Speed Up Your Oil Painting | Amazing Method for Realistic Fur

Sometimes I can't decide between using oil paints or acrylics. I like how you can blend so easily with oils, but I also like how fast acrylic paints dry. If you've watched my other videos, you'll have seen how I like to build up fur in layers, which is why I normally use acrylics. I hate waiting days for each layer to dry when I'm using oils. But I think after a little bit of experimenting, I've actually found a way that I can paint fur in oils in a much faster and simpler way by doing it all in one sitting. I'm going to show you this technique by painting a section of rabbit fur. Thanks to everyone who voted for the rabbit fur on Instagram, I put out a little choice of what you'd like to see, and it was the one that I secretly wanted to do, so thanks again. I've started on canvas and I'm using a combination of browns, yellows, white and black paint that have all been thinned down with sans odour thinner. I'm only loading a very small amount of paint on my brush and I'm wiping any excess off with a paper towel before I'm actually putting the brush to the canvas. What I'm doing is really just a step away from dry brushing. I'm almost having to scrub the paint into the canvas. I don't want to absolutely lather it with loads of oil paints, I just want to put down a base coat. I'm not starting really dark with the oils either. I'm looking at my reference photo and I'm deciding what the average colour for the area is that I'm trying to paint. I don't want to start really dark because I might not be able to get it light again. Because of the properties of oils, the colours are just going to end up going muddy working light over dark. Once I've got that base layer down, I want to start the details and the strands with my lightest colour, an off white, not a pure white. This is different to my usual approach with acrylics, where I'll actually usually work with my darkest colours first and gradually get lighter and lighter. But because the oil paint doesn't dry as fast as the acrylics, I need to do the lighter hairs first so that they don't go muddy being used over that darker paint. I'm only using a very small amount of thinner, like a tiny amount, just to help the paints flow better, but without affecting the opacity of the paint. That's going to be a little bit different for every paint brand and different for every colour within that paint brand. It's not something that I can just show you, so it's worth experimenting with the paints that you own to create a flowing paint that still remains quite opaque and not see-through. And because the rabbit has short straight fur, I'm going to be using an angled brush to add in the clumps and those strands. Different fur types are going to require different brushes at this stage, and I talk a little bit more about that in detail in the real-time version of this video, which is for my Patreon supporters. When painting fur, it's really important to get a realistic look that you add variation. You want to slightly alter the length and the direction of the fur. It makes it look so much more realistic and less like hair that's just had like a comb run through it. For short fur like this, you want to use very short brush strokes. They don't really curve at all, which is why I'm able to use that straight angled brush. You can see that I'm also leaving gaps between each of the marks I'm making. This allows the other layer to show through. It gives the impression of layers of fur and adds depth to what you're painting. I start to add some colour variations and darker colours next. I'm using the exact same techniques, I'm just repeating and adding darker colours each time. The benefit of oils is that you only need to mix up two or three colours. As you add them to the canvas, they'll actually start to pick up bits of the surrounding colours and blend together. This is great because it adds more variation and some softer edges between the colour transitions. Sometimes with acrylics, the fur can be a little bit too sharp and a little bit too crisp and it just starts to look a little bit unnatural. Once I'm happy with the colours and I've added the darkest colour I need, I then switch to a smaller brush. This is usually a small round detail brush. I also swap out that sans odour thinner for an oil medium. I mostly use linseed oil, but any oil medium will do. I mix my paint with the tiniest bit of oil. It doesn't need to be loads, but it needs to allow the paint to sit on top of the layer. Rather than that buttery consistency that comes straight out of the tube, it needs to flow a little bit more. It needs to be a little bit more liquidy, almost like a thick cream. The aim is to create a paint that can sit on top of the layers that I've just put down. It's not perfect. The lighter colours can still mix if you press too hard or scrub, but as long as you're gentle and you just lay the paint over the top of your under layers, you can create a nice fur effect and really nice loose strands that adds to the realism. I actually use this to add more light and also put some really dark sections back into the fur just to establish a little bit more depth and layering. So adding loose strands to your fur can really improve the realism, and for this I'm pretty much just using pure white. I wouldn't usually recommend using pure white with acrylics because it just looks too stark and too unnatural, but with oils the white paint actually starts to pick up some of the underlying colours that are already on that canvas, which ends up knocking back that white and slightly reducing the intensity, which it makes the fur look more real. All I'm really doing at this stage is just adding a few final looser strands of fur. I'm not going overboard with it and really I'm just sticking to that saying less is more. You can also use this technique for softer looking fur. The real-time video, which is exclusive for my patrons, also goes through exactly how I do that softer fur. I'll leave a link to that in the description. I really hope you found the video helpful, and if you have, please like and subscribe. I would love to share my tips with more people, and every like and every comment from you guys helps my channel reach more people. Hopefully, you've been inspired by this video to try out some oil paints, but if you're still unsure and you prefer to paint with acrylics, then here's a video showing my acrylic painting technique. As always, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time!