How to Paint a Polar Bear in Acrylics: Endangered Animal Tutorial

Hey everybody and welcome back to the channel. For this month's tutorial I decided to show you how I painted this polar bear. For the main colours that I used for the majority of this painting, white, black, burnt umber and some phyllo blue and there's a few others that I used for the scenery. Starting off with the background, I actually ended up changing this background like three different times just because I wasn't super happy with how it first came out. So if you see the background magically change it was because I wasn't too happy with it. But I think I got it to a stage where I was finally happy with it in the end. Basic background for now though before we move on to the actual bear itself. Normally I start with what's known as a base layer or a value layer for me. This is the best way for me to get started in a painting. It's known as a value layer because you're basically mapping out the lights and the darks as you can see here of your animal of the painting. So I'm using a dark coloured brown to basically start to map out the shadows of my bear. Now you might be wondering I'm painting a white polar bear but I'm putting a really dark brown on it and that's okay that's what you should do. If you were to put white directly on top of a white canvas you're not going to get any depth, any colour, any clumps of fur or anything that's really going to show up at all. So always start with your darkest colours and work lighter. So I'm going through three main colours for the base layer using a dark burnt umber mixed with a little bit of black to do the darkest layer and then going up a shade with white to create the mid-tones and then the highlighted areas. Next I'm taking a rake brush and I'm actually mixing some of that blue and a little bit of black and a little bit of white together to create sort of this deep bluish greyish colour. I'm putting those over the top of my darker areas to create more of a colder feel to my shadows and then mixing a bit of white in with that to start to create a lighter tone in the areas that need the highlights. Whenever you start any painting of any object or animal or person you want to choose a light source. So I chose my light source sort of coming from that top right side of the canvas so that's why I'm concentrating a lot of my bright colours on the right side and a lot of my dark colours on the left side of the bear's face and body. And then I'm just going in still using the rake brush to get that texture in there with some whiter paint. I'm not using a super bright white just yet it's sort of an off white. I want to save that bright white for when I really do want to highlight the bear's body. When you're painting fur you want to make sure that you are following the direction that the fur naturally grows in. It can be a little bit tricky to do this but make sure it grows away or out from the centre line of the animal's body basically. Every animal has a centre line. I actually should have done the scene first but I wanted to get on and show you how I painted the bear so I actually did this whole painting in a little bit of reverse than I actually should have. Next I'm moving on to the glazing layer. Glazing layer is a great layer to have. It's a fun layer. It's basically tinting colours over the top of your work that you've already done. Now when you're glazing you want to make sure your painting layer beneath is completely dry before you glaze and after you glaze as well. I've glazed some burnt umber, some blue as well as some yellow on the light side of the body to give it like a golden sunshine kind of view. And then all the blues and browns on the dark side of the body to deepen up those shadows. Next going in with some white paint and my rake brush again and just defining the highlights and putting in the brighter areas and retexturing a few areas that got lost in the painting process. Next moving on to the mouth and the nose. Just doing and filling in the lips and the nose can be a little tricky sometimes because bare noses are like weirdly flat on top and then it sort of has this sharp angle. It's kind of odd but I'm trying my best to put a little bit of texture in there without making it look flat or just overly textured. So paying attention to how the lighting would affect the nose, making that graze and the highlighted edges stand out a little better using a detail brush and some white paint. Then making sure the darkest areas are filled in with black. Next moving on to the eyes. Polar bears have sort of black beady eyes so I'm just filling in with the black paint and a detail brush and then going in with some grey and then some bright white to really make the eyes pop and stand out better. This is where I think I changed the background for the third time and I was finally happy with it after that. I'm not going to talk too much about the scenery. I might actually end up changing the scene later on. I'm still deciding what I actually want to do with it but I had sort of an idea in my head of this polar bear who is almost pondering or thinking about their home which is obviously in peril. Polar bears are an endangered species because of climate change because their home is basically shrinking and because of their home shrinking they're starving and losing their resources available to them. So I wanted to kind of pay tribute to that a little bit and I'm actually thinking of doing a series of endangered animals, talking a little bit about the reasons they're endangered and what we can do to change it and maybe a few other things like that. Not completely happy with how the scene came out and like I said I really wished I did the scene first before the polar bear but like I said for the sake of the tutorial I wanted to just get on and do the polar bear itself. So I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the scenery anyway and it just kind of threw it together a little bit but I think it came out okay. I may still change it or I might just leave it as it is. Polar bears are actually one of the largest carnivorous land animals in the world and I think they're the largest bear as well that is like close second would be like the koda bear or something. But they are quite aggressive despite how cuddly and white and pure they look and I think they're just really unique animals. They're very uniquely adapted to survive in such a harsh environment and I think it's a fascinating creature and worth saving and preserving. So that is pretty much how I painted this polar bear adding in a few of the last details just around the broken pieces that are coming off of him and also adding a few little whiskers with some prismacolor pencils. I usually use black and white to get the whiskers on my animals but that is everything for this tutorial. All of the supplies that I used will be listed in the description below and make sure you keep an eye out for future tutorials. I will see you all next time. If you're looking to learn how to paint or improve your art skills then head over to the Intuitive Artist Academy for courses and workshops that will guide you through your own painting journey. I will teach you the techniques you need to create your own masterpiece and works of art that you are proud of. They're fun, easy to follow and will leave you feeling inspired and ready to tackle your next big painting.