Painting a Realistic Lion | My Struggles Making Art with WOW Factor

Hi guys and welcome to Studio Wildlife. In today's video I'm going to show you how to paint this lion in acrylics. This one was 80 centimeters by 100 centimeters so it's pretty much one of the biggest paintings I've done that's just a portrait of an animal. In this video I'm going to talk you through my process and share with you some really important tips for if you're thinking about becoming a professional artist. So it's really worth sticking around watching the video till the end and listening to the tips. Anyway thanks for clicking on to the video I hope you enjoy it let's get started. I like to start my paintings with a drawing. Sometimes I'll freehand my initial sketch but in this case because the drawing was so big I projected the image onto the canvas and traced it with a pencil. This was purely because I didn't want to waste time getting the drawing correct I just wanted to jump straight into the painting process and not have to worry about getting my proportions exactly right. To start this one I decided to begin with a layer of black paint. I did this to establish the darkest regions first. I wanted to solidify that drawing a little bit and then I went over the top of that using thin washes of black paint to further refine where the shadows of that lion would appear. I like to start with a dark wash like this that acts as a base coat so I'm not painting the actual details on a white canvas. At this point I want to thank the photographer Eric Estelle who let me use his amazing reference photo for this painting. I just want to say that if you are going to do a similar photo or you're just painting from other people's photos that you found on Google it's very very important that you ask permission from the photographer first. Again I just want to say thank you to Eric and I'll put a link to his Instagram page in the description below. Once I've got that initial black wash done I start to add color in a very similar way so just washes of raw umber, yellow ochre and I'm just doing that to put down a base wash of color for the lion's fur. I do this in colors that are much darker than I want the final piece to look so that I can work over the top with lighter colors. I actually add some burnt sienna and burnt umber to this wash as well to give some area of the fur a more orange base wash. Because this painting only had small amounts of background I decided to actually get this out of the way first. I'm not going to talk too much about this because it's not the focus of the video. I always like to start the face with the eyes because for me these are the most important part of a painting. For the eyes I start by adding some black for the area around the eye and then the pupil as well. Once I've got that black layer done I'll start to add the colors of the iris starting with the darkest colors first and then moving on to the lighter colors on top. I'm using mixes of raw umber, sap green, yellow ochre, burnt sienna and titanium white for this stage. I will also use a couple of mixes of Payne's grey and white for the skin around the eyes so that they aren't just solid blocks of black and they look a little bit more realistic. Once the eyes are done at this stage I like to move on to the rest of the face and I usually start with the areas around the eyes first and work outwards. For this I'm using a number eight round brush and a small filbert brush starting with the darkest colors first using mix of burnt umber, yellow ochre, raw umber and black. At this stage I'm looking more at the shapes and the areas of color rather than focusing on the details. I'm still keeping the paint much darker than I want the finished piece to be because I'm just trying to create a more established and more solid blocking at this stage that I can work over the top of later when I'm adding more detailed fur. I just repeat this process for the rest of the face starting with the darker colors and adding the lighter colors on top. As I get to the areas of the lion's face that are a little bit lighter I wanted to add some new colors to my mix to reflect that and the colors that I use for the lighter areas are raw sienna and burnt sienna both mixed with very small amounts of white. The areas of the face that will be covered in water later on I also add some thin washes of Payne's grey mixed with a little bit of cobalt blue and white. I don't really go into much detail for this but this is just acting as a guide for later on when I'm refining the painting. For the rest of this blocking stage I follow the exact same process. I work with my darkest colors first and then add the lighter colors over the top. For the mane I'm using a 1 inch flat brush and the number 8 round brush just to refine the blocking that little bit more. The water was a real challenge for me it's always something that I struggle with and I've never painted dripping water like this before. For the base layer I started with a mix of Payne's grey, cadmium blue and white and I use very very thin washes of paint to make sure that I left some of those colors and some of those details showing through from the painting underneath. I wanted to give that transparent effect of water because obviously in real life water isn't blue it's see-through. I just repeated that process gradually adding more and more white to each layer making sure that it was still watered down so it wasn't a completely solid or opaque color and use my fingers to help smudge and blend that paint into the layers underneath. During the process of this piece I actually learned about painting water and I learned that you need to study your reference closely. If you can look at the colors in the water and the shapes that those colors or those blocks make and you can match those colors and match those shapes in your painting then you've pretty much done all of the hard work when painting water. It's just about the shapes and the colors and getting those right. Moving on to the details I went back and started to refine the nose and for this I used the small number 4 angled brush. I used burnt umber mixed with black first and then added lighter layers over the top and those lighter layers involve mixes of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, raw sienna, raw umber and titanium white and the mixes that I use depend on the colors that I can see in my reference photo. So I am looking at my reference photo closely at this stage to make sure I'm picking out the correct colors. To refine the details even more I use the small size 0 detail brush at this stage too. As I build up those colors I'm thinking about two things. First is the form. I want to make sure that each hair strand or each fur strand is flowing in the correct direction so they all start in the right place and end in the right place and that each brushstroke adds to the sculpture that this painting is becoming. It adds to the 3d structure of the lion. The more three-dimensional you can actually get your painting to look the more life your painting will appear to have and the more realistic it will appear. The second thing I think about are the details and I want the fur to look as realistic as possible. To do that I make sure that I study my colors closely matching the reference as best I can. I make sure to leave plenty of gap between each strand of fur so that the colors underneath are actually still visible and I make sure that each strand of fur is slightly different from the last. Slightly adjust in the length, the direction or the thickness of each strand to give that painting a little bit of variation. Variation and differences are what we see in real life so you should make sure to add that variation to your paintings as well by mixing things up a little bit not making your fur too uniform and by doing that by adding that variation you're actually adding realism and an even greater sense of life to your paintings. Once I've got my lightest details in place I will actually go over the top of them with a glaze of color. I do actually have a full tutorial on how I use this glazing technique when painting realistic fur so if you haven't watched it yet make sure to check that out after this video. Once I've done that glazing I'll work back over the top of it with some darker paint which helps me bring back those dark strands of fur that were lost when I did the glazing and also add my final brightest and most saturated colors using that number zero round brush just to add those final bits of detail for that section. The colors that I used for this step were yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw umber and white. I repeated this process for the rest of the face. I started by adding the lighter color of detailed fur using that small detailed brush with mixes of yellow and white paints then once that was dry I just glazed more accurate colors over the top. Through this painting I do find that this combination of working the details first with that solid lighter color then glazing over the top and then refining those details and those colors really really works for me and it's something that I'm gonna be carrying on with my future paintings. So if you haven't ever tried a technique like that I really do encourage you to give it a try. If you are enjoying the video so far please don't forget to give it a like it really does help me out and your support does mean so much to me. I would also love to see some of the art that you make after watching these videos and so if you're on Instagram please make sure to use the hashtag studio wildlife so that I can actually see and check out what you guys are creating. After I finish with the face I moved on to the main. For this I used the number eight round brush and a new brush called a and I start with my darkest colors first then work over the top with the lighter colors and the lighter colors were mixes of raw sienna burnt sienna and white for the mate. This dagger brush has become one of my absolute favorite brushes to use when painting fur or hair because you can create these amazing long strands really really easily and because it's such a long brush and it holds so much paint you don't actually have to keep going back to your palette to add more paint for each stroke which is brilliant. I can now actually get around 20 to 25 strands done before I actually need to put more paint onto my brush and that just really really speeds up my painting process which is fantastic because I don't have much time to spare so any way that I can speed up my paintings is a bonus for me. I do actually have a more in-depth guide on I will link in the description below so again after this video make sure to go and check that out. The mane on the top of the head in the reference was a blue black color and I started out by actually copying that reference exactly as you probably saw right the start of the video when I put the full picture up I actually ended up changing that dark blue color fur to a browner color that more closely matched the rest of the mane. This is where that big professional artist tip comes in. You don't have to be totally reliant on your reference photo. As an artist when you're striving for realism it's just as important that you can take a step back from your reference and actually look at your painting. You yourself need to be able to make adjustments and alterations that improve your painting that may not necessarily be in that reference photo. This is something that I still really struggle with and it's something that I'm trying to train myself to do with every new painting. It doesn't matter how good you get as an artist there is always something new to learn or something else to improve on. If you want to make it as an artist and I'm trying this as well I think one of the biggest things that you need is drive and determination to improve and you need that drive and determination with every single painting that you create. You need to put everything in to each new painting. As soon as you let yourself get content with what you're creating you're no longer going to be developing as an artist. It's also really important to mix things up a bit and try new mediums and techniques that you wouldn't otherwise do. This helps you learn things that will help you improve your normal artistic method. I actually tried this out myself and recently painted a snow leopard using a toothbrush so I'll put a link to that video in the description as well. But the splatter technique that I learned while doing that painting I actually used a little bit in this painting too and I will continue to use in my future work because I found it really interesting and I thought it added a lot of variation and interest to the paintings. I work a lot in charcoal as well and I think a lot of my charcoal work also helped influence my paintings. I was able to, using that charcoal, train my eye building up shape and form using simple blocks of charcoal and I could transfer that skill to painting building up that form using simple blocks of paint, simple blocks of color and that form is something that I wouldn't have been able to establish had I not learned how to do it using a different medium first, using that charcoal. For me it's really important to constantly try new things and constantly try to be growing as an artist. I'm not anywhere close to being a professional artist yet but I am hoping that with time and practice that I will be able to create something that makes people stop and just say wow. Like that's probably my biggest dream at the minute. I want to be able to create a piece of work that people will just stop, take the time to look at it, take the time to appreciate it. I want to be able to create something that's inspiring and impressive that people just stop and say wow. I want that wow piece. For me I don't think I'm there yet. Maybe I'll never get there but maybe that's what will turn me into a fantastic artist. Maybe that drive for constantly wanting to improve and constantly wanting to create pieces that wow people is what will drive me forward and push me into an artistic career. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. If any of you guys are professional artists yourselves or trying to become professional artists I'd love to hear what you think so please make sure to leave a comment below. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did make sure to subscribe and check out more of my art painting tips. Got a tutorial on tiger painting, got more tutorials on lions so make sure to check those out and thank you so much for watching. Again I do really appreciate it. Thank you for your support and as always for more wildlife art tips please head on over to studiowildlife.com. Thanks again see you next time!