Learn How to Paint CANDY CANE POLAR BEAR with Acrylic - Paint & Sip - 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 candy cane polar bear and i'm 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 can 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 cobalt blue burnt umber which i will call brown deep yellow fire red and mars black of course you can switch up those colors if you'd like to but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have a standard number two pencil that i'll use for some drawing and i have three brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a number 12 round synthetic brush and i have a number one round synthetic brush and i will refer to these as small medium and large as we go through the painting process and of course you can switch those up as well if you'd like to if you're painting along with me you'll probably want 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 through 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 paints and brushes and all the good stuff in between so that's there for you there's 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 draw an outline for our landscape i'm going to be using my pencil and i'm going to give you a couple of markers and we'll just connect those markers and by the time we're done we'll just have the insinuation of a couple of gentle snowy hills that our polar bear is walking on so i'm going to be giving you a couple of markers on the left and the right side of the canvas and then we'll just connect the dots so on the left hand side of the canvas if you kind of find your midway point up and down i'm about two and a half inches below that so somewhere right about in through here is where i'm going to make my first marker then i'm going to go almost halfway between that marker and the bottom of my canvas and make myself another marker it doesn't have to be exact but something in that general vicinity will work out and then on the right hand side of the canvas if this is about halfway i'm just maybe about an inch below that so my right side is slightly higher than my left side but it doesn't have to be much and then on the bottom i'm going to come up maybe about two and a half inches and make myself another marker so this marker is a little bit lower than this bottom one then what i'm going to do is i'm going to connect the bottom two with just a a hill of sorts so i'm just going to kind of come up in this direction and then you can give it a little bit of wiggle if you want to it doesn't have to be anything perfect just something that resembles a hill and then i'm going to do the same thing with the back two ones so this one i'm going to slope down pretty close to this hill in through here so it gives you the impression of some nice slopey hills behind and then this can just ride along in through here and then i'm just going to have this kind of going you know maybe something like this up in through here and that's all i'm going to be doing for my landscape you could certainly put more mountains or hills back there but this is all i'm going to be doing i'll be using my large brush for the next step so you can just get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to paint the base coat of our sky and our hills so i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors i'm using are white blue and brown and what i'm going to do is i'm going to first pre-mix myself a light blue color for my sky and how i'm going to do that is i've magically already done it so you can see where i'm headed but what i did was i utilized this is the color i'm going for i utilized blue brown and white and what i did was i took about i would say about equal parts of my blue and my brown and then i mixed about i would say twice as much of the white so you're going to want a lot of the white and just a little bit of the blue and the brown you can even see here i used quite a bit of white but it didn't turn it as light as i want that's looking pretty good and then once you've got it into the color that you want yours does not have to be exactly the same color as mine but somewhere in that vicinity what i'm going to do is i'm going to be applying it to my sky to the exterior area around my sky i want my sky to get lighter and lighter as it comes in towards the center of the canvas but i don't want it to go all the way white so as i'm doing this i am i will not wash my brush when i go to pick up some of the some of the white to get it to go lighter and lighter but i do want it to maintain some color as i get towards that center so that's why i'm i'm kind of just going around the edges right now and then in a minute i'm going to bring it into the into the center but i'm going to be adding some white paint to my brush with the blue so i'm just kind of getting a nice good coverage all along the edges i'm using like a left to right kind of crisscross type of motion but you could certainly use circles or whatever works now what i'm going to do is i'm picking up my light blue plus white on my brush and this is going to help me to start to get it to go lighter and lighter as i go towards the center of my of my sky so again just the light blue and white get these to kind of blend in a little bit as i'm transitioning towards the lighter area and now i'm not going to pick up any more blue i'm just going to pick up white with my dirty brush and what this is going to do is it will provide me with a nice light blue on the on the center but it's not going to go all the way white because i'm utilizing my dirty brush so i still have some of that light blue within my within my bristles so it'll allow me to again keep that soft light blue color without going all the way white but it is providing me with a nice gradient where it's getting lighter and lighter as it goes towards that center and then i just kind of keep working it out so they look like they blend well together and then once i've got this sky background and you might find that you want to do a second layer on this background just whatever works for your visual preference the the darker it is the more the bear is going to pop out and the more your snow is going to pop out on top of it the lighter it is the more it will kind of just fade into um into the bear so either way really works so whatever you're more comfortable with the appearance of and then once you've got that nicely blended then i'm not even going to wash my brush i'm going to move right down to these hills so i'm going to pick up my light blue a touch of brown just a little tiny bit of brown and a little bit of white paint what i'm going to do is i'm going to have these hills darker at the bottom and work their way to really light at the top i don't need them to be very dark just a little bit darker than the the hill that they're in front of at least the bottom of them if you wanted it to be more brown you could certainly add more brown but now what i'm going to do is i'm just picking up some white paint with my dirty brush just so i can get the top of those hills to be nice and light and again my goal is not to get them to go white i just want them to be a little bit um darker than white i'm adding a touch more brown i want this to look a little bit more earthy so i just added a little bit more brown to my equation which you could certainly do the same thing if you'd like to and then i'm just going to bring this all the way up to the top making sure that i get all the way up to my pencil mark and making sure that is hidden and we don't have much of an area that we're doing so you don't really have to do a whole heck of a lot just making sure that that pencil is gone and that you can see the difference between your hill versus the skyline behind it and then i'm going to do the same thing for this hill down here so i'm not going to wash my brush i'm just picking up a bit of the brown and white and i still have some of the blue on my brush if you didn't you could certainly pick up a little bit more of the blue but i'm just going to go with a nice soft tone down at the bottom again just brown and white on my dirty brush that has some of that light blue on it getting a little bit darkness down there and now i'm just going to pick up my white so again a little bit darker at the bottom and moving my way towards the lighter version up towards the top so it provides it with a really nice wintry soft feel to this snow and i want that top of these hills to be lighter than the hill behind it so that way you can see a little bit of dimensional element this whole center area will be covered by your polar bear so if that's not perfect no worries and then i'm just going to kind of go back and forth left to right with my brush and again if you wanted to add any more blue just pick up a tiny bit of the blue and just incorporate it in there wherever your comfort zone the blue is going to make it look a little bit more like snow than the brown is so feel free to make that however you want and if you want to do a second layer on it feel free to do so we will be utilizing our pencil for the next step so once you've got your snowy hills all nice and finished you can put this large brush away take out your pencil 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 our polar bear i'm going to be using my pencil i'm going to give you a couple of markers and we're going to make some really basic shapes we're not um looking to do any fine-tune detail at this point we just want to get some basic shapes that will resemble the shape of a polar bear that's walking towards you so i'm gonna um use my pencil again i'm gonna guide you into some shapes the first shape that we're gonna do is a circle type of an oval shape for the head so i'm going to have mine sitting right about almost dead center in my canvas so this is maybe about i would say i'm going to have it maybe about four four and a half inches wide by that tall so i'm going to give you four markers and then we'll just kind of connect those markers so if you find the center of your canvas from left to right and top to bottom so mine is i would say right about in through here is about the center of my canvas i'm going to go to the left of that maybe about an inch and a half or so make myself a little bit of a marker and then i'm going to go to the right a little bit farther maybe about three inches so i'm a little bit off to the right on my canvas so however wide you made these then you're going to make two more dots on the top and the bottom so you could use your pencil or you could use some other kind of measuring tool to make the subsequent marks so i'm going to make my bottom mark right about here and then my top mark is going to go right about in through in through this vicinity and it doesn't have to be perfect just some something in that general vicinity will get you going and then you're going to connect these with a circular type shape and i caution you into making a circular shape or attempting to make a circular shape when we make these dots our brain wants us to kind of connect them with a straight type of line so you have to make a conscious effort to give it this upside i guess i'm making mine a little wider than than i had anticipated i'm making it a little bit wider that's okay um so your brain wants you to just kind of connect those markers in a diagonal way so just consciously make sure that you curve those edges so it looks like a circle and not like a diamond type of a shape and if it ends up wider like mine does then just we will just roll with it and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to make my front leg of my polar bear so i'm going to come directly down from where i made the mid the bottom marker here i'm going to come directly down until i'm about maybe an inch and a half away from the bottom of my canvas that's going to be as far down as i want that leg to go i'm going to have the legs starting down this right hand side i would say right about in through here so if this is about halfway up or down just come down maybe about another inch and then the inside of the leg if you come down here maybe about an inch inch and a half or maybe about an inch and to the left about an inch that's where it's going to stop so i'm going to in essence connect these two to down here with the shape of the leg so i'm going to have on the on this right hand side i'm going to have it kind of curving you don't want a super straight line so it will end up looking nice and natural and then at the bottom it's going to kind of curve up in this vicinity i want it to kind of look like he's got his paw in motion so something like this is going to give me that leg and of course you can certainly manipulate yours whatever way that you want and then the next leg that we're going to have is going to come up this leg maybe about an inch or so or half of an inch to an inch and then the um back part of the leg the shoulder area is going to end up right about in through here so this is up just a little bit from the bottom of the head and over to the left maybe about if this is the edge of the head go about another inch out from there and you can put it in through there so then what i'm going to do is i'm going to curve this bottom portion in through here to give myself that rounded paw and then as i come up in through here i'm going to bring it up kind of straight and then i just bring it out a little bit so it almost looks like that shoulder i'm also going to put a little separating part in between these two legs so you it almost looks like we're seeing the um this the background or the landscape through that so they look like they're spread open a little bit and then i'm gonna do my back leg in through here so this one i'm gonna have coming up i would say maybe about two inches up this leg or an inch and a half to two inches so somewhere in through here is where this one's going to come out and it's going to come out maybe about an inch and then it's going to meet the up and through here so if i come down my head about an inch around in through here this is where i'm going to have it come out and this is going to be the rear end of the um of the bear so i'm just going to kind of bring this around in a curved line and then as i come down in through here i'll bring it in just a little bit so it meets in through there and then what i'm going to do is i am actually that's all i'm going to do for my outline of my of my polar bear so what we're going to do is we're going to use our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your um large or your pencil away take out your medium 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 the base coat of our bear i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors that i'm using are black brown and white and what i'm going to do is i'm going to pre-mix myself a medium gray tone so we can utilize that as the base coat so when we add the fur on top of it it'll have some nice dimension to it so again i've magically pre-mixed my gray so this is where i'm headed in through here so how i got there was i used quite a bit of white a touch of black just a little tiny touch that might be too much black and a little bit of brown and then i just started mixing them together i don't want anything really dark dark i just want something nice and neutral that is going to provide me with good dimension as i start building my fur so that's pretty good i think i want it a little bit lighter so just adding a touch more white to it and then once you've got your desired gray just know it will get a little bit darker as it dries and if yours ends up too light or too dark it's okay because we'll have other steps that you that will help to um adjust it if you need to so i've got my base coat in through there so i'm not going to barely be doing anything too fancy except for making sure that i still understand where these separating points are so i don't even need any fancy brush stroke i just want to kind of color this in but when it gets to points where i i really want to still understand where like the head meets the body i'll probably leave myself a tiny little bit of a space in between those two just so i can visually see the difference and then when you get towards the edge where the where the exterior fur is going to be i'm going to just give myself a soft edge nothing too long of fur i don't want to pull it out too far but you don't need to have a firm clean line along the edges the the softer it is the more natural that it's going to look so just kind of bringing this out towards those edges reloading my brush i'm going to tackle this leg in through here and again just i'm bringing it to the pencil but i still kind of want to be able to you know see that um any important marks for myself so when i go towards these edges here if i still can see my pencil that's okay i want to give myself those soft edges so i'm not terribly concerned about it being a hundred percent covered at this point and this gray will cover pretty well so that's why it's not really hugely important that you're doing a directional brush stroke or anything like that because the gray is going to cover well enough so you wouldn't really see too many directional brush strokes if you're looking to have that fur look we'll add that later and then again just kind of leaving myself a little bit of a visual space between these legs so i don't lose my marker as to what leg is what and what piece belongs to what piece on the bear and then just bringing this down towards the bottom and then just going to bring this all the way over to the edge and through here and then once you've got this all nice and colored in we will be utilizing our small brush for the next step so i'm just kind of finishing up here again just making sure that i have those soft edges and making sure that the body still has a little bit of shape to it again i don't want it to look too straight coming down that you know coming down the far side of the animal or anything like that so just leaving myself those visual that visual information to make it look nice and natural and then i will put this medium brush away take out my 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 some facial features i'm going to be using my small brush the colors i'm using are black brown yellow and white and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to start by just putting some black marks on the canvas so we can have something that starts the process for us so i'm going to do my eyes first so the eyes on a polar bear are very small relative to the size of their head so we're just going to make two little circles so if you find kind of the center of your head so just find that center of that circle you're going to come up almost an inch and then out almost an inch for both eyes so i've got a small circle in through here and i'm doing mine like the size of a p and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to pull just a little bit of a marker down in that inside corner of the eye so again if this is the center you're going to go up about an inch and over about an inch inch and a half somewhere in this vicinity so i've got myself a little p of a of an eye somewhere in through here and then i'm just going to bring down a little mark for the inside corner of that eye and while that's drying before we go and put any um any details on the eyes i'm gonna go ahead and put my nose in place so the nose is pretty far down the head so what i'm going to do is if this is the bottom of my circle i am oh i'm i guess it could be directly between the eyes i might be a little bit off centered but come directly below the eyes and you're going to be about a half of an inch to an inch away from the bottom of your circle so somewhere in through here is the bottom of the nose and then you're going to go up about an inch that's going to be the top of the nose it's going to be an oval type of shape so find about the midway point of your eye and come down and then about the midway point of your eye and come down so i might be a little bit to the to the right but somewhere in through here and then i'm going to make myself a little bit of an oval type of shape like this and then just color it in with black paint so you don't need a ton of paint at this point this is just going to be in essence kind of the base coat of the nose we're going to put a little bit of detail on it in a minute and i'm definitely going to have soft edges to it so i don't need a lot of paint on my brush you can almost just have these like little sketcherly edges and pulling up these little left and right corners of the nose and then just leaving this really soft along the um the outside edges and the bottom edge so that way it looks nice and natural when we add the fur around it then i'm going to come about in the center of my um nose and bring it down just about a quarter of an inch and then this is actually a little bit to the right of the the center of these legs so i'm a little bit to the right of those just so you have another place marker and then i'm going to give myself a really light sketch really kind of mouth and i'm bringing mine up a little bit more on the right hand side because i my head he's going to have his candy cane out pretty far on the right hand side so i've got his mouth crooked a little bit in through here and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to wash and dry my brush so i can put some details on my eyes so i'm washing and drying my brush i'm going to pick up a little bit of yellow and white paint on my brush just a teeny tiny bit and i'm going to put a little bit of a color part down at the bottom edges of the eye so not necessarily all the way to the um to the exterior outline of the eye but something in through here i'm gonna pick up maybe a little bit of brown right now just to kind of get that a little bit deeper of a color so you can really have whatever you know color that you want there the eyes are just so small that you're not going to see much detail to them now what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up a little bit of my gray plus white i didn't say i was using gray but the gray is brown black and white so the gray that i used for the animal plus a little bit of white i'm going to put a little bit of a of a shine on the eye up here just a little bit in through there and maybe a little bit over here on the left hand side and then i'm going to pick up a tiny bit of white paint give myself a couple of little sparkles i got white on my brush i'm just going to kind of give myself a little curved sparkle over on the right side of the eye and then i'm going to give myself with this white on my brush i'm going to give myself a little bit of bright detail underneath the eyes so i can have a little bit of expression underneath them and then i'm going to do the same thing at the top of the eye i'm going to just kind of maybe tap in a little bit of eyebrow type of spot in through here we'll do more when we go to add the fur on the face but this is just going to kind of start start the process of these cute little eyebrow areas for me and then i'm going to utilize this same combination on my brush maybe just pick up some white and brown i didn't wash my brush i'm going down to the nose right now to put the um the highlight on the top of the nose so i'm going to come down maybe about a third of the way down the nose and i'm going to give myself this arcing line something like that and i'm going to wipe my brush off of my paper towel and pick up more brown and get this line to blend up into that darker area on top something like that and then with the remnants on my brush i'm going to give myself a little bit of a of the insinuation of some nostrils so a little bit of that brown maybe a touch of the gray or white just something that's going to give me this little insinuation of some nostrils and that's really all i'm going to do for the details on my facial features you could certainly keep fiddling with yours all that you want but once you get done we're going to be utilizing our medium brush so you can put your small brush away take out your medium 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 some shadows on our polar bear and underneath our polar bear so this is kind of the first step to the adding real dimension to the fur as well as we're going to put a faint little shadow underneath so i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors that i'm going to use are black brown i'll use my gray and i might use some some white um or something else on the ground if i need to get it to blend into my shadow to blend into my snow so we'll play that by ear as we go so i'm going to start with a little bit of brown and my gray paint on my brush so i have brown plus my gray paint this is going to really just kind of get me started as to where i want these shadows to go so i definitely am going to want some underneath my head i'm going to want some coming into the legs and through here i'll want some on this back leg maybe a little bit where on this leg here where i feel the ankle would be um and then at the bottom of the feet just where we have the tufts of the the fur at the bottom and then maybe a little bit in the face but we're going to start with brown and my gray on my brush so i'm going to just start to wiggle this in underneath the chin in through here the again polar bears have really short hair so our fur so we don't need a lot of length added to the fur so i'm really just using these short brush strokes and i'm keeping it uneven along the edge so it looks like it is going to blend in with the other fur but all the while still have some kind of textural effect to it i'm going to add a tiny bit of black paint to my brush right now because i feel like i want this just a little bit deeper as it's coming right underneath that that chin and through there while i have the remnants on my brush i'm just going to kind of rub it up just a little bit to get this jaw to separate a little bit from the rest of the face so i hardly have any paint on my brush i'm just kind of rubbing it up just a little bit on the sides of the um of the mouth and through there then what i'm going to do is i still have just those remnants on my brush i'm going to pick up a little bit more of the brown and gray so i can get some back in through here in between these two legs and through here and again just going to kind of bring it out and make sure that those edges are nice and soft and almost blended into the gray next to it if you find that yours is too dominant for you what you can do in this process is wipe your brush off on your paper towel and then just pick up some of that that initial gray or that background gray that we use and you can get them to just overlap in that particular area where they're meeting and that's going to get it to look even more natural so this way you've got that that progression of colors where it's not just you know brown to gray they'll overlap and they'll start talking to one another so once i've got that i think i want a little bit in through here so i think i'm gonna go gray with a tiny bit of black on my brush so something in through here and i'm just giving it just a itty-bitty bit of darkness in through here which will help to sell the story of the paw being bent a little bit um and coming up now i'm going to pick up a little bit more black plus my gray i'm going to put a touch of shadow over here on the right side of my of my exterior leg in through here and then i'll also use this black plus a touch of gray underneath these little feet in through here and don't worry about this going too much if you feel like oh my god i just put too much of this little shadowy fur underneath here when we go to do the other fur if you go too far on this you can always back it off when we do the lighter versions of the fur so i'm just wiping my brush off on my paper towel picking up a touch of my original gray um and i might have still had a little bit of black on there but that's okay or bumped into some black that's okay i'm just doing this so they look really nice and natural and i'm just getting them to kind of overlap each other so they they remain talking to one another and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to i wiped my brush off on my paper towel i'm going to pick up a tiny bit of brown paint i'm going to put the shadow underneath the animal so it's a snow storm so there's not a real bright light source so i'm just going to put kind of a faint shadow underneath the animal and i need it to look different than the animal itself so that's why i'm choosing to use more brown in this shadow as opposed to gray but you could certainly feel free to utilize whatever kind of color that you want and i'm just going to put a little bit of that shadow underneath and i'm going to let it dissipate into i'm going to move my canvas a little bit here i'm going to let it kind of dissipate into the snow around it so you could instead of picking up more paint you could always add a tiny bit of water onto your brush and that will help you to just kind of fade this um shadow out into the snow so again you could make it brighter or or more dominant or have a little bit more darkness to it it's totally up to you but if it's a little bit darker right as it meets the animal and then just kind of fades out into that snow that's what's going to make it look the most natural so just putting a little bit deeper tones in through here and then if you felt that you needed to you could certainly pick up your you know a little bit more white i just picked up a little bit more white on my dirty brush and you could get these colors too that was a little bit more gray a little bit of white on your brush and just get it to blend out so whatever you feel is necessary feel free to do that and then the rest of the dark areas up in through here i don't really think that i need much maybe maybe a touch of brown on my brush if you want to add a little bit more information around those eyes we can put a little bit of brown in through there again we'll be adding a lot of the light fur in a little bit but this these varying tones can help out as you're trying to sell the story of the shape of the face maybe a little bit of brown coming up in through here and just a tiny bit on my brush is selling that story and this will get that um that muzzle to kind of pop out a little bit too if you have those varying tones and then we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got your shadows in place you can wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to finish the fur i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors i'm using are white i'll probably use my tan just to or my gray just to make sure that it works out and i might use a little bit of yellow too and i'll show you why i'm going to do that in a minute so how i'm going to basically do this is build my way to the light so i definitely want some of this fur to not look white because you won't be able to see the contour in it i but i do want the edge of the nose to be really really light so probably white white on the edge of the nose like really almost white at the top of the head and along the edges of the body but in between this gray and white i need to have a different tone or a different um shade to make it look nice and natural so we've got our gray on there so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make myself a lighter version of gray and you can use just white with your a tiny bit of your gray if you want to so just a really really pale light version you could even and this is just you know on the fly here you could even touch a touch of brown into it so any shade a little bit darker than white is gonna work you could also use white with a tiny bit of yellow i'm just giving you options because as depending on the color of paint that you have depending on the um the the tone that you want it to be yellow is going to have a more sunshiny look to it so you can just anything that's a little bit lighter than white will work so right now i kind of have a combination of white gray brown and yellow on my brush but it's definitely uh i said lighter than white i meant darker than white lighter than your gray so something just a touch darker than white so i've got my light version on my brush and i'm going to start utilizing it on the body i'm going to have a little bit longer brush strokes because the fur on the body is going to be a little bit longer than it is on the head so i am just utilizing it in a directional type of brush stroke in this right now it's kind of curving to the left i'm going to do the same thing on this leg in through here when i start to meet the edge this is where i'm going to make sure that i bump it out just a little bit and i am having it a little rough on those edges so that way it looks like it's a little on the fluffier side and then as i work my way towards the shadowy area that's when i will start to pick up some of my gr my mid-tone gray to make them look like they belong together so if i'm going to go in this leg right here i just wipe my brush off on my paper towel i pick up some of that mid-tone gray and i get these to blend in together so they look like they're gradually working their way into each other instead of just um having sections of color and you can always pick up some of your your um your shadow color as well if you feel that you need to pick up more brown to get that to work its way in together feel free to do so so again i'm going to pick up my light gray or dark white and work on this next leg in through here just getting those edges to be really nice and and vibrant but not necessarily white yet i'm reserving that white for the um widest of areas that are going to be on that head and the um and the muzzle and i'm just kind of bringing this down in through here putting my head back so i can see how it's going in through here and you know they have short fur but they you know their leg the fur on their legs is a little bit longer than it is on their head and i don't you i'm not using a lot of paint right now so as i'm running out of paint i'm needing this darker the shadowy area and it's working out well for me because it's just allowing me to kind of get it to blend in in through there i'm going to go ahead and pick up that dark white light gray color and work on this leg in through here so just kind of starting at the bottom and working my way up that leg and this one um can have the fur kind of going in a couple of different directions because it kind of would maybe come out from here and then just fall over the paw so i'm just kind of naturally putting these brush strokes in the direction that i feel that this fur would lay and because we have that um darker base it's allowing us to see these individual brush strokes that i'm making because acrylic paint has a tendency to be a little bit on the translucent side so this will help to that dark base helps to show the um the difference in in the paint as it is being layered on like this and then i'm just going to kind of keep bringing this down over on this side and i'm working my way towards that shadowy area and all the while i'm keeping my brush cur in a curved manner as i'm applying these um pieces of first so that way it looks like there's some volume on this leg and that these pieces of fur are coming out in a natural direction and they're not coming out too straight because i don't you know this type of fur would have some kind of um some kind of bend to it like this and then i'm going to go ahead and work on my face so i'm going to start with the the dark white color um or light tan and i'm going to start in these areas by the face and maybe underneath the chin in through here so this way um i can gradually get my way to the lighter stuff i definitely want some nice fluffy stuff underneath this chin maybe like there's a little almost a little beard type of action going on um i'm gonna make this area a little bit darker in a second so it takes on the um like a little shadowy type of area for our candy cane of sorts but just kind of putting this on in through here gonna bring this um color up into the face i i know that as the fur is gonna get closer to the um to the muzzle it's going to get a lot shorter so i'm going to start in a minute to use a dotting type of a technique instead of this brush stroke that i'm using so right now i'm just kind of getting the majority of the paint to kind of work its way off of my brush in through here and now i'm going to start just using a dotting type of technique to give myself the rest of that facial first so it looks shorter than um the long stuff on the legs so dotting is going to give you a shorter appearance and the brushstroke will give you a longer appearance before i move to the top of the head i'm going to kind of tackle this mouth and through here i'm going to pick up a teeny bit of brown and black on my brush i didn't wash my brush so i might have a little bit of that light tan but i want to give myself what's going to seemingly be like a little bit of a shadow underneath this mouth and i'm just kind of tapping in these darker type of colors in through here and then also on this little front muzzle part i think that would be a little bit darker not as dark as the nose per se but maybe a little bit darker just so it um gives you that in from idea that maybe the head is down a little bit and then we're gonna just kind of make sure this little beard is not too white and you can just kind of tap in those colors and now i'm going to go ahead and tackle the top of the head so i just put on the light gray color on my brush and i'm just going to start tapping above those eyes something like this so this is a little bit lighter than my gray color the than the original gray color but it's definitely not white white white yet i'm reserving that for just a moment here i'm gonna bring this down in into the muzzle as well so again not using white yet and i'm just kind of tapping this in so we can have that appearance of fluffy kind of fur as opposed to long fur and i'm going to bring a little bit of this into the cheek area as well i don't want to forget about those cheeks and now i'm going to utilize white paint i didn't wash my brush i i just picked up white i'm going to start up at the top of the head give myself some really bright white up at the top i also want some brightness on the edge or of this muzzle so in through here i'm utilizing white and then i'll get this to blend down into the face so without washing my brush i'm just going to kind of allow this white to work its way into the rest of the head and if you're going about this and you're like this just isn't the right color it might you might want it to be like more of a creamy kind of color that's when you start playing with that with that white maybe you have yours a kind of a light tan so maybe you utilize white with a teeny tiny bit of brown in it so again you can really start steering this as it's drying you can start steering it into a a shade or a hue that is more pleasing to your eye and you just kind of keep building it until you feel like you've got it where you want i'm going to amp up the brightness on the edges of these legs in just a minute but right now just kind of tapping in this additional color especially above these eyebrows are these eyes make sure that stands out really nice and we're going to have the um the ear muffs that are going to be covering these sides because it looks a little silly right now that it doesn't have ears but i've planned for that we don't need to paint the ears when we're going to put big ear muffs on top of them so i i i knew that that was coming so i'm just going to kind of keep tapping in this lighter version until i feel like i've got it as as bright as i want and again i'm going to put a little bit more of this over on this light this left side so the more paint that you um present or have the thickness of it on the on the animal especially when you have this darker background the more vibrant it's going to end up being with the thicker layers so you might have a type of paint that is not as translucent as mine but mine tends to be a little bit more translucent and it gets a little bit darker as it dries especially when we have this darker base which i plan for and i and i enjoy that process of it um kind of taking on the colors that are underneath so as it's drying i just kind of keep looking at those areas and saying okay do you want this area a little bit darker is it drying as bright as you want it to so i just kind of keep enhancing those areas as they are drying and by the time you know i fiddle with it and give it as much fur as i want to it builds that really beautiful textural effect that looks nice and natural so i recommend that you do the same thing you know just put some of the paint on wait a little while and then see if it has dried in the color that you want and if not you just kind of keep tweaking and adjusting it i didn't put any tote i'm noticing that i don't have any claws on mine you could certainly add some claws on yours as well so those are little additional things that you could certainly add to yours and then i'm just going to kind of keep fiddling with my fur until i feel like it is as bright as i want it and then we are going to be utilizing the same brush for the next step so once you've got your um your bare with all of its fur on here you can wash and dry this medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to do the base coat for our ear muffs and our candy cane i'm going to use my medium brush the colors i'm using are red and black paint so how i'm going to do this you could certainly i'm going to do earmuffs but you could certainly do like a santa hat or a winter hat or whatever you want so i'm going to do some fun ear muffs i'm going to start with a red paint and i'm going to put them on top of where i thought the ears should go which i think the ears are should have gone right in through here um and polar bears have kind of small ears so you could make these any size that you want so i'm going to have um this one i'm going to have like oval shaped ones maybe this is going to come in through here come down about halfway down the head i'm going to have mine i overlap the head a little bit so it looks pretty um natural like it's really keeping his head warm and then you can just kind of tap in the color i'm going to have mine looking kind of fluffy so mine's going to have these like little ruffled edges to it you could certainly have yours smooth if you wanted to and then i'm going to do the same thing on the other side if you can see through your red paint at this point don't worry about it because we're going to do a second coat on it in a little while so same thing over on this side i'm going to have mine coming in this direction be coming down about halfway down the face and then inside the head just a little bit and then just going to tap in that color and while i have the red on my brush i'm going to go ahead and do the base coat for the candy cane i'll put a little brace on the um ear muffs in a second with black paint but i've got the red on my brush so i'm going to do a base coat of the candy cane with red paint so i want mine kind of tipped a little bit and obviously going through my through the mouth so i'm going to just make myself a little bit of a marker in through here and then wherever i want it to come out on the other side i'm going to say somewhere in this vicinity and i want mine really long so i'm going to have mine coming i would say about out to here and then you just want to make sure that you've got it kind of lined up with the other side so wherever you want that um the end of the other side to go you just want it to kind of be in a line and then i'm going to have this kind of hook around so i'm going to have this hooking around in through here so once i've got my markers i'm just going to kind of connect my markers and if um it ends up where the it cut it's coming out of the mouth in a little bit weird of a direction you can always adjust the mouth accordingly or if you know this comes out looking a little bit more crooked than you wanted it to then we'll just call it a homemade candy cane that's not super perfect like the store-bought ones are so you can really sell the story as to whatever you want and i really don't think that there's candy canes this large anyways so it's all it's all an imaginative fun type of painting so there's no need to be perfect so i'm going to go ahead and connect this to to my marker in through here and that's looking pretty good just making sure that it's coming out of the mouth the way that i want it to and again it may it might not come out exactly perfect and that's that's the beauty of painting it all has its way of working itself out in an artistic kind of way with this big brush this this is a pretty good size um round brush that i'm using i can just kind of push my brush firmly and it gives me a pretty consistent width to um to my candy cane itself so i'm just kind of utilizing that to my advantage giving myself a big curve in through there and then once i've got the shape of my candy cane i'm gonna wash and dry this brush so i can put the um black part on my on my ear muffs so i'm washing and drying i'm just gonna load it with black paint and i'm just gonna do a you know kind of like the whole the old headphones that well they're not old anymore they used to be old then they went away and now they're back kind of representational of like um of headphones where you listen to music in them so something like this just going to kind of curve it in through here to the top of the ear muffs and i'm going to make it a little bit wider as it meets the ear muff but you don't have to do that and you can put all kinds of little decorations and stuff but we'll be doing a little highlight on them in a minute but once you've got this done we're going to be utilizing our small brush for the next step just getting this little wide part on in through here and then i'll put this medium brush away take out my 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 finish the details for our ear muffs and our candy cane i'm going to use my small brush the colors that i'm using are black brown white and red and what i'm first going to do is just make sure that i have a little bit of a shadow underneath my ear muffs and make sure that the candy cane looks like it's going into the mouth naturally so i'm going to load my brush with a little bit oh i think i said i was using my small brush but if i didn't i'm using my small brush i loaded my brush with a little bit of black and brown and what i'm going to do is i'm just kind of wiggling in a little dark shadow in a not straight line i want this to look like it's kind of rough and tumbled so it looks like it's casting a shadow of the fluffy ear muff or it's you know sitting within the fur so it's a little bit uh of an organic kind of um ripply line and then i'm gonna go ahead and do this one over here so just a little bit of black and brown is on my brush i'm just wiggling it in in through here and just going to bring it down a little bit farther than the actual ear muff itself so it looks like it's casting a little bit of shadow on the face i'm going to do the same thing for the mouth so making sure that i have it really nice and dark underneath the mouth in through here making sure it looks like it's definitely shattered under there maybe a little bit of the shadow from the face is cast upon the um candy cane and maybe the candy cane is putting a little shadow on the fur underneath so shadow shadow shadows those always help to make a three-dimensional story so in through here and maybe i'll put a little bit of white on my brush to put a couple of little pieces of fur in front of the our uh in front of the candy cane like on the edge of the mouth in through here that helps too and then maybe a little bit of maybe i don't think i said gray but a little bit of gray and brown i feel like i want a little dip in the face right in through here just to it so it looks like that part of the mouth is lifted up a little bit so just i used a little bit of brown in my gray just to sell that story and if you felt like you wanted to do it on this side you certainly could and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up some black paint i'm going to give myself a shadow at the bottom of my candy cane so i just have black on my brush you could utilize black plus red depends on how fluid your paint is or how um how dramatic that you want this to be you could also put a tiny touch of water on your brush i just added a little bit of water on my brush that helps to keep the fluidity so i get a nice clean line i'm going to go ahead and do the same thing over on this side so i'm really just putting a black line at the bottom of my candy cane up until this curve so i'm just again just got i have black on my brush right now just giving myself a line at the bottom and of course like i said you could also utilize red if you wanted to have it blend in i just picked up red as well looked like i had a little bit of a bare spot in through here so i picked up some red just to make sure that i have it fully painted make sure that i've got this on this side too and then i'm going to pick up that black again i want this where it turns on this curve i'm putting the black on the bottom side so that way it continues to tell the story that the shadow is on the bottom not on the top and then if you need to you can pick up red just to get it to blend in a little bit especially in these bigger areas and i just got red on my canvas and through here so i'm going to quickly put some water on a on a stiff brush to get rid of that and if i couldn't have gotten rid of it i could have put a big piece of snow there later but that's that's the joys of me and my messy painting hands i seem to get paint in lots of places that i don't necessarily want i'm going to do the same thing with black for the shadow at the bottom of my ear muffs so i put black but i'm also put a little bit of red i'm going to dot in a darker area at the bottom of my ear muffs so it looks like they've got a little bit of a curve to them or and gives them that shape that i like to create and now what i'm going to do i'm going to wipe my brush off of my paper towel pick up some red just to make sure that that dark area blends in with the rest of the um of the earmuffs so just dotting in red i will put a highlight on it in a minute but just making sure that that darkness is well spoken for and that it blends in with the rest of the earmuff cell just adding that red in through there now that i've got the red at the top here what i'm going to do is just reload my brush with a little bit of red and white and i'm going to dot in a highlight up at the top of these ear muffs so just red and white on my brush and this will help me to give that highlighted aspect or that three-dimensional aspect of it and i'm really dotting it because i want it to just look like it's that fluffy kind of textured ear muff that i'm familiar with and then once i've got this done i'm gonna wash and dry my brush and i'm gonna put the stripes on my candy cane so washing and drying my brush i'm going to be using just white paint for my stripes you could certainly stripe yours however you want and i'm going to be doing a curved line which will indicate the curve of the shape of the candy cane so mine will not be perfect i can guarantee you that but what i'm going to do first steady my canvas what i'm going to do is i'm going to start at the top and then i just bring it down in a curved line and again it doesn't have to be perfect you'll see i just kind of cruise along on mine i'm spacing them about a half of an inch to an inch away from each other you could certainly measure yours out and make sure that they're spaced exactly correct you could you know do this whatever works for your own um you know pleasure when it comes to candy cane making but i'm giving this curved line so it looks like a what i refer to as a traditional candy cane and then the only tricky part is when you're going around this corner so what i'm gonna do is i just kind of follow the candy cane so instead of i'm not going to just i'll keep doing these lines but they've got a kind of curve around so i instead of starting at the top it's easier for me to now start at the bottom area and i'm going to start here and then just kind of curve it it ends up being a bigger or a longer curve just in the way that i feel that it would go and then i just kind of keep curving it out like this and if you run through wet paint like i did just let it let it work its way into it because that that will make it look nice and natural as well and then what i'm going to do without washing my brush i'm going to utilize that white paint and you could even i'm going to dip my brush a little bit in water i'm going to put a light highlight on the top side of the candy cane so i have white plus a touch of water you could do this right along the edge or i'm going to do mine a little away from the edge so this way it look it gives the impression of like shape on the on the candy cane itself so just a little streak of light will help to sell the story that this is a three-dimensional kind of object and then i'm gonna do the same thing in through here so just kind of a little light streak will give that information that it is three-dimensional and that there's a part of it being lit up and then i even i streaked right through my wet white so that gave me give me the um the variety of bright tones and through there and then you just go through and do any little tweaks that you want we're going to be utilizing our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this done oh actually i want to do a little highlight on the earmuff too almost done let me just stick a little bit of white paint back on my brush i want to give just a little streak of a highlight on the ear muff so just a little bit of white on my brush and i'm just going to kind of go like that for my highlight and if you needed to add any more black to it feel free to just pick up a little bit of black and do any little modifications that you feel necessary and then we'll utilize the medium brush for the next step so you can just put the small away take out your medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're making snow i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm using white paint so i am making big huge snowflake ball things flying through the air so i i never really make these large ones but i thought it would be really cool in this painting so i've got my medium brush and i'm going to make a bunch of really big ones and you can make as many as you want you can have them whatever size you want but i'm going for some big floppy snow flakes balls in the air on this one i'll do some smaller ones in a minute but we're just i'm just starting with some big ones to start and i think it just adds like this extra fun you know atmosphere to this like it does polar bear is really going through this fun winter wonderland with his big huge candy cane in his mouth and if you're making big ones you can even put like half of ones you know coming off the side of your canvas so it looks like they're coming in from all kinds of angles and then once i have the big ones then i'm just going to kind of dot in as many smaller ones as i want you can certainly have them overlapping you can have three or four different kinds of sizes it's totally up to you just make this a magical winter wonderland for this beautiful cute polar bear who is having fun i am going to put some coming down in front of the land you could even put some in front of your bear which would make sense if it's a snowstorm to have it falling in front of them but that's going to be up to you if you want to take um that chance of putting it in front of him and making um the snow become the focal point instead of the bear so you make that judgment call all on your own but i would i am definitely going to put a couple in front of the land itself um so that maybe we'll sell the story of it being a big snowstorm and if you want another big one like i just felt i wanted another big one you can certainly go ahead and do that as well and then we have one little step left to go and it's going to be with our small brush so once you've got as many big or small snowflake i love these big ones once you've got your sorry now i'm getting all tongue twisted because i'm excited about snowflakes or snowballs whatever you want these to be they could be huge stars if you want them to be but maybe not in this time of day but just have fun with it i guess that's the moral to my story and then we'll use our small brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your medium 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 in my opinion which is to sign it so i typically sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i'm going to go with my small brush i'm going with black paint on this one i think i'm going to go bottom left i signed mine with my initials but you could certainly sign yours with your first name or the date or your full name or a symbol or whatever you'd like 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 very cute polar bear and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 20,415

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, cute, bob ross, starring, looking, animal, portrait, canvas, large, face, close up, stare, winter, snow, field, ground, close, camera, pet, snowy, tundra, arctic, eyes, landscape, male, female, paws, illustration, surreal, cartoon, fun, funny, polar, bear, ear muffs, candy cane, walking, fall, storm, sky, blue, day, adorable, iceberge, ocean, sun, arm, leg, paw, run

Id: pgM_VFMRqxA

Length: 64min 34sec (3874 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021