How to Paint a Golden Retriever Pet Portrait in Watercolor Tutorial

Today I'm painting a golden retriever. In this video I'll show you my process for painting a long wavy haired pet with a happy expression using watercolors. When painting animals with a background I like to start with a wet and wet technique. So I'm taking clean water and applying it all over the background area surrounding the head. I'm going to start with some burnt umber and indigo to create a nice rich black and in the top left corner to vignette the head of the animal and painting that in wet and wet allowing the color to bloom and blend softly in the background. The edge on the top of the head is going to be a hard edge so I'm not too concerned about making that soft but around the edges of the neck I want it to be really really soft and diffused and be more careful to paint around specific strands of fur around the ears. You can see I'm negative painting around some of those little pieces of hair overlap in the background. Close to the neck I like to re-wet the area if the paper has dried by now and so I'm taking clean water and applying that and then pulling in the background color towards the fur moving in the direction the fur is growing but you can see because we pre-wet the paper it's nice and soft. Now going into the head I start with wet and wet again so I'm taking clean water and painting all inside of the head just avoiding the eyes and nose for now and also the mouth. Make sure you have no pools or puddles. I'm taking a combination of raw umber and yellow ochre and painting that into the center of the head. Where I see this nice shiny little ripple in the forehead I'm leaving that alone with the paint. Any areas that are going to be bright highlights just make sure to paint right up to those without entirely covering them up. To make your painting look luminous and like it's glowing from within make sure to leave some highlights areas where just the white of the paper is showing. So I'm covering the entire dog in this yellow ochre combination and in areas where maybe I lost some light I can lift the paint back out. For the main colors on the dog I'm using burnt sienna by Daniel Smith. I'm starting with the eyes. I'm using my silver black velvet size 8 round brush and then taking a separate brush and softening each layer as I put it down. You can work side to side from one eye to the other to create a balanced effect and just to get the colors the same on both sides. Always be looking for balance and evenness when you're painting a portrait of an animal or person that's looking straight ahead. Now is the process of building up our layers. I'm taking mid-tones using yellow ochre or raw umber and burnt sienna and just a little bit of water added in so they're not too dark yet and just applying slowly layers of color wherever I need to go a little bit darker. This is a great time to start reaffirming your drawing. If you're losing your pencil marks just go over those areas with this mid-tone wash so that you can see better where you're going to go with the painting and where you need to darken gradually. So we're slowly adding details using these mid-tones and if you want you can start the eyes right away. This is helpful in some paintings especially ones where you have a lot of mid-tones to apply really dark color at the beginning such as in the eyes and nose so that you can make better judgments about the values you need to apply later on in the painting. For the black of the eye I'm using mostly indigo with a little bit of burnt umber added in to make it less blue and then underneath the rims of the eyes I'm applying some ultramarine. For the brown centers of the eyes I use burnt sienna and raw umber and then to make it look even more realistic make sure to add some shadow tones where the eyelid is overlapping the eye itself and to help the eye feel fused to the head apply lots of fur texture using a small brush with little separated brush strokes leaving highlights in between. Now those highlights are still a little bit too bright so I'm taking some ultramarine watered down and once the eye is dry I can fill in those highlights a little bit so they still stand out but aren't quite so bright. The other eye is done pretty much the same way just observe your reference photo for any differences you might see and also filling in the highlights to make sure they're not too bright. Now before we go on if you're new to my channel hit that subscribe button right now for more watercolor tutorials like this and click the bell so you never miss any new videos. Just adding the eyes helps our dog look so much more realistic already and we can also see really clearly where we need to go a lot darker with the rest of the painting. So now you can start adding washes to the face or if you want to paint the nose next that's what I chose to do. I'm taking a combination of ultramarine and indigo watered down and applying a flat wash all the way across the nose just filling in the entire round shape. In my reference photo the nose is a little bit out of focus so I don't have a whole lot of details to work with but that's okay it's not necessarily the focal point. I'm applying this bluish tone underneath the mouth and also where the gums are. All of this will need to go a lot darker but it's helpful to get these base layers down. I'm also applying that same color around the mouth. Now before we go on if you feel like maybe this video is moving a little bit too fast I wanted to let you know that this tutorial is available in real time. Just head over to emilyolsonart.com where you can join program. For just a small amount per month you will have access to all of my real-time full-length tutorials which include downloadable reference photos and traceable line drawings, a complete list of materials used with each project, and thoroughly narrated explanations with closed captions so you can paint right along with me. As a member you can also access all of my real-time youtube tutorials all in one place, learn how to paint different kinds of fur and whiskers, create your own color mixing chart, and share all of your amazing artwork with other artists like you through our private facebook group. I'll leave a link in the description below so you can check out all the tutorials that are currently available. All right let's get back to the video. If you've lost a little of the highlight in the nose it's okay to lift some of that paint back out which is what I'm doing here and now I'm mixing up a dark black again using indigo and burnt umber filling in those nostrils first and any dark details that I see in the nose. Most pet portraits have these little rims of light that are catching underneath the nostrils so negative paint around those with your dark black. Paint right up to about the center point of the nose and then water down your paint a little bit and blend that edge slightly lighter. You can do this in several steps until you get the lightest value on the nose and a soft blended effect. Now those rims were still too light so I'm darkening those up and while the paint on the nose is still wet I can pull some of that paint down forming the shape of the mustache underneath our dog. This dark fur using short quick brush strokes. For a more specific tutorial about painting fur and watercolor check out this video. Along the side of the muzzle of the golden I'm painting these little stripes. This is where those whiskers come from. I'm gradually darkening with more washes tinted washes using burnt sienna and raw umber and little hints of my indigo if I need to neutralize those tones and make them more grayish. For the texture on the nose I like to use a cross hatching method wet on dry so make sure the nose is completely dry before doing this technique and use a very light feathering motion with your brush hardly any pressure at all to create a nice subtle texture. For the tongue I'm using Holbein alizarin crimson for the main wash and then applying a combination of phthalo blue and quinacridone rose to create purple for the center of the tongue. Be delicate with your painting right up to the fur and then apply a shadow in the center of the tongue using indigo. I'm softening that edge using my favorite lebenson small white synthetic brush and then painting the tiny little center stripe of the tongue. Continue to darken just gradually building up your layers. This does take patience but I promise you the payoff is worth it. For the gums I'm using my black combination of indigo and burnt umber carefully painting around a couple of little areas where the gums look shiny where they're catching the light. You do want to constantly refer to your reference photo for these little details. It's important to include them if you want your painting to look really realistic. So for underneath the mouth this is a really soft area with really fuzzy fur so I pre-wet the paper again and now I'm applying some color wet and wet so that the paint softens. Now is also an opportunity to begin to add the curly fur texture underneath the mouth and to continue to darken. While the paint is wet it will soften a little bit. It won't completely diffuse as it begins to dry but you have kind of this wet on damp effect where the paint looks really soft but not totally washed out and lost. Using my burnt sienna, burnt umber, and yellow ochre I'm continuing to add washes of color. On the ear I start with more of a flat wash first and I'm darkening the fur along the edges of the ears using burnt sienna. I want to have kind of this gradation from dark to mid-tone to light in the ear. So here I'm adding the darker tones using burnt umber mixed with a little bit of indigo and adding more specific brush strokes to portray these very specific curly strands of fur. It can be a little intimidating when working on an animal that has all of this detail in the fur and so having a good sketch definitely helps but you're always going to be continuing to draw with your paint. So just watch your reference photo closely, study it carefully, and copy what you see with your paintbrush. As we continue to build layers it's really starting to look more lifelike. Underneath the head is another important place where you're going to want to add darker tones so that the head feels like it's coming forward from the animal. Adding shadow shapes really helps it begin to look 3D and you can see I've added probably five or six layers to the neck by now. All this complexity of layering is helping it look so much more realistic. Be gentle on the top of the face, it needs to stay really light so when you're adding fur details and brush strokes make sure that it's a very very light wash and that you don't go too dark with these areas. You can soften any details that they feel a little too linear or overdone by just going over it with a scrubbing motion with your brush. The other ear is done almost the same way. With this one I apply a flat wash and then I'm pulling that wet paint out and away in the direction the fur is growing so that it looks feathery and soft and then once that layer is dry or almost dry I can go back in with burnt umber and indigo and more layers to darken it up and help the ear feel separated from the head with those shadow shapes. This ear has a highlight right in the center so I'm painting carefully around that. Make sure that your brush is missing little gaps on the paper. It's so important to leave some of those highlights there otherwise it's all going to look a little bit flat and you're just going to lose some of that beautiful detail. On the neck it's almost curling like feathers or like leaves on the neck so just observe the direction the fur is growing as best you can and move your brush in those same directions. For the really dark details on the ear just add a few details that will enhance the overall look. Don't go overboard with these dark details. You can see I'm being more specific as I finish up the painting with these little details using wet-on-dry techniques mostly at this point and now is the time to check your values. This mouth was a little too light so I'm scrubbing that out and darkening it and any areas that maybe felt a little too overworked you can scrub out those as well. Now for the whiskers I'm using my Dr. Ph Martin's bleed proof white and a tiny little liner brush by Arteza and one by one applying these delicate little whiskers. The advantage of using bleed proof white is that it's pure white and it's not going to diffuse or soften. Now you want to make sure you're only using this product when you want to have perfect white whiskers. If you want your whiskers to be a little bit darker or a different color I recommend using gouache instead. For more information on painting whiskers check out this video. So there's our finished golden retriever. If you enjoyed this video leave me a comment below. I love to hear from my audience. Thanks for watching and see you soon!