8/18/2023 0 Comments Wolf reflection paintingWhat I am most focused on is creating the illusion of volume and clumps. I often get comments like “Wow it looks like you painted every hair!” or “You must have used a single haired brush to get all that detail.” The truth is my underpainting did most of the work. To further drill in my point,the underpainting is the most important step for realistic fur. If I do find any I push them back into range. At this point I should be able to squint and find no values in the darks that are as light or lighter than my darkest value in the lights. I do a lot of squinting throughout the painting to better judge values. Also Titanium White by itself can cause a chalky look that will kill my painting. Again I don’t use straight Titanium White for this because it is one of the coolest colors on my palette and I need warm highlights on the fur. Using a mixture of Titanium White and a bit of Yellow Ochre I lay in my lightest areas. Step Nine: As I near completion I continue build up my values to their final range. This is more evident in the muzzle because the hair is short there. The other side though in shadow facing away from the light source is absorbing the temperature and color of the blue sky above, making it cool. This is because the direct light on the light side is creating a lot of specular light or highlights on the fur which reflect the temperature of the light source, the sun. Also, notice how the right side of the muzzle is blue and the left is warm. These tones are still considered part of my dark family, so I am careful not to mix too light by using Burnt Sienna grayed down and darkened with a bit of French Ultramarine Blue. However it would probably bend to the warm side rather than a cool green. For example a white horse in a green pasture would have green reflected light on its stomach. There are times when this light can appear cool because of the color of the surface it reflects off of. Reflected light from the sun bounces off the surface (ground) and fills objects with a low intensity of light and is warm. For example, I know there is reflected light filling the chest area on the right side as well as all the planes that face towards the ground. Here is where I have to focus on temperature and values on the surface. Step Eight:With much of the initial layers of surface fur complete I can lighten my values for the next pass in each area as I begin to work towards building volume. Now I start laying in color and value as I identify it under the surface fur. Thus I can use any of these complimentary combinations to create an incredibly wide variety of warm, neutral and cool gray tones in a full range of values. With the exception of Yellow Ochre (which I will use to lighten my warm colors in lieu of White to maintain temperature and chroma, then to warm my White for the lightest surface fur) the rest of the colors can be considered either as part of the Orange or Blue color families. My palette is kept simple, using only Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Orange, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine Blue and Ivory Black. Without this crucial layer your surface fur will have nothing to contrast against. This would be the areas where the clumps of fur “break open”. The difficult part here is training your eyes to look beneath the hair and see what temperature and value lies beneath. The values and temperatures established at this step will describe the surface fur as much as the actual brush strokes of fur themselves. Step Four:The underpainting…When it comes to painting fur, nothing is more important than the underpainting.
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