and if you needed to pull anything else down you certainly could while i have the brown on my brush i'm going to put brown plus a little bit of white on my brush and i'm going to give myself a little bit of a skin type of area right in this little triangular section that i made so a little bit of a skin kind of appearance in through there and then we'll be putting all kinds of other information around the eyes but that's about all i'm going to do for them right now i'm going to move down to my nose so i'm going to put a little bit of black and a touch of white on my brush so i have black and white on my brush so i'm in essence going for kind of an on-the-fly gray color that's going to give me the highlight to the top of the nose so if this is about halfway up or down the nose i'm going to go a little bit above that and this is where the light part of the nose is going to to be on the top so something like this i'm going to put a touch more black on my brush so i don't really want it to be super white so just give myself that little bit of a highlight at the top and then i need a couple of nostrils so i'm just going to if this is the center of the nose i'm going to go a little bit to the right give myself with this same color combination just a little bit of black and white on my brush i'm going to give myself a little kind of arcing motion like that i'm going to do the same thing over here a little arcing motion like that and then i'm going to give myself a little kind of piece of skin in the middle of there and then you can certainly make any little adjust adjustments if you feel that you need to dull down the nostrils or amp them up a little bit feel free to do so and then we are going to be utilizing our large brush for the next step so once you've got your facial features on here maybe a little bit of extra stuff down below here once you've got these done you can put your small brush away take out your large brush and get ready for the next step alright so we're going to be doing for the next step is we're doing step number two to the fur so i there's only going to be three steps so don't worry about that um so what i'm going to do is i'm using my large bristle brush i'm going to be using black brown gray and white and what we're going to be in essence doing is kind of putting in the color pattern of the wolf i'm going for a arctic type of wolf that does have a lot of white in it but they can have some gray they can have some brown so i'm kind of allowing those colors to show up in my beautiful wolves so i'm going to have some dark areas around the sides of the eyes i'll have dark in above where the eyebrow bone if the eyebrow socket or the eye socket is in through here have a dark spot above and then we'll do some darkness under the eyes which will make that muzzle pop out maybe a little bit of darkness above the nose and we'll go from there so i'm going to use my large brush the the key here is never have a lot of paint on your brush at any one time so i'm going to be using the texture of the bristles because i like these firm bristle brushes to give me a lot of dimension and texture within the paint and we will be doing another layer on top of this so if anything goes wrong and you're like oh my god i didn't expect that to happen don't worry next step we can certainly modify it so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start off with a teeny tiny bit of black paint and brown paint on my brush so very little bit of both this is going to help me to start where those dark areas are going to be so i've already kind of started these guys in through here so i might as well just kind of get get those going as well and i'm going to pull this in a little bit into that side fur i'm going to do the same thing over on this side so i very little bit of paint on my brush right now i'm going to bring this in through here i'm going to do the same thing for my eyebrow area so i'm going to come up from here just a little bit give myself a little bit of darkness in through here and all the while i'm thinking i am creating fur so i am not going to be utilizing anything other than a brush stroke that tells the direction of that fur so every everywhere i go that's what i'm going to be doing is i'm moving my brush in that specific direction i want a little bit of this darkness in the forehead in through here i already started it there but i want a little bit more textural type of effect into here so very little bit of paint on my brush and i'm just kind of pushing it and kind of pricking it into the canvas so i can still see some of that gray underneath but i'm utilizing that little bit of the black and the brown on my brush and i just keep reloading with a teeny bit of black and brown i'm going to do the same thing underneath these eyes so i've got just a teeny bit on my brush and if you bump into things like your eyes and you're like oh i didn't mean to bump into it don't worry you can always come back and and make any little adjustments that you want i feel like i need to put a little bit more paint on my brush so i'm going to go ahead and put just a tiny bit more of the black and the brown and if your bristles get too splayed out and i'm tough to control what i like to do is just take it and squish it on the side of my palette and that'll bring those bristles back together in a more controlled fashion and if this brush is too big for you you can always switch to a smaller brush i really like the bristle brush because i like the the textural little pieces that i can get from the um from the tip of the brush so this is one of my favorite brushes to use but sometimes it can get a bit much for for creating these smaller details right now i'm going to go more into brown because i want there to be more brown over on the sides of the face so i just picked up more brown and i'm going to go ahead and do the same thing over on this side of the face so again just really kind of these gentle kind of tapping motions to get this this colored area in through here i know i wanted to transition into the longer fur so just going to kind of tap that in a little bit over there and get a little bit more going on in through here and then just tap that in through there just making sure that i've got enough going on up and through here dotting that i'm going to do a little bit at the top of the nose to the doll or to the top of the nose and through here and just kind of bring this up and this is just a real gentle dotting so i can get those dark undertones in through there maybe a little bit underneath here as well so right now what i'm doing i'm just kind of looking and seeing where do i want these darker marks to to appear and i'm just kind of going for it i want i'm going to wash my brush because i want more of the brown to show up right now as opposed to the black so i'm washing my brush right now so i can get the black off and i'm going to put some brown on my brush and this way i can have more evidence of the brown as opposed to the black color so you can see as soon as i as soon as i did that i've got more evidence of brown as opposed to the gray or the black and you can really i mean there's a lot of wolves that have a lot of gr a lot of brown in them as well so if you feel that you're um you know steering more towards liking the brown in it feel free to utilize that i'm going to bring a little bit down in through here so i can have a little bit of this brown in this longer fur that's coming out over the sides so something like this and then maybe a little bit of this brown is going up into here as well and again we will be utilizing the next step of the fur is going to bring all the bright highlights into it so this right now is just kind of setting the stage for the color markings i want a little bit of brown up in through here so again hardly any paint on my brush at all you could certainly i might use a little bit of the gray in a minute as well but right now just kind of getting this here i think i'm going to pick up a touch of black right now as i'm going into these ears i feel like i want a little a little more darkness on the tips of those ears so just a little tiny bit more black up in through here and of course you could certainly utilize a smaller brush as well but i like again the the the texture that these bristle brushes will offer me and then maybe just a little bit more of this darkness up and through here so that's provided me with a pretty good assembly of my where i want my dark areas to go where i want all of my markings to go maybe a little bit of darkness above these eyes i'm going to put um black with my gray on my brush right now so this way i can get a little bit up into um the tops of these eyes kind of coming up in through here so i have black plus a little bit of brown on my brush just so i can get a little bit of um information up in these inner corners of the eyes just like this so this is going to give me yeah some nice some nice depth and through there just making sure maybe i got a little bit more over in through here so again just play with it i am going to be utilizing this same brush for the next step and the next step will be where we add all of the the brightness to to the fur um this is looking pretty good let me just get a little bit more brown in through here so you can see also the muzzle starting to kind of make its make its appearance this is looking good all right so next step same large brush you can just wash it and dry it yeah sometimes it's hard to stop washing trying and get ready all right so we're gonna do for the next step is step three to the fur or the final step to the fur so i'm going to use my large bristle brush the colors i'm using are white brown gray and probably some black too so how i'm going to do this is very slowly i'm going to use very little bit of paint on my brush i'm in essence adding all those bright little highlights onto the fur so it really comes to life we're gonna be adding a little bit more fluff along the side so it really looks nice and voluminous as the fur kind of wraps around the face little kind of pops of long pieces of fur on those ears some nice brightness on the top of the head maybe a little bit more around the eyes and stuff so i'll use my large bristle brush again if you want to use a smaller one feel free to do so my trick is i'm never going to have a lot of paint on my brush i'm going to be using a lot of a dabbing or stippling type of effect when i get into the longer fur on the sides i will be using that the corner of my brush and just kind of pulling pulling out those longer pieces of fur so i definitely want to utilize some of the colors underneath but i also want to build my way to the white fur and i don't want it to go all white too fast on me so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a light tannish gray color to build my way to the white so what i've done is i've taken my gray and i added white and a little bit of brown to it so you can just take a little bit of white add it to your gray maybe a little bit more than that and then a little bit of brown so what you're in essence doing is creating a little bit lighter version of your gray with a little bit more warmth in it so it builds its way to that light white that we're going to want to put in a minute so somewhere in this vicinity will totally work out and then what i'm going to do i'm just going to make sure i don't have too much paint on my brush so i'm going to wipe it off even wipe it off on your paper towel if you have to so that way you ensure that you have very little bit of paint on your brush so i am going to want some kind of all over the place to add um that bit of brightness but i know that there's some distinct areas that i want to have some of this so i definitely want some underneath these eyes so i have a little tiny bit on my brush and i'm just going to kind of dab in this little bit of lightness underneath these eyes and same thing over on this side and again just bringing a little bit more life to to these eyes and you want to make sure that it it kind of works its way into whatever is next to it so you don't just want to have a section of it you want it to kind of blend in or talk to whatever's next to it i definitely want a little bit on top of these eyes so i can kind of dab it and dot it and if i feel like i'm gonna have i want some longer fur i can kind of pull it out a little bit further but right now just kind of getting these little lighter areas on here i again will never have a lot of paint on my brush so i can utilize the light colors on the tip of it i'm going to come up in through here to start to get some of this to be lighter but i still want to see that darkness underneath so i don't want it to go too too much this is again just adding more texture to the fur so i'm not necessarily looking to to you know make it all super light i just am looking to give it some texture and make it look like fur as opposed to just speckled dots on my canvas so i'm bringing this down in through here because i know that this is all going to be the muzzle so i've got that i haven't reloaded my brush so i'm still just working with that light tannish gray i'm going to bring this down in through here and you can see every every little dab i make makes a difference so even though i don't have a lot of paint on my brush this this bit of information that i'm putting on top of the other paint is providing me with that additional layer of information i'm going to at this point pick up a little bit more of that light brown because i'm enjoying what it's doing and i want to make sure that i do that in as many places as i want to so i'm just dabbing it on my paper towel i'm going to give up in through here a little bit of this light texture as well and again i put i'm doing a brush stroke in the direction that i feel that that fur is coming off or coming out of the head and then i'm going to i think i went a little more on my brush so added just a little bit more so i can make sure that i have this effect coming in through here and again just kind of adding it in a way that makes sense to me and in a way that looks like it blends in with the with the rest so it i mean it's probably one of the biggest keys for me when i'm doing fur especially on an animal that has multiple colors on it is everywhere needs to talk to each other so you don't necessarily just want to have a distinct section of color that doesn't transfer into the area next to it so it makes a whole lot more sense if they start to overlap one color overlaps the next color um if you can put that you know if you've got this light color maybe put it in a couple of pieces of the fur that are coming out of the ears let it look like it's got some cohesion around the rest of the painting and then i'm gonna kind of bring this out here while i have it on my brush this light color i'm going to start to add a little bit of extra fluff coming out these edges in through here so just a little bit i don't want this outside area to over power my my wolf look but i definitely want to make sure that i've got some extra fluff coming out in through here so that's when having a dry brush like i've got right now really helps to start building some extra information i think i want some darkness over here so i'm switching gears here i'm putting a little bit of brown and black on my brush i feel like this is not kind of the face isn't outlined as much as i wanted to so a little bit of black and brown and these are the kind of the tweaks that i make on the fly as i'm kind of finishing up a particular animal like i didn't feel like that that face was rounded enough in through there so adding this on the fly as i'm as i'm looking at it is fine you can really if you're if you're not utilizing too much paint on your brush you can always just kind of make these little adjustments on the fly like this which will help to build it even more it'll help to add more shape to it it'll help to to give more information to it so you can certainly if need be you can add you know go back to adding some dark colors as you are as you're finishing up or or doing these these last little um these last little tweaks so i am going to go back to my light color in a minute but now that i've got the darkness on my brush i'm like oh well maybe i want a little more dark here all right so i'm going to go back into that light tan without washing my brush and now i'm going to have light tan and some white on my brush so i'm i'm working my way towards the the brightness of the of the animal so we'll start back where i wanted the extra bright stuff and just kind of elevating it a little bit more and every time i go into a lighter shade i'm going to be painting less of an area on that animal so when i when i start going into these light light light colors you'll notice the real estate that i take up with them is much less than the prior color so it's just a matter of bringing it into a more vibrant tone as it's getting um closer to the surface and then just kind of amping up some of these bright tones on the edge of the face in through here making sure again that they kind of all talk to each other i'm going to add a little bit in the face in through here and this is where again the the edges of the face are going to start to to pop out i'm gonna continue on with that tan with a little bit of white on my brush making sure that i've got all of this lightness in through here that i want and in a minute i will start using more white i think i'm going to put a little tiny bit underneath here for underneath his mouth just to give him a little bit of a of a bottom area in through there and i'll just make sure that this kind of translates up in through here maybe a little bit on the side of the face and i'm kind of floating around right now just looking for those light areas where i want to incorporate the this lighter tone because i know that in a in a minute i'm going to start really utilizing white on my brush and i know once i kind of get into that white zone i might not come back so i'm good that's why i'm kind of floating around right now just getting building my way to that lightness making sure that i've got as much of the other colors on here as i want i think i'm going to put a little bit more brown in that nose just so i can have a little bit more brown represented in through here and again this is that time where you get to just kind of keep fiddling and tweaking these little areas as you as you're building it to see if you want it lighter or darker or have more depth to it or more dimension to it and you know you might find that that you want yours to be really dark or really light or you know have more information in it than mine does and that's going to be a personal preference as you're going through your process of building your wolf i'm just giving a little bit more darkness under these eyes so they sink in just a little bit more and have a little bit more drama as we're going into these areas so this is kind of like you know my fine-tuned details as i'm as i'm going um bringing it kind of into that final resting place i think i want a little more tap in of that on there and then maybe a little bit of that um that tan color so we can just get this to blend in with this nose and through here yeah that's looking pretty good so you know adding these extra bits of darkness and extra bits of lightness enhance the depth within the fur so even though at times i flip back from my light to my dark colors i'm doing that because i feel that maybe there wasn't enough contrast in one area and it's not popping out enough or maybe i feel that it needs that um additional bit of information especially like on this nose so i can have that muzzle popping out a little bit more so i'm adding this the these additional pieces of contrast or little bits of fur in through here in order to continue to sell my story of having the um the shape and the form of the animal as well as all of the fur that i want to to happen so i'm going in for some white now i think i'm going to wash and dry my brush because i want a lot of white at the top of the head and i want it to be kind of crisp so i just washed and dried my brush i'm going in for some white paint and again i don't need a lot so just a little bit on my brush i know that i want some within these um these eyebrows or eyebrow eye socket areas so just adding a little bit more on there gonna add a little bit more on here so i'm hardly touching my canvas i am really just kind of dotting it with just those tips especially coming up in through here because i want some of that darkness to still show underneath so i really just want to add these little pops up maybe these look like the edges of the snow or maybe maybe snow's falling on his head or maybe they look like the little tips to the to the hair you can certainly decide all on your own i'm going to put some up at the top and this again is going to make it look nice and dimensional and just kind of bring this in in a direction that i feel is natural so i feel it would be little dots in through here and then over above here maybe a little bit of a curved type of motion and then i will definitely let mine dry for a minute step back from it see if there's any little more information that i want to add to it because i know that through this process as we are putting these little final details onto it especially when i'm sitting here this close to it sometimes when you're sitting that close it's really tough to see if you've got all the information on there that you want so to put it in or put it on the canvas kind of let it sit for a minute step away look at it from a distance see if there's anything more that you want to do on it and make any little fiddles and adjustments that you want and then once you've got it in a place that makes you your painterly eye happy we will be utilizing this same brush for the next step so you can fiddle with yours as much as you want to and then once you've got it in a place that makes you really nice and oh i think i want a little more lightness on these edges here once you've got it in a in a place that makes you nice and happy you we are going to utilize this same brush for the next step this is one of those steps it's really going to be hard for me to stop i'm going to try really hard but so once i get done i will be switching my brushes and you can come along with me on that journey so you can just get ready alright so we're going to do for the next step is we're going to paint the border of the painting so i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors i'm using are black brown my pre-mixed grayish blue and white and what i'm going to attempt to do is just make a real abstract type of background that's going to complement my wolf but it's also going to give the illusion that my wolf is kind of emerging from a snowy forest so i'm going to have the impression of maybe some the tops of pine trees down at the bottom some snow covered pine trees so what i'm going to do is i'm going to be using a very loose kind of skecherly interpretive type of brush stroke we'll i'll be doing some dots up at the top but down at the bottom i'll be doing like these tall triangle types of shapes and then we'll put some snow on them and it'll be fun so what i'm going to first do is i'm going to start with my grayish blue plus a little bit of black on my brush what i'm going to do is along the edges i'm going to be kind i'm going to be doing these a vertical type of marks and then i'm going to be pulling out some of the edges of them so what i'm in essence doing is just giving a loose um impressionistic look of perhaps out of focus out of focus pine trees so again reloading my brush with blue the grayish blue plus a little bit of black i'm going to do the same thing over on this side so just some real loose sketcherly type of brush strokes vertical and then i just kind of bring my brush down towards like in a triangle or a diagonal type of motion to give the illusion that they're out of focus back there as i work my way down towards the front i'm going to be using more black on my brush so without washing my brush i just picked up some black i don't want this to take up my whole um beautiful wolf that we spent so much time on so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to kind of lay out a few kind of markers where i want the tops of these trees to be so that way it will keep me in control and say don't go any higher than that and then once i've got those in place now i can start to use that kind of sketch early diagonal type of brush stroke i'm going to reload my brush with a little bit more black and you don't need to paint the whole thing you can certainly have some of the blue showing through i even still have some blue on my brush so this way it will allow it to really all talk together and complement one another and you can have it a little bit darker at the bottom if you want there it to look like it's gone further down into the forest but this way you you can have your tree tops looking whatever way that you want if you want there to be multiple treetops feel free to do so i'm just going to be putting the black on right now as i'm coming down towards these ones in the front so it looks like they're kind of deeper in that forest than the ones that are up top and then once i've got this done what i'll do is i'm going to start to add some light snow on my trees and you can see i still have some of my blue showing through this is all meant to to work together so now that i've got that in place what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up my blue plus a little bit of white paint on my brush at the same time i didn't wash my brush so i may still have some black on there as well and this is going to give me some snow on my trees so for my snow i'm just going to kind of lightly dab it going in kind of a downward type of motion and again i want this to look out of focus so i'm really not going to go all in and make every single one have the same amount of snow and have it look like it's you know got the same type of pile of snow on it i just wanted to be out of focus so i'm using the white plus a little bit of blue on my brush right now to get these ones in the background to look like they've got a little bit of snow on them and then as i work my way towards these darker front ones i can utilize the same color combination and even if i go on top of wet black paint which is exactly what's gonna happen that's great because what's gonna what that will do is that'll make it blend in a little bit and make it look even more natural so let the blend happen if it if it's if it's there if the if the black is wet just go for it let it let it merge into one another and i'm letting it get darker and darker as it goes down towards the base of the canvas to make it look like it's going out of viewing range maybe these maybe we've got a couple of front ones that are in a little bit more focus because they are in the foreground a little bit more so you can have some of them really having a lot of snow or a lot of whiteness on them if you want those to look like they're really you know close to the viewer feel free to do that but utilizing that blue also on your brush is going to allow for it to make it look like the snow some of it is in the shadows some of it might have you know be out of focus you know just use your imagination we've got a wolf who's hovering over this beautiful forest it doesn't have to our trees don't have to look realistic we can have it look as impressionistic as we want and then once you've got your trees done you can fiddle with them as much as you want what i'm going to do is now i'm going to kind of finish the top of my canvas so i'm going to just wipe my brush off on my paper towel i'm going to pick up a tiny bit of brown plus white and then wipe my brush off again and so what i've got is a really kind of soft type of a color on my brush that is going to work with all of the colors in the canvas and i want this to almost look like a light snowfall it might be happening so i put that color on there now i'm going to pick up a tiny bit of white and do the same thing dab it off on my paper towel and just kind of give myself a really soft border to the painting you can even dab it right into the sky wherever your visual comfort zone is make it look as snowy as you want or as soft as you want if you feel like you've done too much pick up some of that original blue this is your final touch to the painting you can really make it something that is pleasing to your eye and really special and impressionistic and abstract all at the same time so have fun with it and when you feel like you've got it as as filled as you want we i have one tiny little step left to go and it's going to be with the small brush this is one of those steps where i'm like oh i just want a little more here and oh i just want a little more there so it's tough for me to stop so i imagine it might be a little difficult for you as well but once you've found a place where you can stop you can put this large brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step alright so we are on to the final step this is the final step of every painting which is to sign it so i'm going to use my small brush i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i am going to go bottom left on this one and i am using my soft blue color my grayish blue color i signed mine with my initials but you could certainly sign yours with your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you want for your identifying mark to be is totally fine and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a beautiful winter animal and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 38,673

Keywords: how to paint, acrylic, painting, tutorial, beginner, simple, easy, painter, class, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, beautiful, best, top, inspirational, pretty, art, realistic, bob ross, looking, animal, portrait, face, close up, stare, winter, snow, close, camera, pet, snowy, arctic, eyes, landscape, male, female, illustration, surreal, polar, storm, sky, blue, day, adorable, wolf, dog, canine, white, grey, pine trees, evergreen, forest, above, fur, hair, brown, coyote, howling, moon, staring, star, nature, wild, wilderness, hovering, head

Id: UE1pO0aeNHc

Length: 56min 31sec (3391 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021