Allie Tutorial

Painting an animal in watercolour can be a little tricky as the watercolour medium cannot be that forgiving if mistakes happen, but there are ways around correcting mistakes. I also use white acrylic paint to highlight the white areas, now I know that most watercolourists use the white of the paper, I prefer to layer the white acrylic paint to create a more textured feel. The technique I use is different to most watercolourists where a 'loose' painting style is normally adopted, I tend to keep things very tight and detailed. Now I won't go into all the colours I use as I feel this will vary for everyone, my choice of colours is just something I do automatically when painting and believe it or not I don't even know the name of some of the colours I use in my palette! Oh, and excuse my typing, spelling and grammar is not one of my strong points!  
The paper I use is a Watercolour Block which contains 20 sheets of 12" x 16" Hot Pressed paper (very smooth) made by Aquarelle Arches, Ok, the first thing I will do is draw the outline of the dog onto my watercolour paper using very little pressure with a 2H pencil so I don't mark the paper in case of errors. Use a small piece of paper to rest your hand on so you don't get grease from your hand on the paper, this will damage the watercolour paper and will not allow the colour to be absorbed by the paper. So firstly the outline is drawn (Step 1), click each thumbnail to the right of this page to view a larger image throughout this tutorial. First draw the outline
I then worked on the background by wetting the paper then very quickly whilst wet brushing in a variety of earth colours. (Step 2) Once the background was dry another wash of clean water was applied then a darker layer of colour was used. Work on a wet background being careful not to go onto the animal drawing
The first part of the animal I always paint will be the eyes, to me this is the life and soul of an animal and if I can´t achieve this 'life' feel then I will start again. There would be nothing worse than spending 30+ hours producing a painting then finding that you cannot paint the eyes properly at the end! Adding a little acrylic white paint for the highlights in the eyes blending the paint whilst still wet. I also worked on the ears to get the shape whilst applying coloured washes of Yellow Ochre/ Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Yellow.(Step 3)Working on the detail of the eyes which are the most important part of the painting
Then it's time to start on the hair, every hair is painted more than once sometimes 5 times, as watercolour dries about 50% lighter! After which I worked on the nose applying washes of a mixture of blue/purple and browns, again adding highlights with acrylic white then blending with a damp brush. I then worked around the nostrils and nose hairs, once again working in layers. With watercolours you have to start with a light colour and build up each layer making it darker, hence painting every hair many times! (Step 4) Working on the nose and highlights applying many layers of washes and hairs
Most of the facial hair has now been painted including the ears. I've worked on the outline of Allie creating extra hairs to place over the background to break up the background watercolour line. I tend to work with many layers even though when a wash is placed over detailed areas it tends to blur a little, this enables more detail to be placed on the top. (Step 5)Work on a wet background being careful not to go onto the animal drawing
Some Artists prefer to work on every section of a painting bit by bit however I tend to more or less finish one area at a time. The final stage was to add washes and detail to the neck line and paint in the chain and band. Dealing with very dark areas in watercolour is not the easiest of things but can be achieved through numerous layers of dark washes, once again a mixture of blues, deep reds and browns were used for the black areas. I do not use a black paint on it own as this tends to be very bland in colour, so either using black with other colours or making your own black from the colours I've mentioned, will give you much more realism with the colours of the animal you are painting. (Step 6)I've now worked on the neck line and chain, blending some of the hairs together to give the feel of depth.
The detail of the eyes The background washes
I hope this has given you some idea on how I work on a painting. Everyone has their own way and style plus not everyone will agree to my methods. However saying this I am nearly (only nearly) happy with the results. If you paint and would like a little bit of advice, help or you just want to show me your work then please email me from the link below. Excuse the quality of my photo's, I am no photographer that's for sure especially with the different light changes in my living room! One day I may even get a studio to work in and not my computer desk! :-)

Paularty image
BACK TO TOP