Realistic Wolf in Soft Pastel - Timelapse

Hi everyone, welcome to my channel and to this time-lapse version of Another Wolf in soft pastel. I really loved working on this one and if you'd like to work along with me and learn all of these techniques then the full-length real-time version will be coming out very soon over on my Patreon channel. But in the meantime I hope that you enjoy this speedy version here and please as always do hit subscribe. To begin with this time I thought that I would set the camera up a little bit earlier than I normally do because normally I just show you the soft pastel color work that I'm doing and in this case I decided to film the whole sketching process as well and that's going to be included in this big full-length series. So I thought that I would include a little bit of it here as well because this is often the part that you don't see. I'm either sketching something out using a grid or in this case I'm just having a bit more fun with it and going in freehand. As I often do when it's wildlife or landscape, if I'm doing a commissioned portrait where I really need to capture a very good likeness, then I'll often use a grid to help speed me up a little bit and especially if I'm scaling the image either bigger or smaller. But in this case, as with a lot of my wildlife artwork, it's done freehand and I really enjoy keeping my hand in when it comes to freehand sketching. I just use plain drawing paper. This is just some white cartridge paper and just a HB pencil and I come in very lightly to begin with. Lots of rubbing out, lots of mistakes as you can see and I make adjustments as I go. Once I get the sketch to the stage that I'm happy with the proportions, then I cover the back of it in soft pastel. I prepare my pastel paper, in this case it's pastel matte that I'm using and then I just transfer on my line sketch. Then another part of the process is going over that with my pastel pencil and as you can see here, now I can start to add some of the hint of the hair or the fur detail here. Before it's just very basic shapes and straight lines. Now before I start to paint, I really start to look at the texture and the direction of the fur and bit by bit my line sketch becomes more refined and ready for the color work. Now I will include this full part of the process in real time in this tutorial series. I don't always do that. I don't always talk about the sketching process or how I figure out my proportions and get my line art actually onto the pastel paper but the odd time I do include that just so that anyone beginning, anyone starting right from the start with their art journey can see exactly what I do right from the start. But however you get your line art onto the pastel paper is fine. I just always recommend a bit of sketching practice and to really work on your eye when it comes to looking at proportions because that also feeds into the color work of course. Just because I've got my line sketch quite accurate at this point doesn't mean that I can't go off course during the painting process and that's even more the case when I'm working on something big. I've got to remember to keep stepping back from the artwork, getting a good look at the overall piece because it's very easy to just get lost in the small details and lose sight of some of those more important proportions. But for a change with this one it's a very simple background. I've cropped it to a nice big square which is 16 by 16 inches and that gives me so much space to play with when it comes to the face. And of course we've got this beautifully thick yet soft fur to deal with. And if you're struggling to make details with your soft pastel sticks one tip is to work bigger like this. I didn't use very much pastel pencil in this piece. It really wasn't necessary because the scale of the face is so big. I have plenty of space to make all of my marks using the soft pastel sticks. And as you're going to see it's a very long process when you're working on something big like this. However I will say that I find this almost meditative to get into the flow of building up all of the little marks, smudging plenty as I go to soften everything in between the layers. And what I'm really aiming for is to get all of these little individual marks to kind of melt together a little bit. If you've got too much definition in the fur sometimes it can end up looking a little bit spiky. Whereas if you blend in between all of the layers really soften the effect as you go it looks much more convincingly soft I think. So I'm using a mixture of unison pastels. It's a couple of Terry Ludvigs and then the black stick that I'm using a lot here is a harder black pastel stick. The one I'm using is from New Pastel. These are now quite difficult to find. I'm just still using some older stock that I had but there are lots of different brands that have a harder black stick on the market. And I use that black in the first layer right across the face because it's like she has this beautifully multicolored coat. So many colors and dashes of color dotted through it. But the first layer is always being built up with the black. And then as you see right throughout the process I do come back in with the black and redefine some areas. So it's really many many layers of these little marks and all the time I'm trying to look at the flow of the fur. So what direction I make all of these little marks really describes the form of wolf's face. So where it's curving over the shape of her eyebrow, I've got to do that with the marks. I've got to replicate that 3D form that I can see underneath. And then each time I blend a little it's almost like I'm petting the animal because I tend to blend the marks in the direction of the And that just makes the root of the mark and the tip of the mark sink into the paper a little bit so you get a more natural look to each hair. But you can see just how many marks are going to go into this big face. You could work a little bit smaller on this one but it really was my intention to indulge in the details in this one because quite often, especially recently, I'm working on images that have a lot of background going on. Sometimes the animal is actually quite small within the overall composition and that's often the case when you're including a background. Sometimes the animal is not so detailed because it's a more minor part of the overall composition. And in this one I really just wanted to indulge in the details, go back to my roots a little because I began painting animals more like these big close-ups and I didn't really paint backgrounds in the early days. So I totally avoided painting backgrounds by going all in on the detail on the animal like this. And I think more recently, because I've been enjoying painting backgrounds much more than in the early days, I don't do as much of this type of work anymore where it's just a big detailed face. And I've got to say I found it so satisfying, really felt like going back to my original comfort zone in art. I set this piece up just before Christmas and, as I often do, set up something nice before I take a few days off over the holidays and then that gives me something to easily fall back into when I come back to work. So I had the beginnings of this face on my easel before Christmas and then it was lovely over the following couple of weeks to just ease myself back into work and chip away at this a little bit at a time. So there is that blackstick again as you could see there, just filling in some of the darker areas on the nose. And because there's so much detail in this piece, I kind of went back to my original way of working which is to work from top to bottom. Sometimes these days I will build the whole image up, especially if I'm working on a landscape, and I'll work more right across the whole piece. But when it comes to something really detailed like this, I kind of like to just chip away at it a little bit at a time. And by working from top to bottom and a little bit from left to right as well, because I'm right-handed, it means that I've always got somewhere to lean my hand while I'm working on the smaller details. But there's really no right or wrong way to do it. I use many methods and many ways of building up a piece of art, and I love to experiment with all of the different ways you can do things. So there's really no right or wrong, it's just whatever feels right to you. And in my case, sometimes that changes from painting to painting. But I've been loving making use of my wolf photo references. I recently visited a wolf park in the south of Spain called Lobo Park. A big thanks to them again for the wonderful photography tour that you can book there. It meant that I got a very quiet day at the park, and I got some fantastic access to photographing these amazing animals. So I'm well set for photo references of wolves, something I have wanted for many years. And as part of the tutorial series over on Patreon, as is often the case when I release a tutorial like this, especially of wildlife, you will gain access not only to this tutorial and the photo reference, but also an extra pack of photo references, extra photos that I took on my day of photographing, that I will never get around to painting all of them. So quite often when I release a wildlife tutorial, you can choose to work along with me on this exact image, or you can choose a similar image. Perhaps it'll be of a slightly different angle of the same wolf. Perhaps it will be some of the other wolves from the park. But it means that you can pick up all of the techniques from the tutorial series, and then apply it to a different image. And of course, this means that you end up producing artwork that is a little bit more original to you, because all of my extra photos that I release are royalty-free, so you are free to make use of them, sell the images of them, exhibit the images. And I'm really pleased to be able to do that, because I know that many of you can't get access to certain animals that you would love to be able to paint. And I really enjoy working from my own photo reference. But as I said, I'll never get around to painting all of the photos that I take. So it's really nice to be able to release those, and see them come to some use. But this was a really striking image. This particular wolf was the leader of her pack, for sure. She was definitely the wolf who was in charge, and no one messed with her. And while I was photographing, the guide had some food, and she was really intensely watching the guide, because she had the food. But as I was just about to take a photograph, I made a very tiny squeak from quite a distance away from her. So I've got a long lens on at this stage, I'm not really close up to her. And she just flipped her head around and gave me this intense stare for just a few seconds. And I knew when I clicked the button on my camera, that this would get painted. I just loved the intensity of her face. I'm not sure that I would love to be much closer to her, she may be a little bit too intense. But certainly a beautiful animal to observe. And I feel really lucky to have had that day photographing them. So final touches, whiskers, and signature. I really hope that you've enjoyed this. I loved producing this image. And I hope that you'll come and check me out over on my Patreon channel. I'll add links in the description below. As always, please do show me some support here by subscribing. But thanks very much for watching. And until next time, happy pastling!