﻿Hi it’s Anna Mason. I recently painted this realistic French Bulldog in
watercolour, and in this video I’m going to show you how to paint it,
which I hope will help you with your own pet portraits.
Let’s just say, I know from experience that, with animals, it’s usually easier
to work from a photo as getting them to pose for you is near on impossible,
so here I worked from this photo.
I began by making a really detailed outline drawing on some illustration board,
making sure I was very light and pale with my pencil.
Here we’ve made it darker so you can see it more clearly.
I outlined the key features like the eyes, ears, nose and whiskers,
but I also marked out with jaggedy pencil lines, all of the main changes in tone,
or value, in the fur. These are especially noticeable around the muzzle
and nose area, and getting them in the right place will make a big difference
to achieving the 3D shape.
I always begin the painting by laying down a very light version
of each colour I can see within each different area,
making sure it’s at least as light as the lightest bit of colour I can see
in that area. We will darken up later, but it’s so important with watercolour
not to go too dark too soon. And it’s all too easy to misjudge just how light or dark
colours are until we have more of them painted.
Even at this early stage, when I was painting fur, I made sure to apply the paint
in short little lines with my brush, to begin to build up a hairy visual texture.
When I came to the eyes, I again started with the lightest colours,
using a small brush to apply a pale grey wash to most areas within them,
but leaving the highlights as the paper colour.
While I was working on the eyes though, I decided to paint them to a near-complete
stage right away. I always find that brings an animal or bird painting to life.
Plus, as the eyes are so important, I find that any pressure I feel to get the painting
looking right subsides once the eyes are looking good.
So, once that was dry, the next stage with them was to paint the darkest parts of the
eye, including the pupil, with a darker version of my black mix, but still not AS
dark as I would need to paint them.
There are lots of subtle shapes and shades of grey and black in the eyes which
if painted in the right places, and the right tone, will create the shiny curved look.
So I want to make sure I don’t take any of them too dark too quickly.
I also painted in the brown shades to the iris with another pale mix.
I then painted the other eye to this stage, before going in with a darker,
thicker black mix to darken the very darkest areas again, and then
watering down again to slowly darken up the midtone shapes within the eye,
and using my brush to add in plenty of the detailed little shapes of colour
I could see within the eye.
I worked on the other eye to a pretty complete state, before returning to
darken the darkest areas and midtones within the eye
so that they looked in balance.
With them looking back at me, I could work on the rest of the face
using a midtone mix of some of the black colour to focus on the
darkest areas of fur and nose.
I then painted the lightest tones to the tongue, and the rest of the fur on the face.
I took the mix a little darker on the darker parts of the body,
as I didn’t see as many flecks of white or very light grey there.
With that layer dry, I concentrated on the darkest areas,
but with a mix I knew wouldn’t be quite as dark as it needed to be.
Working slightly paler like this allows me to build in the furry texture via layers.
And I do that by applying the paint in short little lines. Just having these shapes in
place started to give the face form. I varied the consistency of my mix to
match to the areas I was working on but the focus was on the darker patches still.
The dog was looking really disjointed at this stage. So I began to darken the mid
tones some more, using a larger brush and starting with
the more brown colour in the ears. I then used a pale grey mix to work into
all areas that were at least as dark as this mix, applying gently over the top of darker
areas I’d just painted so as not to lift the short hair markings I’d made.
And leaving gaps through to any areas that were lighter than this as I painted.
This really brought the dog’s fur together, even though as this stage it was still too
light overall. Being too light at this stage is actually a good thing, as it means
there is more opportunity to add hairy fur texture as we layer up to darken.
Next I painted the tongue, before adding some more fur detail to the face,
and then using a small brush to add the darker details to the nose,
being careful here to leave lots of gaps through to the lighter colour underneath,
so as to create a wet look.
The muzzle area required some shorter brush strokes to create the different
visual texture there where the fur was a lot shorter.
Next I worked with a thicker, darker mix to apply another layer throughout,
focusing on the darker areas, adding detail as I went.
With all this darkening done, I could see I needed to darken the inside of the ears,
so I did that with the brown mix, before using the dark paint and some smaller
brushstrokes to develop the visual texture to the fur there.
I then got totally ‘in the zone’ and spent a couple of hours adding furry texture
with my small brush, all the way over the dog. Always paying attention
to the direction of the lines.
Then I used the bigger brush and a pale wash to gently darken some of the
lighter areas again.
I could see these were now too pale because I’d been doing more darkening
and the contrast levels were now looking too harsh. Next I added even more details,
there are just sooo many to capture when aiming for realism
and painting at this scale.
With most of the detail now added, it was time to paint the dark whiskers
with my treble zero brush, before rinsing it off and using some white gouache
to paint in the white whiskers. It would also have worked to have used some
masking fluid at the beginning of the painting for these, applied with a pin-point
applicator. But on this occasion, my pin point applicator had broken,
so I used gouache at the end, which works pretty well too.
I did a final check for extra details to add, and the painting was finished.
Full video classes showing how to paint the rest of this dog portrait are
available now in my online School.
If you’ve enjoyed this short video, please subscribe to my YouTube channel
and then hop on over to AnnaMasonArt.com where you can
take a full length video class FOR FREE and find a whole heap of resources to help
you pick up your brush and paint the way you’ve always wanted to.
Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you soon to help you create more
watercolours with “wow”.
Ah, you just won't sit still, will you buddy?
Will you sit still for a sausage?