How to Paint a Realistic Tiger With Watercolor - Painting in Layers

Hey guys welcome to my channel. For today's video I'll be showing you how I painted this super realistic tiger face. If you want to see a really easy trick for doing whiskers be sure to watch all the way to the end. To get a really quick drawing today I'm going to use transfer paper to get my drawing on my watercolor paper. All right so I have this Richeson transfer paper. I'm going to place that on my pad of paper and I printed out my image so that I can easily transfer it onto my watercolor paper. I'm going to just take my pencil and start placing it on. You guys can download my color corrected and cropped version of this image using the link in the description. This image is available on Unsplash for free. It's a free download photo but the image I thought was just a little too yellow so I've adjusted it in Photoshop and I've also cropped it way into the tiger's face. There we go. So that's all the information I need to get started. Yeah let's jump into paint. So this painting I'm going to be experimenting with layers. So I do have a hair dryer on hand. You'll need something if you want your layers to dry a little bit faster. So I'm going to just grab some brown mix that up here in my palette first. The reason I do this is so I can see how pigmented it is against the white on my palette and I want to make sure I have enough water and enough paint to cover a fairly large area. We're going to start with a real light wash of this umber in the shadow down here around the neck and around the mouth. Using a little bit of water to lighten it over on this side and I am going to right away start adding in some fur texture just by pulling in that shape into the chin here. Pulling in some of the paint just using a quick scooping motion with my brush. I also see that brown in these strips along the nose so this will be a soft base layer of brown and around the stripes over here. If you have good quality watercolor paints they should be transparent which means that every layer underneath will show through the layers above. So if you know how to use this correctly to your advantage it can be an absolutely gorgeous effect. So I see a strong shadow along the nose here leading up to the eye and this will not be nearly dark enough for the final result but it's just going to help me see where I need to go darker and add more layers later. So this serves as a good starting point. This is my first base layer. Looks a little lopsided right now but I promise every painting goes through a really ugly phase and sometimes several ugly phases. You just have to push past that keep painting and trust that it'll get better. With that first very light layer dry I'm now going to add some bluish hints to the shadows in the light of the tiger. So I'm going to take this ultramarine blue over here and maybe we will tone it down just a bit with some brown and I'm going to start dropping in that bluish shadow. Even with these first layers I'm starting to do some fur texture just by splaying my brush a little bit. See that blue creeping all the way up the side here but it gets a little bit lighter and whiter over here so I'm going to leave that pretty much white. Adding a nice delicate shadow right here above the eyes. While that's drying I can add a first layer of pink kind of this peachy orangey pink to the nose. I think I'll just start with actually some naples yellow. Very vibrant generous amount of paint and drop that in the nose so let's let that dry. For the next layer I'm going to start building up layers of color in this yellow area in the tiger's face. I like this naples yellow that I used for the nose. Of course that's going to go pink later in the painting but let's go ahead and grab a nice light layer of naples yellow or whatever warm-ish yellow that you have on your palette. Juicy wet layer of yellow paint and that is why I let the edge come out beyond where we first painted. I do want it to look like there's this overlap of color. The whole idea behind painting and layers is with watercolor anyway is to be able to see the layers underneath. You can almost imagine how the artist just put them on one at a time just to stay white. I'm just kind of wiping that up. There's a little bit of yellow in this stripe just above his eye here. Layer watercolor you want to go light to dark so working in layers is a very smart way to start out if you're not confident about your values because you can gradually just add more and more depth and value to your painting as you go. I'm just adding a little richer pigment to some of these areas up here. I also see a little bit of yellow here in the chin. I'm going to add that in with this layer as well. Notice I'm not being fussy with my paint. I'm working fast but I'm being decisive. Sometimes I have to dry my, you can see I use my paper towel incessantly. I'm using it to just check how much water I have on my brush to dry it as needed. Okay we'll let that layer dry. For the next layer I'm going to add some burnt sienna to the shadows here in the side of the face. So I will mix up a nice rich burnt sienna here on my palette and just do a quick layer of that. Here in the corners of the eye it's a little bit richer and while the paint is still wet I'm going to drop in some darker paint and just let that bleed out. Okay I'm going to use my hair dryer again and dry this next layer. Okay I'm going to take a nice rich yellow for the next layer. I'm going to continue to add brighter colors as we go. So this is my brightest yellow on my palette. It's this rich sunflower yellow. Start with the ears again. See little pops of color up here. I'm also going to add my very first layer to the eyes using that same brilliant yellow. Okay for the next layer we're just going to continue to darken the browns inside of this area of the face. I'm just going to use a little bit more of a natural brown as opposed to that bright yellow. I'm watering it down a little bit as I come outward where the hair starts to lighten. There's the bridge of the nose right here that darkens just slightly in the middle. Definitely gets darker along this side of the nose here. While there's wet paint here in the forehead you can dab in some darker hints of a reddish brown right in the center which will bleed out into that wet paint. Tiger painting is not exactly something you can expect to finish in five minutes. The very nature of the subject with all of its stripes and complexities will mean that it requires some time but I don't think it's beyond the grasp of someone who's a beginner either. As long as you're patient with yourself and just get about the right values and about the right colors it'll look like a tiger. Okay let's let this layer dry. I think the shadows in the white need to be darker so we're going to continue to add more layers in the shadows down there. I'm going to take another warm brown here and darken yet again in our shadow. Obviously when we add the black stripes that's going to help a lot but like I said at the beginning you want to make sure that your values in the white are correct before you add the black stripes otherwise your tiger will look a little bit too illustrative, a little too flat, like it doesn't have any dimension outside of the stripes. So make sure that you're painting deep enough shadows even in the white areas. I'm going to deepen the shadow up here above the eye. As you darken the brown and yellow shades inside of the tiger you begin to really see where your white areas need to go deeper too. Most of it is not really true white. Okay for this next section I'm just going to go ahead and paint the eyes. I see little hints of green in the middle of the eyes. I'm going to mix up this light yellowish green to put in the center and as we add more layers that will start to look darker. I'll switch to a smaller brush just for these tiny details. There's a deep deep shadow on the black up here. Be very careful to avoid your highlight. You can even outline it just so you can see it better. Don't accidentally paint over it. Water it down just a little. I paint the shadow a little over the top of my yellow. This eye isn't quite in as much shadow as the left eye. There's still a very dark distinct shadow at the top. There's also a little bit of shine here in the corner of the eye. I'm going to try to leave here white as well. Second highlight here that should not be as bright as the brightest highlight. I'm going to darken that just a little bit with some brown. I see reddish orange coming all the way around the edge of the eye. Even more apparent than the one that's better lit on this side. You really have to slow down and be careful as you're painting these details. Alright because this eye is connected to this stripe I'm just painting that all right away. I'm beginning to do this kind of quick side to side brush motion to paint the fur texture in those stripes. I think the next step is I'm going to paint the nose a little pinker. I'm going to add this rich reddish layer to our nose. For now I'm just putting in a flat wash of red over the top. I'm lifting a little bit of color up along the side here. Add some washes of this yellow ochre. Okay I'm pretty happy with my layers of color. So I think this is the part we've all been waiting for. Adding the stripes is so much fun. All you need is some deep rich black. I've got a couple different blacks to choose from here in my palette and a detail a nice round pointed brush that you can use for those details and let's jump in. This part might take a little while but just be patient and look at your reference photo and always be sure when you're adding fur texture to work with the area or to work with the direction that the fur is growing. If you feel like your values are still not dark enough especially after you put the stripes on you may be looking at it and thinking those stripes look really dark compared to the rest of the tiger. You can always wait until the stripes are completely dry and then go back and put some more layers on. What I'm doing right now is I am dragging my just damp brush with a little bit of paint on it across the surface of the paper. This is called dry brush technique where you're using wet paint on dry paper and I'm actually using some of the texture of the paper to create the effect of fur. For the chin area here you can see I'm avoiding a lot of white areas. I'm also going to take a tan color and paint some more fur in a different color besides just black in the chin here. Again I'm using just the tip of my tiny little size 4 round brush. So that was a marathon of stripe painting and fur but I think I'm gonna let the stripes dry and then our last thing will be to add the whiskers. So I just have this cheap white gel pen. I got these in a pack of like 10 on Amazon and we're gonna try this first and see how it goes. There we go, watercolor and white gel pen. If you enjoyed this video be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. If you're new here turn on notifications so you never miss any new videos. I'll be posting new videos every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Thank you so much for watching!