Learn How to Paint NUT CRACKING SQUIRREL with Acrylic - Paint & Sip at Home - 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 nut crack and squirrel and i'm going to be sipping on some ginger peach tea 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 green oxide mars black deep yellow burnt sienna which i'll call rust fire red and burnt umber which i'll call brown and 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 white piece of chalk that we'll use for sketching later and then i have three brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a quarter inch wide flat bristle brush and then 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 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 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 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 even to the piece of chalk that'll all be in 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 what we're going to do for the first step is we are painting our background i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors i'm using are yellow green brown and black and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to be applying it in a circular type of brush stroke with the tip of my brush and i will not be washing my brush throughout this process i'm just going to continually pick up one color or the other color my goal here is to make this look like an out of focus just forest of some sort where this squirrel has just stumbled upon a beautiful stump to create his nutcracking adventure so i'm just picking up some green paint in through here and i'm really just going to kind of go around in these kind of chaotic circles for a little while then maybe i pick up some brown intermingle the brown a little bit something like this then maybe i pick up some gr some yellow go around with some yellow for a little while so i'm just going to kind of alternate these colors i just picked up a bit of black so the black is going to make its way into into the background as well with these kind of dark little spots throughout the um throughout the forest just picked up some green and you can see i'm just going to kind of keep alternating my colors until i get the entire background colored in i like to kind of overlap but what i'm doing by doing it this way is i'm kind of forcing myself to have these real kind of distinct areas of color and then i'm forcing myself to kind of blend them in a little bit so that way i don't end up with an unpainted canvas so to speak and it will still give me the variety of the colors throughout that background so in this process i i'm using a good amount of paint so that way i can spread it kind of far but what i'm trying to avoid doing is getting all of the colors to blend in and have one solid color around the entire painting so once i kind of got that initial chaos on there now i can just kind of systematically go through and just kind of fill in my little spots of course i'm using the tip of my brush which is helping me to get a nice consistent brush stroke throughout the entire painting and if your paint dries a little bit faster than mine you can if you want to use a tiny bit of water in your paint or you can thin out your paint a little bit with some liquid medium i am using a student grade paint which tends to be more on the fluid side so it stays moist a little bit longer and it allows me to kind of keep working it for a little while as it's in its drying process so you might be working with a more heavy body paint that is not going to stay what they call open or wet for as long as mine does and if that's the case you could do you could do a couple different things you could either wait for it to dry and do another layer on top of it or you can moisten your paint a little bit by either adding a touch of water into it or you could moisten your canvas in advance sometimes that will help to keep that paint in a more fluid state as it is working its way through your canvas um and of course the the next alternative is use more paint on your brush and that way it will stay nice and wet throughout the process so i'm just continuing to go through here you can see the the yellow spots are almost looking like little spots of sunshine being being you know added to the equation you can certainly make yours as light or as dark as you want um i'm making mine more on the darker side so my so my beautiful squirrel just kind of emerges from from behind or from the middle of that beautiful forest but you could certainly make yours in whatever tonal value that you would like maybe you want to have yours a big blue sky and have it all nice and open air kind of thing but my little guy is he's tucked away in the woods he's kind of hiding his his his cash of food so maybe the other squirrels aren't going to get it on him but you can certainly do yours as as you see fit and once you get this done like i mentioned you could do a second coat if you want it to look a little bit smoother by doing a second coat i might even do a second coat depending on how mine dries i might take a look at it and say i want it a little bit softer looking and if i do feel that way then i will just let it dry for a minute and then just pop a second coat on it and when you do a second coat you don't have to worry about getting each spot on top of the last one you can certainly overlap and intermingle and make them all work together again my goal is just to make it look like it's an out of focus type of forest background but you could certainly modify and add your you know change yours into whatever look that you would like and then we are going to be using our um we're going to use our chalk for the next step so once you've got your background 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 drawing and painting our large stump so i'm going to use my chalk and i didn't tell you this but i'm also going to use my large brush but i do recommend before you start this step that you make sure that your canvas is dry so you know this is that time where you can take that extra long break if you'd like to or you can find some kind of you know fun fanning method let's see what do i have here i have some tape i can use for a fan method or you can do as i did and just whip out your blow dryer and get it dry so we're going to be painting this bottom portion and drawing on top of it so you'll want to make sure that it's dry before we get there so i'm going to start with my chalk i'm going to give you a couple of markers and then we'll just connect those markers and by the time we're done we'll have the shape of a top of a stump so i'm going to come over on the left hand side i'm coming up maybe about a quarter of the way up my canvas make myself a mark then i'm going to travel to the center of my canvas and come up maybe about a half of an inch to an inch make myself another mark then i'm gonna go below that until i'm about maybe about an inch and a half to two inches away from the bottom of my canvas make myself a mark and then over on the right hand side i'm coming in at the bottom maybe about an inch and a half to two inches make myself a mark so this represents the top of the stump we're going to make a big oval for the flat surface of it and then this is going to be the bottom side so what i'm going to do is i'm going to draw a vertical line from this marker up to i would say about a little bit higher than here so i'm going to just kind of draw and it doesn't even have to be perfect because we're drawing a stump here so the less perfect it is the better so something like that and then i'm just going to connect here with a very uneven line to here and then i'm going to curve it up just a little bit up into here then what i'm going to do is i'm going to curve this around like this and just make my mark up here and you can see how purposely i am doing it uneven and then i'll make it like that that's all we're doing for our outline then i'm going to take this brush here i'm going to paint the bottom half with vertical messy stripes like this i'm going to use black brown yellow and white so i'm going to take some black and just kind of do some messy lines i'm going all the way up to my chalk mark i'm taking some brown making some messy marks with my brown and i'm not washing my brush just kind of getting these on here picking up some yellow getting a little bit of yellow on here and then i'll take a little bit of white and just kind of in a messy fashion just kind of get them to all work together so you might want it to be lighter or darker than mine i'm really just going for a uh rustic kind of deep woods been this has been kind of weathered for a long time i'm trying not to blend it all too too much together so if you feel that you are blending it a little bit too much maybe wipe off your your brush and just kind of get it to be a little bit on the thinner side mine is going nice and gray on me which is super cool because it really looks very natural that way i'm just kind of moving my brush up a little top to bottom and of course you can certainly modify that as as it's drying and then what i'm going to do i'm just going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and i'm going to do the top surface which is going to be much brighter so i'm going to be using brown tiny bit of black maybe yellow and white so i'm going to do it in kind of a circular type motion so i'm going to start with some brown paint on my brush and i'm just going to kind of do it in this oval type of brush stroke i'm going to put a tiny bit of black paint on my brush just to kind of get some of those grains in the wood and then i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel pick up some yellow a little bit of yellow and white and get this rest of the area just to kind of start talking to each other and again i want this top area to be lighter than my side so i'm not terribly concerned if this gets overly light because that's going to indicate that there's a lot of sunshine that's happening in our scenery so i'm cool with it being pretty darn light and again i'm just kind of utilizing this circular type brushstroke you might want to add more brown you might add you know you could even add some of that burnt sienna color to it if you wanted it to look like a richer kind of wood but being on the messier side that's what's going to make it look the most natural plus we're going to have a big huge squirrel on top of it so it doesn't need to be the squirrel is definitely going to be the star of the show so just know that if you're yours isn't perfect that's okay i'm going to do some some extra light edges to it over on this right or on the bottom type of side to it so i just added a bit more white to my brush and just getting some little edges that are going to just pop out and make it look like you know it's been weathered and it's got some age to it and it's got some wrinkles to it like we all do when we age um and then what i'm gonna do is i'm going to be using my chalk for the next step as well so once you've got your stump all nice and finessed and you can just kind of keep keep wiggling in these colors and then once you've got it to your desired way you can put this large brush away take out your chalk and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting our small stump so we're going to start with our chalk and we'll end with our medium brush which is the smaller bristle brush so i've made myself four knots so i'll tell you where they are i've got this one is about i would say an inch and a half to two inches over from the left hand side and if you were to say okay about halfway in my stump this way in your main area and then just go to the left that would that would be about where i've got it and then i'm coming over maybe about two and a half to three inches to the right and then i'm just going up right above my um my stump line and i'm gonna make two more these do not have to be perfectly lined up with these you can even off center them a little bit and then i'm going to connect these with a very uneven line so i'm going to do this in through here and then i'll do maybe this is going to go in through here the bottom one i'm going to do with a little bit of an arc going in this direction and then the top one is going to be connected with a little oval so my oval is going to be something like this and it doesn't have to be a perfect oval obviously just enough for a nut to fit on it and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my medium brush i'm going to color in the stump part similar to how i did the bottom so a little bit of black with some uneven kind of black marks a little bit of my brown with some uneven brown marks and of course i'm not washing my brush throughout this throughout this step i think i need a little bit more black just to kind of make sure i've got enough on those edges so we can see that they are edges so something like that maybe a touch more brown in here a little bit of yellow give it some life a little bit of white and my trick here especially on this smaller stump is i'm not using a ton of paint on my brush and i'm not using a lot of pressure so i'm just really going in for a um an uneven visual effect we've got a great base underneath it which is the color from the large stump and i'm really just looking to give it some good diversity here so it looks like again it's pretty weathered it's been around for a while and i can get some light spots in it which is going to give it some dimension to it will we will with the top side of it and with the shadow we'll put underneath it later that will give the visual cues that it is in fact round but right now i'm just kind of getting some color on there and then on the top i'm going to use my brown yellow and a little bit of white maybe a touch of black too but just enough to get this top area on the lighter fashion and again this is going to be mostly covered by a big nut so you don't need to get it perfect we're just going for something that resembles a stump here and then we are going to be utilizing uh you know what i think i want to put the shadow underneath it while we're here so i'm using that same brush i'm just going to take a little bit of black paint give myself a touch of a shadow underneath it just so it looks like it's nice and grounded and this will i'll just pull this out a little bit over here on the right hand side and then we'll use our piece of chalk for the next step so once you've got your your top stump on here and you've done any little finessing that you want to to make it look the way that you want it to so we'll use our actually we don't even need our chalk we're going to actually just use our small brush for the next step so once you've got your stump on here you can put your medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step alright so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm painting myself a chestnut so i'm going to be using my small brush the colors i'm using are brown rust yellow white and black and i'm going to do this is i'm going to create a base coat for the chestnut and then we will put it in place and while that's drying we'll go do a little shadow and we'll have some fun with it so i have pre-mixed myself my base color right in through here so how i got to that was i used a little bit of yellow a little bit of rust a little bit of brown and then a touch of white and kind of almost equal parts of each and once you once you spin it all in there you can see if you want it lighter or darker we're really just going for a kind of a medium to dark tan type of color so somewhere in there it works for me and we're going to be adding highlights and shadows on top of it so if it's not again exactly the same color as mine that's okay we're just going for a base coat here so when i go to paint this on i'm going to do just a thin layer of it so it it dries quickly for me so i'm going to start my the bottom is going to be a little bit up from this edge here so i'm just going to kind of make myself a little bit of a marker and then i'm going to go i would say about an inch and a half above my stump and through here so something like that and this is a oval type of shape i don't want it to be wider than here so i'm going to bring this in maybe about a quarter to a half of an inch just give myself a couple of little markers so i don't go too far outside of that and then as i do this i'm going to make ripply type of edges this does not have to be a perfectly round um nut it definitely has some some bumps and stuff along the way so don't feel as if you have to make yours completely of a perfectly round shape so i'm just kind of getting this on here and plus our squirrel is going to be holding on to it nice and tight so it's it it's there's no need for it to be perfectly round even if it was perfectly rounded probably roll right off your stump so and then i'm just kind of painting it in with a thin coat of paint so this can dry for me in a in a quick minute here and once i've got my shape on and just kind of readjusting my shape a little bit in through there that's looking pretty good to me then i'm going to just wipe my brush off of my paper towel i want to put a shadow underneath my nut so i'm going to pick up a little bit of brown and black and i'm just kind of going right underneath that nut maybe a little bit more black so we can really get the essence of a shadow underneath it and i'm picturing my light source to be up in the left of this whole structure so this is gonna so my shadow's gonna be down in the bottom right hand corner of it and then once you have your shadow on there then what i'm gonna do with this um dark color on my on my brush is i'm gonna kind of lay um the in where the creases in this nut are gonna go where it would essentially open if it was you know being opened by a regular nutcracker so i'm going to put a little like seam in it in the in the center in through here i think i need a little bit more black on my brush so we can get there we go and if you're working on wet paint if yours hasn't fully dried yet don't worry about it that's going to help you make this look a little bit more natural so i'm putting this uneven kind of seam in the middle of my nut and then i'm just going to kind of give myself some grooves all along the nuts something like this because these are kind of bumpy type of nuts a little bit and they're not super bumpy but they definitely have some bumps to them so i'm just kind of using that black with a little bit of brown to get some some curves of sorts and some some little creases throughout the throughout the nut and then once i've got as many as i feel that i want then i'm going to use that dark color and put a shadow underneath the on the nut at the bottom of the nut so again just a little bit of brown and or a touch of black so you can get it nice and dark down in through here and you might have to work it a couple of layers to get this on here so it's in the in the value that you want you might need to get it to go a little bit darker or lighter or whatever is visually appealing to you then i'm going to wash and dry my brush i'm gonna put a highlight at the top of it so wash and dry my brush so the highlight can be your tan color plus white and at some points you'll just use white as well so i'm to start with the the base coat of tan plus white and this is going to help me to get these little bumps or the elevated pieces of the nut to kind of pop out a little bit more and then i'll use my white just the white in a minute to get a really bright highlight at the tippy tippy top of it so you can utilize this to make areas stick out a little bit more like if you wanted this piece in here to stick out a little bit more you just add a bit more of the lighter tone within the within the nut and that's going to help you to get those pieces to look like they're protruding a bit more than the than the piece next to them and then if i want a really bright highlight up at the top i can just make sure that i've got that white all the way to the edge in some of the area you don't need to do the whole area and that's going to give you that three-dimensional look to it and i'm just bringing this kind of all the way down the side leaving some of those grooves evident so you can still get the information that it is in fact a rounded type of object and then you just kind of keep fiddling until you have all of your poofy parts and your shadowy parts in the um in the way that you want and then we're going to use our chalk for the next step i think yeah our chalk for the next step so whenever you get done painting your nut and you've got it in the proper dimension that you would like you can put your small brush away take out your piece of chalk and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're outlining our squirrel body so i'm going to use my chalk and we're going to just make some basic shapes and by the time we're done we'll just have a nice outline that we can color in so i'm going to have my squirrel sitting the body is going to be in through here the tail is going to go up there and i'm going to have my head around here with his arms and his legs in appropriate positions but i'm going to start with a basic shape for the body so the bottom of the body i'm going to have down in through here so what i'm going to do is i'm coming about i would say maybe two two and a half inches away from my stump or if this is the center of my canvas from left to right i'm a little bit over to the left from that and make myself a little bit of a dot and then i'm going to go directly over to the right hand side and again if this is the center of my canvas somewhere in through here this is about a quarter of the way to the edge so something around here and then you can just loosely connect those two then i'm going to go from the center of here and i'm going to go directly up to maybe a little bit to the left but up around here so this is if this is about halfway up or down my canvas i'm about two inches above the center of my canvas once i have that marking in through there i'm going to connect this dot to here with a an arcing line but it's going to bubble out a little bit further than these points in through here so i'm going to start up and through here and as i do this i'm going to watch down here make sure that i bubble this out a little bit further than here and then i'm going to come back in like this something like that and i'm going to do the same thing over on the right hand side you could even start down below if you wanted to and then just kind of bubble yourself out a little bit more like that and then just come back up into here and again it doesn't have to be a perfect shape because we're going to be putting a whole bunch of squirrel fur on top of it later so don't worry if it's not perfect so then what i'm going to do is i'm going to do a circle for the start of my head so i'm going to come over from here about a half of an inch or a little bit to the right of here and up right about here that's going to represent the bottom portion of my circle the top portion of my circle i have right about here so this is maybe about two inches above here and over to the left and then the side of it is going to be maybe i would say almost directly above my stump somewhere in through here so then i'm going to make myself a circle connecting these my circle is going to overlap the edge of my um or come close to the edge of that initial shape that i made something like this and again no need for it to be perfect we're just giving ourselves a basic outline i'm going to connect this circle to here with a little bit of a scooping type of motion like that and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to give myself the rest of the shape of the face so we need to kind of give our little guy a little bit of a nose of sorts so i'm going to from this part of my oval i'm going to come almost straight down and i'm going to bring it down to almost about the bottom of where this circle is something like this and then i'm going to scoop it up like this and give myself another little marking like that so that's going to represent like the um part if the amount will say the mouth is going to be there this is going to be above the mouth and that's going to be its little nose and i'm going to give myself some ears so i'm going to go almost from the center of my circle straight up to the top give myself a little bit of an ear something like this and like this these aren't very tall at all and they're pretty narrow then i'm going to go just to the left of that give myself another one maybe this is the one on the other side so it's got a little bit different of a shape to it something like that i've got to give myself the arms that are going to be connecting this so i would say if you come up about halfway between your circle and your stump somewhere in through here that's going to give me the bottom part of this back arm like that then i'm going to go about halfway between well maybe somewhere about here so about halfway between my circle somewhere around here this is going to be the bicep of the squirrel something like this it's going to come close towards my um my nut and then i'm gonna bring it over like this we'll draw a little a couple little fingers but if you don't necessarily need to chalk them in but i'm just gonna so you can see where they're gonna go i'm just gonna do three little bumps over on that side um i think maybe this arm needs to be just a little bit there we go just a little bit further down something like that and then let's see what else do we need oh we need some legs so right about the bottom of um here i'm going to come up maybe about a half quarter to a half of an inch just give myself a little bit of a line going in through there this is the bottom part of that foot that's going to go on that side and then i have if you come about halfway over here i'm just going to dip this down just a little bit this is going to be like the bottom part this will be like the leg and this is the bottom part of the foot come on over here and then maybe just give myself a couple of what's going to be squirrel toes and i don't even really need to do much i'm just kind of marking it for my own um from my own visual i don't even really need to tell myself what the toes are at this point because we'll be making them um with the paint in a minute and we're not going to do the tail because that's just going to be paint so that is all we're going to be doing for our outline we're going to be using our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your small or your chalk away take out your medium brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the base coat of the squirrel so i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors that i'm using are rust and brown and i will always have both of those colors on my brush at the same time this way it's going to give me kind of a nice variety of shades of this brownish rusty color underneath and it's going to provide a great base we are going to be um painting over our chalk marks so the ones that you'll probably lose that you that i'll walk you through keeping them later or re-establishing them later is this one in this one so i am not doing anything fancy for my brush stroke you can you can spin it around in circles you can do it in you know streaks whatever you'd like to do is totally fine because this is just the base coat we're gonna have a whole lot of information on top of it in a little while so it does not need to be anything perfect it's going to be see-through it's going to be streaky it's not going to be of anything that's beautiful right now so don't worry about any specific brush stroke at this point you just want to get the entire areas covered in even when you get down to the feet i'm just going to give myself the little outline in through here and i'm just going to pull the paint out where those toes are going to be but again i'm not concerned about any little detail i'm just getting the the generic type of shape on there when you get to edges where you think are going to be kind of fluffy or you want a little bit of fur like this area down here instead of doing a straight line you can just pull the corner of your brush out to give you a little bit of a messy edge in that particular place this is my other little foot so i'm just going to go ahead and color it in with my base coat in through there and then of course i'm just every time i reload i'm reloading with my rust and my brown this edge here would have a little bit of a fluffy edge so i'm going to try not to make it so super clean and then i can go ahead and just paint the rest in on the arms they would probably have a pretty smooth coat to them so i'm not concerned about giving them fluffy edges like i was the other parts of the body and i'm just going to bring this all the way to my nut and if you find her in this process that oh my my chalk is a little bit too wide for me and i you know i want to make you know i don't want to go out as far as my chalk that's okay just leave the chalk there and you can just erase it with a little bit of water later so my fingers here i'm just going to put a little dot of the color right on where those little fingers are and of course we have another hand to contend with but he's the other hand's floating in here somewhere we'll get we'll get that established in a little bit and then i'm just going to go ahead and paint the head and the ears i know that my ears are going to have a little bit of fluffiness to them so i could start that in this process but it the fluffiness kind of comes up towards the top of those ears so i'm just kind of pulling it out just a little bit not a lot and then i'm just again this this step is primarily just so you can get that base coat on there it has really not much of a bigger purpose than that we just want to establish a nice base tone for for our cute little squirrel and through here and then as i get towards this facial area i'm going to go a little bit slower just so i can make sure that i keep that shape that i want so just coming out from my circle a little bit giving myself my little my little nose and i suppose you could certainly um use a smaller brush when you get to these little areas something like this there we go and then we're going to use our large brush for the next step so once you've got your base coat of your cute little squirrel on here you can put your medium brush away take out your large brush and get ready for the next step alright so we're going to do for the next step is we are doing the first layer of our tail i'm going to use my large bristle brush the colors i'm using are black brown and rust and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to start by giving myself i'll call it the shadow area right along the back of the squirrel and then i'm going to just kind of build it out with my rust and my brown so i don't want to overdo it on this step i just want this to be i want this tail to be really light and fluffy as opposed to dense and and heavy and dark dark so even though i'm doing a dark base to it i don't need to make solid paint strokes so i'm going to start with a little bit of black and brown on my brush at the same time and i'm going to start a little bit up from the bottom of the of the animal in through here and what i'm going to do is i'm taking my black and my brown and i'm just kind of lightly rubbing it along the edge and i'm kind of pulling it in an upward and outward motion so i put it on and then i'm just kind of pulling it out just a little bit so my line is pretty clean where it hits the squirrel and soft where it's going farther away from the squirrel and then i'm gonna go ahead and do that all the way up in through here as i come up the back of the neck something like this and you can see i didn't reload my brush at all and if you bump into the squirrel's body that's totally okay so now that i've got that area established i'm not going to wash my brush i'm going to pick up brown and rust at the same time but again i don't need a ton so i i just wiped my brush off on my paper towel around the side of my pallet and now i'm going to start kind of pulling this out even further but i'm going to maintain control while i'm doing this so i'm not pulling it out too too far again this is going to act as the shadowy area within the tail this deep deep part in through here so i've got this going on in through here bringing it just a little bit farther than we did that initial layer and now without washing my brush i'm just going to pick up rust from here on out so i just picked up rust on my dirty brush and now this is where i'm going to start to give the the tail the full shape but as it gets towards the tips of the um of the fluff it's not going to be really heavy i'm just going to be using um thin the remnants kind of thin paint strokes along the edges so i'm bringing this down in through here and this is where i'm going to start to form the shape of my tail so the shape of my tail is kind of going to be in the same curve as the back of my animal so i'm overlapping these colors but i'm still kind of pulling them out a bit and i'm pulling them out in this kind of curved type of brush stroke with it very thin along those edges and you could even go back and forth like this wherever your comfort zone is and i'm curving it along the the way of the back of my squirrel something like this as soon as i get right into about this region this is where the tail is going to start to kind of go up and over so if it makes it easier for you what you can do is just take this paint and give yourself kind of a little bit of a road map going up to the the end of the tail i'm reloading my brush with some rust right now because this in essence is going to be if this is like the center of the tail it will splay out a little bit on either side of this so i'm going to go ahead and bring some of this in through here and i'm coming way out here you can even bring this you know almost as far out as you have this area in through here i'm bringing it just about up to the top of my canvas something like this and then as i come along this edge over in through here i'm kind of changing directions a little bit bringing it more in a natural way coming out that what would be the tail itself so the spine of the tail i guess i don't know if that's the right word or not but something like this and if you don't get yours big enough or fluffy enough in this step don't worry because we have another crucial step to go on this tail later so this again is just that base coat and then we're going to be switching to our small brush for the next step so once you've got the base coat of the tail 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 painting our eye our ears our little nose and the little mouthy area i guess so we're kind of doing the features on the head so i'm going to use my small brush i'll be using black brown red and maybe maybe some rust or yellow but i'll call out the colors as i'm using them what i'm going to first do is put my dark areas in place and then we'll just kind of build some information around them so i'm going to start with my small brush and black paint the very first thing i'm going to do is put the shape of my eye in place so i've pre-marked mine so you can kind of see where i'm headed but to know where this is going i'm going to be almost between my two ears and about halfway down my head that's going to be the upper right hand corner of the eye and then i'm going to go in a diagonal almost about an inch and that's going to be the bottom left hand corner of the eye and then i'm just going to make myself a little bit of like an almond type of shape for the eye something like this and of course that doesn't have to be exactly as mine but this is a pretty traditional shape for these eyes but you can you know make yours into whatever kind of shape that you would like and then once i have that i'm just going to color it in with black paint i think i'm going to bring this left corner up just a little bit more give it a little a little bit more volume in that corner yeah that looks cute and of course you can reshape yours as you go as well and then once i've got that on there while i have this dark paint on my brush what i'm going to do is i'm going to darken the inside of this ear in through here but i'm going to pick up some brown with the black so this ear is going to come into the head a little bit so if this is the top of the head you're going to bring this inside of the ear i would say you know a good half of an inch almost inch and it doesn't need to be a solid color this is just the inside furry part of our cute little squirrel ears so i'm just kind of rubbing this paint in and when it meets the head in through here you can just kind of dissipate it out into the neighboring um into the neighboring head i'm going to do the same thing with my bottom part of my mouth so brown and black is where i'm going i have the little nose kind of comes in through here and i'm going to bring this bit of darkness at the bottom of my nose somewhere in through here and i'm not doing firm lines i'm just kind of letting these dark colors be maybe a little firm on the edge but dissipating into the into the skin color or the the animal color itself i'm bringing this line almost all the way to where it meets the body in through here and i'm going to bring it up just a little bit in through here this is going to represent the little mouth that we got going on in through here which is not very evident at all but once we get all of the other information in there this is just going to be a little afterthought in through here and then i'm going to just kind of outline the side of the face just so we can understand where this is going to go so this will be i guess somewhere in through and through here this is going to be our big our big cute cheek a squirrel cheek in through there and then on the this part and through here what i'm going to do without washing my brush i'm going to pick up a tiny bit of red and white so a little bit of red and white on my brush just dabbing it on my paper towel because i want this to just kind of work its way into the um the fur that we're going to be putting on but i want it to transition kind of naturally so a little bit of red and white you could even or red and brown could even put a little bit of white on there when we lighten up the face this will all make sense but right now i'm just trying to establish a um a way where this this dark area will will naturally work its way into into the face and then around the eyes what i'm going to do i didn't wash my brush i just picked up a little bit of white so i have a very dirty brush with a little bit of white and i'm going to give myself a little bit of information underneath the eye something like this this is going to give you that little cute part underneath i've got a little kind of eyelid up in through here and of course you could use a little bit of yellow or even maybe a little bit of your nut color that would that would give you some some nice light color doesn't have to be white white white i'm going to bring this down towards this corner of the eye in through here i'm going to bring up a little bit of light fur up in through here so i picked up a little bit of that nut color just to give myself diversity in my light colors here so this coming in through here maybe a little bit more up and through here i like these light colors surrounding the eye and then i'm going to pick up a touch of red and white i just wiped my brush off on my paper towel to get a little red and white so this is going to give me a little bit of that natural skin color through or like that pinkish hue on the inside of those um around the eye and then i'm going to get my eye to to take shape here so i'm just washing my brush off of my paper towel i'm going to pick up a touch of rust and yellow just a little bit to give myself a tiny bit of color within that eye i don't need a lot just a little bit more towards the bottom of that eye maybe a touch more of the yellow and i'm not using a lot because i wanted to just kind of dry on the fly for me and i know that with the black underneath it will remain really subtle as it dries and then once i've got that on there i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel pick up a little bit of white paint and i'm going to give myself a sparkle in the eye but i'm going to stay away from the edge so i'm just going to kind of put a little bit of a sparkle up in through here and then i can even pull it down in a couple of areas and then if i wanted it to look really natural i just dipped my brush a bit in water so i can make some of this white almost like see through like glossy looking and i just kind of pull it down over a portion of that eye and then you can just kind of keep fiddling with it um the lightness in the face will add that as we go through the fur process on the face but if you want to keep tweaking your little eyes as much as you want to feel free to do so and then we're going to be switching to our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your eye and your note your ear established and where your mouth and stuff are going 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 adding the shadow areas inside the body of the of the squirrel and uh from the squirrel on the stump so i'm going to be using my medium brush the colors i'm using are black brown white and probably some of my rust color as well and i'll just call them out as normal as i get to them so what we first got to do is establish some areas to work with so the first area that i'm going to establish is this far arm in through here so i've got already a little bit of a marking here so you can see how i'm going to do this i want to separate the body in through here from the arm so for me a lot of squirrels have this little bit of a grayish kind of white fur on the underneath their neck and in their belly so i'm going to put a little of that in through here so i'm going to put brown and black on my brush to start in a very very little bit so little you can even just kind of dab it on your paper towel and i'm going to establish myself a little bit of a separation so i'm going to go from this marker which is a little bit you know in that neck area and i'm just going to give myself a little bit of a shadowy type area in through here that's going to separate the body from this inner arm then without washing my brush i'm picking up a teeny bit of white paint so this is going to give me that dark fur on dark gray kind of fur which would be white if you saw it in person or if the light was shining on it so i'm just kind of putting that underneath here a little bit and i'm just kind of using my brush to pull out the little the little edges of it and then in through here i want this to be the um what the body color is so i don't really want it to be gray i want it to be more that rusty color so i'm going to wash and dry my brush wash and dry and i'm going to put rust and brown on my brush which is exactly what we used for the base coat but this is going to give its kind of final layer to it we'll put a little highlight on the tip of the arm later on but right now this has just given me that little bit of darkness that i that i'm gonna want from um from it being shadowed back here so a little bit of brown and rust and you don't even really need a fancy brush stroke just something that gets it on there so then i'm going to have to establish the arm that's going to come in through here so if you come directly to the right from where your elbow is almost i would say if this is halfway into your body just a little to the left of that and then i'm going to give myself with black and brown so a little bit of black and brown on my brush i'm going to go right from here and i'm going to give myself kind of a diagonal type of line that's going to be a little bit above here so maybe about an inch above there and then what i'm going to do is from this marker in through here i'm going to bring this down to where my my foot in essence is going to be so this will be maybe about an inch and a half in through here so a little bit to the right of here and then just go straight down and that's going to give us the separation from the big leg that we're going to put on here to this under part of the belly so i'm going to bring this darkness all in through here because this is going to be nice and shattered underneath here so whatever remnants of the black and the brown that i have on my brush now what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up a little bit of white with the black and the brown and this is going to give me in this area here it's going to give me some of this white um fur that's kind of peeking out from from the belly area so i'm just going something like this i think i'm going to put a little bit more black and brown on my brush to get a little bit more of this emerging from the darkness so it's not just a solid color so this is giving me a nice gradient coming out from that belly area so it's a little bit lighter on the edge and a little bit darker underneath and i just want to make sure this all looks like it's nice and gradually coming out here and i'm not using a ton of paint on my brush i'm really just kind of making sure that i have the right amount so i'm not over blending i'm going to go ahead and put the um the similar colors to here so that's going to be my rust and brown and i will be again putting a highlight on this area later which will be with a lighter squirrel color right now i'm just kind of adding the darker color on now to get these shadows in place and kind of establish everything that we have here this back leg in through here is going to be a little bit darker so i just added a touch of black to my dirty brush to get this um this other leg the far leg to have its darkness to it and to just kind of make sure that that is taken care of and then i need to add a shadow up and through here where the top of the leg is going to meet the arm so right now this is the bottom part of the arm that's going to be holding the axe so i'm going to wipe my brush off i'm picking up again black and brown and this is where the top of my knee is going to go so this is again if you go maybe from this elbow go about halfway into your canvas come up a little bit and over so this is if this is your mouth come directly over and just a little bit down that's going to be the top it's going to meet this here in a nice natural kind of way it doesn't have to be perfect but nice natural and then i'm going to curve it around just a little bit coming down in through here and then from here i'm going to bring this in an upward direction this is going to be the back of the arm so this is going to come right about up in through there and then i want this to blend in a little bit so i'm just going to kind of pull it out so i don't have a firm outline to it and same thing with over here just kind of pull it out a little bit so it's not a firm outline and then i think maybe just a little bit underneath here so i'm going to put a little bit of rust on my my brush on my dirty brush just kind of get these to to blend in a little bit and i'm thinking that's oh we need to put the shadow underneath underneath our little squirrel here so i'm going to just wipe my brush off on my paper towel pick up black and brown and this is going to give me my shadow underneath so i don't have a lot of paint on my brush i can always add more but what i really want to do is just make sure that i have a nice dark area underneath and this is where i'm going to start to establish those little toes you can kind of just bring this little shadow up between the toes i think a squirrel has four toes if if the photos i was looking at were accurate in displaying the toes i think there's four and then as i go towards uh this area where it's a little bit furrier i'm going to just kind of bring some of this darkness up into the crevices of the fur so something like this and it doesn't have to be perfect because you're going to be doing a whole bunch of fur on top of it and then i'm going to bring a little bit behind my squirrel because if we're going with what we did on our stumps that shadow is going to be cast off to the off to the right a little bit so something like this and then i've got to put a little shadow in between the legs that would be cast by the leg and perhaps from the um the stump itself so something like that and of course you can keep fiddling with these but we're going to be utilizing uh this same brush for the next step so once you've got your shadows in place you can wash and dry your medium brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing the fur on the main body part so not the head we'll do that in a future step and not the feet we'll do the feet and the two hands we'll do those in a future step so just know that i'm avoiding them on purpose right now so i'm using my medium brush the colors that i'm going to be using i i might use a little black i'm on the fence about that but i might use it to blend a little bit but i'm definitely going to be using brown rust red yellow and white and i have pre-mixed myself another color so we'll be using the walnut color the tan that we used as one of our fur collars and i've also pre-mixed myself this peachy type of color this is where the red plays into the equation so what i did was i took a little yellow a little rust a touch of red and a little white and mixed them together and that's how i came up with this beautiful peachy color this is going to act as a wonderful highlight on top of the fur in addition to the yellow and the white so i got myself some of that color and you can make kind of any shade of this that you would like because squirrels come in different colors too there's gray squirrels and there's black squirrels and there's rust squirrels so there's all different colors oh i think there's even white squirrels too they're not from around where i live but i think ours are mostly the this color and black squirrels we have a lot of cool black squirrels but anyways so i'm going to wash my brush now that i just pre-mixed that color and i'm going to start from the dark and work my way to the light so i already have established that this is dark under here this is dark here and of course as it goes over towards the tail that might be the darkest my lightest areas are going to be the areas that pop out the most so that's going to be in through here on the edge of this arm and through here and maybe on the part of the back that pops out the most so i've washed and dried my brush i'm going to start with some brown and rust and yellow all on my brush at the same time these are my three colors that i'm starting in my dark areas so i'm going to just kind of establish where i want these to go and i'm going to be using a directional brush stroke so that means that every brush stroke that i'm that i do i'm going to be putting in the direction that i feel that that fur will be falling so right now i'm going to pick up a little bit more of the brown and rust to go and make sure i've got this dark side down the back and make sure that i've got all the way to my tail so really i'm also just kind of right now making sure that i've got full coverage on some of these areas because i can still see some of my background through there so right now i'm just making sure that i've got enough accomplished in through there making sure that this kind of blends in well with this dark area in through here and making sure that everything where i want those dark areas have really been established and they are we're working our way towards the light and then as i work my way up this leg i'm just going to kind of continue in this directional motion making sure that i've got this paint all nice and on there and through here so in this area in the arm this is where we this is probably going to be the trickiest area because you have the arm in the exterior or the top part of the arm in through here and then there's a little forearm in through here so i'm going to start working my way towards the lighter collars right now so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up a little bit of my rust as well as that peachy color so i can start to establish where those lighter areas are because i've already got dark on there now i'm going to start establishing where the light is so i know that i have a little bit of a forearm of sorts in through here so i'm going to just kind of put a little bit of that paint and pull it down i don't need to pull it all the way down to the bottom because that's going to be a little bit shadowed underneath there i also know that i'm going to have the the hand is going to come in through here so i don't really need to go too wild in this position or in that spot and then i'm gonna start to add this rust and this peachy color over in through here and this is one of those steps that less is more you never need a ton of paint on your brush you just want to have just enough to get the job done and and show that you have that that fur but you don't need to go you know and paint every single little piece so it's a solid color because if you do then you're gonna in essence kind of work over or get rid of all of the work that you did underneath so this is definitely a less is more kind of step i'm going to start establishing my lighter area on top of this leg in through here and this in through here is going to get again that directional brush stroke but i want the viewer to understand that this is kind of curved up in through here so that's why i'm kind of curving the pieces of the fur as they're making their way down that leg and i'm overlapping but again i'm not covering the whole thing this peachy color is really making me excited right now so i'm going to continue on with that with the peachy color and some rust and i just added a bit of brown as well to my brush and again i'm just kind of getting this back fur on here so it has some texture it has some dimension to it and i'm not again i'm not overdoing it so i've got the the lighter areas involved now i'm going to start using some of that walnut color and probably a little bit more yellow and white as well i'm not washing my brush and i very rarely wash my brush when i'm doing fur of this nature when i'm just building it upon each other because i want all of these colors to speak to each other and i want them to look like they're not different sections of the fur it's just the fur being highlighted by the form the shape of the animal and or by the light source so that's why i don't wash my brush i like to just kind of let these colors speak to one another and even if i'm working a little bit with wet fur or wet fur what wet paint underneath this will help me to get them to to look like they belong together and i'm just kind of bringing this in through here this is looking good i think i'm going to want a little bit more darkness down at the bottom but you can see how i'm just kind of building my way towards the light i definitely want to make sure that it's understood what's you know what this piece of the animal is and so for me i know that it is the knee and it's going to be popping out the most i do want to add some of this lighter color onto this back side of this arm in through here and as i'm building this you'll notice that every time that i go for a lighter color i'm in essence kind of painting a smaller section of the animal because the light is it though the lightest spot is going to go be concentrated and it gets smaller and smaller so that's why as i'm going towards those lighter sections i'm painting less of the animal i just am in essence kind of bringing the light out from from the darkness and in through here i know that this is going to kind of come from the head so this might have a couple of different directional um elements to my paint stroke or to my brush stroke i know that this is going to kind of pop out over here because of the way that the body would work i guess it'd have a big bump in through here and i'm just going to kind of keep building the lightness as i'm coming down this back area i think i'm going to add a bit more of that lighter color in through here just to get that to kind of whoops almost just lost my brush there get a little bit more illuminated and if you ever get to a spot where you're like oh i just did too much or i didn't do enough you can always just let it dry for a couple minutes and then just start building upon it after that i mean you don't have to just muscle through something that you weren't quite sure about just you know just step away from it for a minute let it let it dry let it do its thing and see if by the time it dries you might not need work on it sometimes when we're going through these processes we're not really planning for what's going to happen when it dries and it always looks a little a bit different when it dries so if you're if you don't foresee that then you might get a little alarmed or startled throughout the process and think that you're doing something wrong when in essence you just need to wait a minute and then you'll probably enjoy it much better if you just kind of give it that minute to to rest and to and to fully dry and you can see my knee is starting to pop out nicely i think now i'm going to start pulling in a little bit more white maybe a touch of yellow and you can you know use them together you can use them separately you can see i'm really starting to build it towards that lightness and every time i go to do this i'm i'm using less and less paint i don't need a lot at all just teeny tiny bits getting these little highlights established definitely want this section of the yeah there we go and the highlights they do it for me so as i'm building this it's making me happier and happier so once i've got this little area enter here he's he's almost there he's he's speaking to me he's he's like yep i've got a lot of highlights on here i've got my little arm is showing through i've got some stuff on in through here and anytime like i feel like i want a little bit more in through here so i got to go back into a bit of the darkness so i'm going to go ahead and just kind of pull some of the rust and the yellow maybe on my brush just to get a little bit more happening in through his chest area because this is the under you know this is going to be inside but i know that i'm going to still see a little bit of it as it you know once it once it dries so i just want to make sure or once i put those other objects on top of there so i just want to make sure that i've got it all in the in the vicinity that i want maybe a couple of lighter pieces on and through here oh and or maybe i'll put a little bit of darkness down at the bottom here just to make sure that this kind of looks oh maybe a little bit more black on my brush i don't know if i said i was going to use black but i'm just using a little bit just down at this bottom to get me a little a little more shadow down here a little more dimensional elements down and through here and of course this is one of those steps that you can you know keep fiddling but what i would recommend is before you fiddle too much fin let's let's finish the animal let's get all of the other elements onto it and then if you feel you know at that point that you want to go back and make any you know more adjustments or tweaks or anything like that you can certainly feel free to do so but i think that once we get the head established and you see how the other bits and pieces are going to um work with what you've just done on the body you might you might be very content in that so you might not want to fiddle too much just kind of get your the the majority of it on here and then get as much in there as you want i like painting my animal first it's tough to stop that's my that's probably my biggest problem so we're going to go on to the next step we're going to be using our small brush so once you've got this done you can put this medium brush away or just fill all you want and then take out your small brush for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are doing the base coat for our axe i'm going to be using my small brush and i'm going to be using black and red paint so i'm going to start with just the head of the axe so i put black paint on my brush i'm going to have the pointy tip of the the axe is going to be just to the left of my little nose and maybe just a little bit higher than my nose and i'm going to have the bottom part is going to be just to the right of wherever i put my hands or my little fingers so something like that and i'm just going to connect these with a curved line so something like that is going to give me that pointy part and then the back side of it i'm going to come just to the right of this and maybe it into my um nut a little bit so i would say maybe about a half of an inch to an inch maybe somewhere in that works and then i've got the top of my ax is gonna be uh like i'm just gonna describe it as i do it so it's going to come down like this and then it's going to kind of curve around where the um where the pole of it is going to go like this and then it's going to come back down in through here and then just kind of poke out in my um in my nut so i'm gonna do it like this and i'm gonna come up like this so it's gonna look like there's a little piece that's stuck into the nut and a and again if yours doesn't look exactly the same shaped as mine it's okay and once we put the little red handle of our ax on you can certainly modify anything that you need to and then i'm just going to paint this section in with black paint so this is going to give you that realistic kind of look to it going to make sure that it goes all the way to the nut in this area and then i'm going to wash and dry my brush so i can put the red portion on so wash and dry my brush i'm going to have the butt end of the axe is going to come where you have this elbow here i came up the elbow maybe about an inch or so so it's going to start in through here i'm going to utilize that shadow that i already established as the bottom portion of the axe i'm having my axe with a little bit of a bend in it but you don't have to have your you can have yours totally straight it's up to you there's all kinds of varieties of axes so i'm gonna start in through here i'm gonna come down a little bit like this and then back over and just kind of meet this line in through here and i'm gonna have the top part of my axe is gonna have the same curve to it so it's going to be something like this and then the butt end the back end could be wider if you wanted it to or you can just have it the same thickness some axes will get a little bit wider as they at the bottom end of this i'm not quite sure why but some of them do so you could certainly make yours wider if you wanted to and then i'm just going to color this in with solid red i'm going to put a little piece sticking out the the the head of the axe on the other side so once i've got this in here just make sure i have it exactly where i want it that's looking pretty good and then i'm going to go ahead and just follow this line in through here come up to here give myself a little piece of the axe coming out the other end and then we are going to be utilizing our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your small brush 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 finishing our little face in our head except for the whiskers we'll do those later i'm going to use my medium brush i'm going to use all the colors that i used on the rest of the fur so this is going to be my i'll use brown that peachy color that we made white rust yellow i'll call them out as i use them so my thought process here is we're going to have some fur that's going to be on the little cheeks and that will blend into the back of the head and into the back the fur on the face is just going to be of a softer variety so instead of using like a directional brush stroke i'll be using a lot of stippling or dotting it's going to be pretty light around the nose and the mouth so i'll be using more of the white and maybe a little bit of grayish kind of color and then i'll establish the edges of the ears and maybe a little bit of fur over on the other side of the ear so it'll be light on the top of the head and in the front it'll be light on this back side of this ear and of course light down in in the front so how i'm going to start this is i'm going to start with my stippling areas so this is going to be kind of just dotting so i'm going to put a very little bit of brown and a very little bit of white so stippling is meant to be dots so if you push really hard or have a lot of paint on your brush you're not going to get that dotting type of effect so if you want to be cautious what you do is you put the paint on your brush and then you just kind of dab it on your paper towel that's going to keep you in control of the amount of dots that you are putting in that particular area so i'm going to put a lot of dots around the nose and i'm and you know i know that i'm going to be doing another you know i'm going to probably come back with another layer or two after you know i establish this first round of dots but this is just kind of getting me going i'm going to start picking up some of my walnut color and maybe a little rust as i go up the face and through here but i didn't wash my brush so this is giving me some lighter some lighter some lighter textured dots as i go up in through here but i don't want to lose all of that color that i had established underneath and i also don't want it to look too um organized so i am making sure that i kind of overlap them a little bit as i get towards the front of the head i'm gonna maybe do that in a little bit more of a directional brush stroke just to establish that it's going up the head a little bit and to get the the top lightness on the head and through here and then maybe i'll go back to my my stippling as i'm coming down over around this ear and through here and again if you if you feel like it's too you know heavy on the dots just wipe your brush off on your paper towel i'm gonna go ahead and get this all in through here because this is again adding that texture to to the face this is where it's going to start to get into the longer fur so i'm going to just start that directional kind of brush stroke in through here just to establish the direction that i want that to go in i'm going to start picking up i think i want a little bit more darkness in through here underneath so underneath the lighter fur so it's going to tell the viewer that there's a little bit of a of a dip in of sorts underneath the eye so i just picked up a little bit of brown and black just to i think i have some of that lighter color on my brush i'm just washing and drying real quick make sure that i'm not tainting the area that i want so a little bit of black and brown just to give myself a bit of a of a shadow underneath this eye a little bit there we go to give um a little bit of form underneath this eye so it looks like it's kind of dipping in a bit in through here and of course i'm not doing a whole heck of a lot just making sure that i've got that information on there if i want there to be a little bit more information underneath where it's going to have the little cheek in through here i'm still just kind of using that brown and black just a teeny tiny bit of it maybe a little bit back here above the eye again this is just adding those little dimensional elements to it maybe a little bit in through here maybe a little bit here just kind of getting those those form in there and now i'm gonna go ahead and start getting those lighter colors so rust and yellow is where i'm starting with this information over here just like i did on the body i started with some some rust and some yellow just to get that that layer of um the iconic colors on there and then i can start building into those lighter textured type of pieces on top of it and this one i want this to really look like it's kind of a separate piece like it blends in up here but then in through here kind of takes on its own its own direction of the first so something like that maybe now i'm going to pick up some more of that nut color to give myself a little bit of a highlight establish the edge of the ear in through here yeah that works like that maybe a maybe a bit more white that's too much on my brush there we go get a little bit of lightness going on in through there i think i want a little bit more lightness on this nose so i'm picking up a bit of that peach and the white just to kind of give myself a bit more vibrancy on that and that little button nose that he's got and i'm also going to use this up the side just to make sure that we we know that there's a bunch of sunshine on that left hand side of the face i just picked up a little bit of white to get myself some nice vibrant little pieces of fur up on this left hand side and again if you feel like you've done too much it's okay just kind of let it dry for a minute and then you can you can back it off and make it a little bit duller if you want but sometimes having that bit of brightness really helps to sell the story of the where the where the light is coming from i'm putting a little bit more brightness in the face right now without taking away all of that underneath color so again i'm just kind of getting my way building my way towards the light i think i want a little more light coming on this part of the head so it shows a little bit more shape or form to the head so this is where you can just kind of keep playing with the the colors i just picked up a little bit of rust and my um that nut color just to kind of get a little bit more of that lightness in through here i think i'm going to use this as my highlight color for my ear hair as well so my nut color plus maybe a little of the peach and a little of the white just a tiny bit on my brush at the same time get myself established these um little pieces of the the i almost call them feathers the little pieces of the wispy hair ears that these some of these um squirrels have super long fluffy pieces coming out of their the outside of their ear which is really fun and they can be really long too so you can you can have fun with these little pieces on the top of the ears they add they add quite a bit of of excitement when you when they're on the um when you look at them on the squirrel so you can have as much fun with that as you'd like to and then of course i'm just kind of at this point going back and forth between the the colors that i've established as my lighter colors i'm gonna go with that peach and the and the um and the nut color for some highlights in through here and again i'm not adding a ton of paint to my brush especially when i'm doing these more directional type of brush strokes so that way i can continue to just kind of add build that build the layers upon layers as opposed to just doing one solid paint stroke because i really want the viewer to understand that this is a fluffy little guy and that he's got you know lots of dimension within within his his fur i think i'm going to go for a little bit more of the lighter yellow type of version for the fur in through here just to get this to pop out a little bit more and i'm going to kind of just keep fiddling here i know that i want a little bit more lightness in front of the eye as well like up in the eyebrow but these are the things that you know as as you're building your your little furry friends here you can certainly just enjoy the process and step back and say hmm i want that area to be fluffier so you know come back and just add another layer of of the you know rusty color or the reddish color or you know your yellows that the lighter toned yellows are going to add more sunshine onto it if you want this to look a little bit longer you just pull a couple longer pieces of fur in through there if you want to look darker you're going to add a little bit more of your black and your brown and stuff and through there so there's all kinds of ways to bend and tweak and and twist this into having a little bit more dimension and more information around the face again i want it kind of softer looking so i'm going to do a lot of the stippling effect to get the that information to just pop out and make the viewer understand what they're seeing and make them understand the shape of this um cute little fella i think it's a fella i don't know i've been calling it a a a male the whole time i'm not quite sure i know the difference between a male and a female squirrel but if you do you can certainly make yours a male or a female and then i'm going to just kind of add these lighter little speckles to just make sure again that i've got you know the form uh and make sure it's as bright as i want maybe i've got a tiny bit more lightness above this eye whenever you want if you want the animal to look a little bit cuter if you can put more emphasis on that eye and get the eye to kind of pop out a little bit that tends to add a little bit more of the cuteness factor um as opposed to like a dark eye that might be sunken in a little bit so the more contrast that you have in that eye and getting it to pop out a little bit more it adds that bit of of additional cuteness to it and you can just kind of keep fiddling you can see my nose has popped out i've got this great space for where the um front of the face is without it being too invasive it's just kind of blending into the side of the face i've got a bright area established on my on my front forehead but i feel like i want this area a little bit a little bit more of that more iconic kind of color so i'm just going a little bit more of the vibrant color in through here there we go and again you can do the same thing with yours as you're going through this process if you want it lighter or darker or you want one section to have more of that rusty color just keep keep tweaking it just keep adding those those little bits of layers to it and then we are going to be using oh i forgot a little highlight in through here let me just put it this little highlight on this arm in through here because we want we want this little arm the back arm to have a little bit of a highlight too so i just picked up some of my nut color and maybe a little bit of the the white as well just making sure that we didn't forget about that little arm because i almost did so just adding that that bit of highlight and then we're going to be utilizing our let's go for our uh our big brush for the next step so once you've got this all done you can put your medium brush away take out your large brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing our tail so i'm going to use my large brush and i'm going to be using all of my fur colors but my goal here is to get it to look really fluffy and light and being kissed by the sun and all that good stuff up on the top as well as kind of in the middle of the tail back here and on the tail tips so i'm going to be adding these layers in kind of a chaotic type of way but i'm again i'm never going to have a lot of paint on my brush especially as i start building this tail i'm going to start with my rust color um i don't know if i'm going to use any brown because i already have a nice deep base there but if i if i go too light i can bring back some of the brown but i'm going to start with some rust and yellow on my brush so i've got rust and yellow that's going to be where i start and i'm just going to kind of start at the bottom and just kind of establish where the additional layer of this tail and i know again that my paint that i'm using is see-through so it's going to take on the look of whatever is underneath it until i start using white the white is going to change the opacity of it and you won't be able to see through the white so before i start using white i'm going to get these lighter areas or these more vibrant areas in place before i start using the white so again right now i just have rust and um yellow on my brush and i'm using the same direction that i did initially and you can even bring some out a little bit further than that original footprint of it and i am using the same direction but every piece doesn't have to be exactly on top of the other one you can certainly have them overlapping in a different um in a slightly different direction it doesn't have to be perfect and on top of every single last one because that wouldn't necessarily make it the most natural looking so again just rust in yellow is where i'm starting i'm getting it all to go all the way to the tippy ends i'm making it kind of curve a little bit making it fluff out a bit at those at the ends like this and now once i've got that vibrant um layer of the rust and the orange are the rust and the yellow now what i can start doing is building the um the lighter fluffier pieces i'm thinking of this kind of like blonde hair that type of color which is where the two that nut color and that peach color are gonna play factors of this as well as i'll use yellow and white so i'm gonna start right now i'm gonna pick up a little bit of this peachy color and start adding that into into the tail as well and again as i'm doing this i'm not using a ton of paint and i'm not pushing it really hard i'm just kind of utilizing it in the direction that i had that initial footprint in and i'm not bringing it all the way into the shadow area either i'm just kind of doing this in addition to it and if you run into a a place where you have too much paint on there and it's all just blending together and is one color and it's not working out for you let it dry or blow dry it or something so you can you can work with it because if it's too wet and all you're doing is just blending everything together then that's going to defeat the purpose of getting this to be nice and light and fluffy looking you can see i can still see some of my other colors underneath i am not painting over them 100 i'm just utilizing this peachy color to give me another dimension within the tail feathers and i'm just kind of going all the way around making this color evident everywhere but not overdoing it now i'm going to start using my walnut my nut color without washing my brush and this is like when i was doing the regular fur every time i go to to add another layer i'm adding less and less in the in the in that particular section so i'm just going to kind of add little tiny tidbits in the in the edge of this tail maybe bring them in just a little bit more and you know you might find that you want to do you know 76 different layers on this tail you might really want it to be on the lighter side or on the darker side so you you definitely can steer this into whatever brightness or darkness that you want but you can see i'm using this more on these little tips i'm digging the way that it's looking on the tip so i'm just kind of letting that happen maybe i'll put a little bit in through here i'm definitely gonna need some more of that um probably rust color and you know some more of the the reddish type of tones throughout this but this is this is a building process for me sometimes when i'm doing these type of um steps i do go back you know several times just to make sure that i've got the lightness on there that i want or the the structure that i want so right now i'm just kind of building my my lightness to it and i'm gonna you know establish this the the direction of my of my fluffy tail as i'm going up here i'm gonna bring it out i think a little bit more along these edges and i don't want it to go you know straight out so i i definitely want there to be some different curves to it and some different you know directions to it i'm going to start putting a little bit of white on my brush right now i want to start to get some of this lightness up and through here but i know that i'm going to have to bring some more of the peach and the reddish tones in through the tail itself but i want to start to establish some of these really bright light pieces in through here so i just added a bit of white to my brush just to make sure that i i'm starting to build this really light area in through here and i suppose you could even be using when you get to these smaller more almost individual looking pieces you could certainly use your small brush if you wanted there to look like there's you know individual kind of pieces of the fur but whenever i look at a squirrel tail it just there's a there's a million little tiny pieces in there so that's kind of what i'm trying to go for in this type of effect that i'm doing and i'm going to get some to come all the way to the end and again they don't all have to be in the same direction i think i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and i think i'm going to wash it i want to get some deeper reddish kind of tones in through here so i'm going to pick up some of my rust brown and a little bit of red and yellow all on my brush at the same time i want to get some deep some deep color in through here so yeah that's going to work i know that this is again going to dry a little bit a little bit darker because of the base that it's on but i definitely i want the the reds of the of the squirrel tail to definitely be nice and evident so i'm just putting a little bit deeper tones in right now of that reddish kind of color making sure that i whatever i do in one section i definitely again want it to all look like it belongs together so i can just continue to add that deep tone into the rest of it as well and i'll just keep building on top of it so that's the beauty of this i i often when i'm doing fur i i'm often thinking about skin because skin has a million different layers to it and i think the same thing about fur and hair because it's just different layers piled on top of each other and they offer a different purpose so you know the ones that are underneath are going to bring you know your deep dark tones and and those colors into it but those ones on that lay on the top add your dimension to it so you know they all they all serve different purposes and i i want to make sure that i'm i'm pulling the colors around to to sell that story that this that you know has a lot of demand dimension and depth to it um and that it's all connected it's all it's all from from the same source so once i've got that on there yeah that's looking pretty good now i'm going to start i think i want to add a little bit more of the um yellowish kind of highlights to it so i just washed and dried my brush again and i think i'm going to go for some of this peachy tone again but i think i want a little yellow and white too so you can pre-mix a color you can i like using them on my brush at the same time so i've got peach yellow and white all on my brush at the same time and i'm going to get some of these additional kind of colors especially up in through here yeah that's bring that's bringing the life i want into it so this is adding a little bit more of those like goldeny kind of tones to it and again it i i'm picturing this to be kind of like flitting in and you know maybe blowing in the wind a little bit so i'm just kind of adding this as much as i want and i know that these pieces are pretty long you know they would be coming from the the um base of that tail so you can certainly make them as you know long brush strokes if you wanted to but i just want to make sure that i don't you know overdo it so that's why sometimes i just go on the slower side i'm just kind of reloading my brush so i can my bristles are back in in place here so sometimes my brush gets a little bit too splayed out so i just kind of reloaded it a little bit so my bristles could get back in control a little bit and you can you know that's just a little trick of mine to get them to to be in control you can add a tiny bit of water to your brush and again i'm just kind of having fun with this making some little bits of highlights maybe popping through the tail and through here maybe maybe a couple on the edges and you know have fun with this keep keep tweaking it you can certainly you know let it dry for a minute come back and maybe do some additional adjustments on top of it i'm probably gonna let mine dry and see see where it's at and maybe add or subtract some of the fluff on it but i do like to kind of let it you know let it fester for a little bit and and see if there is anything that i want to do to it before i say okay i'm totally done you know but definitely adding these little these little bits of layers and getting it all to talk to one another and you know it adds that volume to it it adds the dimension to it and i'm just going to kind of keep having fun here because i like these kind of steps and then once you've got this all done we're going to switch back to our small brush so keep fiddling with your tail all you want and then you can put this large brush away take out your small brush i think it's what i said and get ready for the next step [Music] alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting our hands and our feet so i'm going to use my small brush and i'm going to use a whole bunch of colors i'll just call them out as i'm using them so first i'm going to start with the fingers on this hand here i'm using my walnut collar i've got this little guy having four fingers so i'm gonna utilize strategic places so i can just kind of hide some things so i'm gonna put one coming right where this the front of the chest is and i'm just gonna do a little bump in through here and just pull it down almost about as far down as the um axe is and then i'm going to put another one next to it with a little bump up here and this one's going to be a little bit longer than the x something like this and they're not very wide just maybe about a eighth of an inch wide i'm going to do oops i have a little bit of white on my brush i meant to pick up my walnut color then i'm going to do another one in through here so this one i've got oh the knuckle is a little bit taller and you can have them touching or you can have them separated a little bit totally up to you i'm going to have this one a little bit different of a length and then i have one more that's even taller this is going to show that he's you know holding on holding on to his his big ol axe here and this one's going to be a little bit shorter maybe only half coming halfway down that axe so while that is drying i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to come down to my toes so or my feet so all i really need to do for the feet is add a little bit of highlighted fur at the top and then separate my toes a little bit these toes are over on the other side of the stump so i don't even really need to do anything to those so i'm just going to take a little bit of my walnut color and kind of establish a little bit where i want my toes to go and again i'm not doing much i'm just kind i don't even know if i'm anatomically correct on these little toes but i think that there's four in through there and then i think they're pretty long so i'm just going to kind of make that a little long in there and then i'm going to put a little bit of a highlight on the fur over in through here so i just picked up some of my walnut color with a little bit of the peach and i'm just going to get a little bit of a highlight on here and then maybe just kind of pull it down like this just to show that there's a little bit of fur over here and of course you could certainly utilize any other of your fur colors that you would like i'm just trying to give it the essence of the rest of the colors of the fur on this other leg again i'm just going to kind of put a little bit of a highlight up at the top that leg's going to be kind of hidden so i just want to make sure that it trend that it has a gradient coming over on this side so i just picked up some rust and brown to make sure it just kind of fades into the darkness over in through here then i'm going to do these little fingers in through i'm going to put toes on or the toe nails in a second but first i want to just establish my highlights to them so i'm going to put little highlights over just on the edge over in through here we've already got the finger in place so just adding a little a little edge to it in through there i think i'm only going to see three fingers in through there and then i'm going to wash and dry my brush and i'm going to put some fingernails on so i'm going to put some little i put a little bit of black paint on my brush and all i'm really going to do is just kind of put these pretty long black fingernails coming out and they can come out in these different angles they don't all have to come out at the same angle because this is a wild little creature i don't think he's gonna he's been to the um salon to have his nails manicured in recently so they're going to be kind of ragley kind of nails into here so i'm just bringing this back up the toe a little bit so you can see some of the skin along the sides of it something like that and then over here i've got maybe just the little the little tips touching my touching the nut because he's holding on with with his his fingernails i'm assuming so something like that and then maybe this one is kind of down the side like that once i've got that i'm going to wash and dry my brush and i'm going to add a little highlight actually you know i think i'm going to put a little shadow in between these fingers first so i just picked up a little bit more black and brown to get a little bit of shadow in between these fingers in through here just so they've got a little bit of dimension to them and then maybe a little bit of my um rust and brown just to give them a little bit more dimension than just that solid color yeah there we go that does it and then i'm going to pick up a tiny bit of white to do a little highlight on my fingernails so i don't want to cover up all the black i'm really just going to kind of do a quick little swipe on them and if it goes too much i can always just bring back some of the black but i'm just doing a little kind of curved swipe to tell the viewer that there is a little bit of a highlight and that they're curved and these guys over here just gonna hopefully my hand won't go too much in the way but something like that and like that and like that and then we're going to use our oh let me put a little highlight on these on these fingers and through here too so i just picked up a white with a little bit of that nut color just to give you a little bit of a highlight on the top of those fingers and then we're going to use this same brush for the next step so you can just fiddle and do any little adjustments that you might want just putting a little more color in those toes and then again i will be using the same 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 finishing our ax so i'm going to use my small brush i am using black white red and i might use some of that yellow or peach color but i'll let you know if i'm going to do that so i'm going to do my axe part first i'm loading my brush with red and black or the red i'm doing the ax but i'm going to do the handle part first i just put red and black on my brush at the same time because i'm putting a shadow down at the bottom portion of my handle like this so just red and black is going to get that on there making sure i do it in the little front part as well and then i'm wiping my brush off on my paper towel reloading with just red paint to make sure that these two kind of blend together so i just kind of put red paint on my brush make sure these blend in together and then i will put a highlight on the top of it make sure i get back here too that already looks kind of like it's in the shadow anyways so then i'm going to wash my brush and dry it and i'm going for i'm going to start with white and just kind of establish where i want this bright highlight to go somewhere in through there and without washing my brush i'm picking up some red and just kind of getting that to blend in a bit i'm not going to do much with the highlight i just want the viewer to know that it is in fact lighter on the top and darker at the bottom that's going to give it the three-dimensional element if this went too pink on you you could certainly use some of that peach color to get it to look more like a light red as opposed to a pink type of color but i'm digging the way that mine is looking so i think i'm just gonna i think i'm just gonna roll with it and get my little tip with a little bit of a highlight right on the end of it there we go making sure that we carry that highlight all the way through then i'm going to just wash and dry my brush and i'm going to do my highlights on my um my axe part so this i don't i don't know how they make them but this metal part is going it kind of takes on the same shape as the handle so i have black and white on my brush right now and i'm going to add a little bit of a highlight in through here and then what i do is i just pick up a tiny bit of black paint and get it to blend in with the bottom portion of that particular section so i'm just really kind of taking it and making it a little bit brighter at the top and duller at the bottom and then i'm going to make this section down in through here have a little bit of gray on it to make it look like it is of the shiny sort i'm just putting a little bit of gray on here i don't want to take away all of the black but i do want there to look like there's some sort of shape to it so i'm going to put a little bit of a highlight on the front i just put a touch of white on my brush something like that but you can certainly blend it in a little bit just picked up a little bit of black so i'm in essence kind of putting a highlight on the front of the ax i'm making part of the interior a little bit on the gray side and then i'm making sure that i have that established section that kind of pops out a little bit so i just put that bright part on the front of this picking up a little bit more black to get this to blend in a bit there we go and then i think i want to touch more highlight right there we go there and then i want to put a shadow on my um on my nut indicating that the axe is casting a shadow on it so i just have a little bit of i didn't say i was going to use brown but i'm using brown and black and i'm going to from where the tip of the axe kind of sticks out here i'm going to give myself like a little bit of a curved shadow coming out of there and if you want it to look you know more like the axe pops out a little bit more you could certainly add a touch of a lighter spot at the end of it where it kind of curves here that will give you a little bit more information for the viewer to digest on it and then we are going to be using the same brush for the next step so once you've got your ax finished here you can wash and dry this small brush and get ready for the next step alright so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm painting some whiskers so i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to start with some black dots and then i'll move my way into the light whiskers which i'll probably be just using some of my light colors for so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start with some watered-down black paint so i'm going to just dip my brush in water so my bristles are wet and then i take it and put it in my black paint spin it around on the side so it's nice and thin and then i have a nice pointy tip with not too much black paint on it and i'm going to have these whiskers just kind of coming out of this little side of the face so i'm just making some really tiny little black polka dots and if you make too many or they're too dark for you you can certainly dull them down with some little white dots if you want to and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to wash and dry my small brush i will be using i think i'm going to use maybe just my walnut color and a little bit of white but i really want these to be light and see-through but i don't necessarily need them to be white so what i'm going to do is i'm going to have both of those colors but i'm also going to have water on my brush so that way my brush again holds the moisture and allows me to have a nice slender line and i like to kind of go fast so i can have um a fluid motion you might want a smaller brush you might you know want to practice before you do it i'm going to do a couple coming out of that left hand side not very many i might only do like two or three and i know that they're they can come out in different directions so i'm just going to kind of do something like that and maybe another one coming in through here and one of my tricks if i find that it's too wide what i can do while it's wet is i take another brush a clean brush put some water on it and i can almost just kind of thin it out as it's drying so you can do this method or that brush isn't firm enough for me or you can use a little bit of black paint you can use a contrasting color to make it so it's not so visible or so thick looking so once you've got the ones on that side then i'm just going to move over to this side and i'm going to use that same color combination with a little bit of water on my brush and i want these to look pretty you know natural and chaotic so i'm just going to kind of start and just kind of pull them out i'll have maybe one coming down in through here maybe one in through here and i'm not doing too many maybe a couple coming off the the front little area in through here and if you wanted them to look more visible if you if you're doing this in your life that's just not not visible enough then just pick up a tiny bit of watered-down white paint and you can add a little highlight to them without having to go full on and doing the whole thing so if they're you know not light enough add a tiny bit of white if they're too vibrant they can cross over one another too so feel free to make some going in front of another one that makes them look even more natural and then we have one tiny little step left to go with that small brush so when you're all set you can just put the small wash and dry the 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 usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i think i'm going to sign this one in the bottom left i'm using my small brush i am using black paint i sign mine with my initials but you could certainly sign yours with your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you'd like to be your identifying mark is totally fine and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a really adorable little squirrel and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 48,502

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, beginner, painter, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, realistic, beautiful, best, top, art, wall, sitting, looking, cute, adorable, easy, fur, animal, small, brown, hair, eye, nose, mouth, pet, face, foot, arm, fluffy, holding, smiling, happy, shadow, feet, legs, round, big, baby, tan, squirrel, rodent, woodland, creature, critter, axe, ax, nut, walnut, cracking, breaking, open, cutting, standing, stump, chipmunk, nuts, tree, ears, tail, fingers, determined, long, orange, woods, nature, forest

Id: 7mrr2b3Rg4g

Length: 113min 36sec (6816 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021