Easy Guide for Painting Realistic Fur | How to Paint Detailed Fur

Hi guys, welcome to Studio Wildlife. In today's video I'm going to talk you through my process for painting fur in acrylics. I've done a similar video which you can check out here so if you want to learn more about how to paint tiger fur specifically like the colours I use and the brushes I use please click on that. If not and you're just here to learn about how to paint detailed fur carry on watching the video. So to keep this one simple I'm just using white and black, I'm not going into any colour. I've got my glass palette, I'm just laying out my paints. I've just got a gloss black and a titanium white from the Abstract Sennelier acrylic paint range. I want to do this one on paper but you could do this one on canvas. The brushes I'm using are this Royal Langnickel round brush number eight and then this small detailed brush that I got for about a pound from a hobby shop. So the first thing that you're going to want to do is block in the darkest colour of your fur and I do this quite lightly so I mean what I mean by lightly I mean I mix a lot of white, sorry not white paints, I mix a lot of water with my acrylic paints and I just brush my fur direction or brush down the blocking in the direction of the fur in the direction that I would like it to go and this just provides a base that I can work over the top of. So for this step I'm just using that number eight round brush and I'm just building up that blocking, that darkest colour. I'm not worried about being too accurate here because it's just a base colour. I will then go on to add some white to that mix and again quite watered down and while the paint is still wet I'll start to bring in some lighter colours. This is so I can get a nice blended under drawing or under painting ready for painting details over the top. Because this is acrylics I only have to wait a couple of minutes for it to dry. If I was doing this with oils I would do this layer and then wait a couple of days for it to dry so that then I can work the details over the top with smaller brushes. So you can see here I'm now being a bit more precise and blocking in some strands of fur. Not too much detail but I am getting the basic shape and sort of lines of the fur and the direction that I would want them to go in. For me this step is just about the blocking. You don't need to be very precise you just need to get a base colour down and I like to work dark to light just because it gives me the impression of layers showing through which I think adds to the realism of fur a little bit more. So I'm just using that number eight round brush just to give that impression of loose fur. This is really good for painting softer fur as well that you don't necessarily want as detailed those round brushes are brilliant for that because they leave sort of that faded edge which can be nice for fluffier looking fur. So next I want to start adding in a few details and for this I need to bring out the smaller detail brush. For this I am blocking in the darkest furs and bringing them back so that they can show through. I'm just drawing in sort of a few of those loose strands just to build in some details and build in some direction of fur. This will inform my painting as I go and it's more there as a guideline than anything that's going to be finished in the final structure but I'm just blocking in and drawing out those strands of fur and those clumps of fur in a little bit more detail. I should note that I am just painting this from my head I'm not copying from a reference photo or anything so I am just blocking in the basic texture of fur here rather than thinking about colours rather than thinking about lighting I'm just trying to get a basic blocking of that fur texture and fur detail. If I was going to use this as part of a wildlife painting and part of an actual finished painting I would be thinking more about the tones the values and the colours that I was using and putting down but again if you want to learn more about the colours I use and how I paint coloured fur as part of actual paintings click on the video on how to paint tiger fur and that will go through my process in a little bit more detail. So once I've got that first blocking done and then done those detailed stages with the darker colours I want to start bringing in some lighter fur and to do this I'm just using that same detail brush and I'm just building up the colours. Now a lot of people seem to struggle with actually painting these fine lines and I would say that was because you are not using thin enough paint so make sure you water down your paint because if you try and use it straight out of the tube you won't be able to create thin lines like this or you'll have difficulty creating thin lines like this. It is possible so I'm just following those guidelines but I'm just putting those hairs down sort of loosely and randomly but still following the guidelines that I put out so all of my fur isn't pointing in exactly the same direction I'm making sure to vary a little bit and add some interest to that fur pattern. I don't know about you guys but I find this step super relaxing. This is why I like to paint in this way because I find these stages where I can actually put in these fur details and see it come to life really really relaxing and really really enjoyable. I do enjoy sort of thicker painting and pastel painting a bit more abstract painting but this is where I really come into my own and really love the process with these tiny tiny little details. I don't know why it's just the way that I prefer to paint and I love it. As I said in my last video I would love to hear more about you guys. I'd love to hear about what you like to paint how you paint and if you learn anything from these videos and if there's anything that you'd like me to cover particularly in any of my other videos or my next videos. I'd really love to hear about you and your thoughts in the comments below so please make sure to drop a comment and subscribe to the channel because it does mean so much to us. So you can see here I'm just building up a lighter colour over the top of those strands that I've already done making sure to leave plenty of gaps so that those colours show through underneath. It's easy this way because I'm painting in black and white I don't need to think about different colours all I'm thinking about is how light and dark those strands are and I'm just working from dark to light whereas if I was painting with colours I would be adding lots of different variations of colours. For tiger fur I'd be using different browns, for lion fur I'd be using brown yellows, for leopard fur I'd be using sort of a yellow with a green tinge and I'd have to think about what colours I was using and the values and tones of those colours or the chroma as well as how light and how dark it was. Whereas with this one I'm just thinking about adding more white to make it lighter. So you can see some of the hairs I'm actually putting down aren't even following the direction of fur as such that is because in a will be pushed by something it's lent on, by the wind, by just the growth of some random hairs and it's important to have that randomness in your paintings to give it that sense of life and to give it a little bit of interest. So here I'm using what almost looks like pure white, it isn't pure white. I don't recommend using pure white in your paintings because it's just too bright you cannot get any physically any brighter than pure white. So I tend to avoid it and try to use a sort of very very light grey because if I do need to do highlights or I do need to do something that is pure white I save that very sparingly and just use it in limited amounts just to really set apart that one highlight. Usually I save this for the whites of the eyes or a tiny section of the highlight on the eye just to make them pop. It wouldn't necessarily be that bright in real life but I think having that pure bright highlight really adds some life to the eyes. But for painting fur I would never ever use pure white, it's always mixed with a little bit of whatever colour I'm using. So for this one it's the black because I'm painting in black and white, with tigers it would be mixed with probably a bit of yellow, lions also a little bit of yellow and leopards also a little bit of yellow. So I'm making sure not to cover up all of the fur, I'm making sure to give gaps between each strand and I'm making sure that each strand curls off in a different direction to the one next to it. This just gives that sense of realism, that sense of variation that I was talking about before. I like to leave plenty of gaps between the fur strands to show that fur underneath and really give that sense of layered fur sat, or one strand sat on top of another. So I just repeat this process building up one layer on top of the next, refining that fur, making sure it looks layered but leaving the gaps between each strand to show that layering that I've just done, otherwise it'd be a waste of time, wouldn't show off that hard work if you just painted over all of those strands that you just painted, so make sure to leave plenty of gaps. That's actually one of the biggest things that I've learned in the last couple of years, especially from watching amber paints, is make sure to leave plenty of gaps between your strands, otherwise you're just wasting that time, wasting that time painting those layers underneath if you can't see them. So make sure you can still now while we work for this next step, but for you guys if there's anything that you would like me to paint, just let me know in the comments and I will try and get around to it. If there's any drawing tips that you'd like to know, please let me know and I will get through to them. I do have some videos planned for when we can actually get out and about again and I would like to see Amber in a few more of these videos, so let me know in the comments if you'd like to see Amber participate in some of these videos. So what I'm doing here is just glazing some shadows back into the picture. I felt like I lost some of those shadows a little bit, I lost some of those darker regions, so I'm just using very, very, very thin watered down paint just to glaze in some darker colors. Usually at this step if I was painting in color, I'd be glazing colors over the top of this fur, but for this one I'm just painting in black and white, so I'm just glazing in some of those shadows with that black paint. I've actually mixed it with a tiny, tiny little bit of white just to dull it down a little bit, just so it's not as pure black. So once I've done this step with the black, what I then like to do is just bring back some of those highlights once again using that detail brush and just really think about where each strand is going. I don't need to do this for every single strand, but it's then nice to just really take the time to think about the direction, the start of each first strand and where it's going to end up, which direction it's pointing in, the way that it curls, just to really give that final layer a sense of purpose and it shows that you've really put a lot of time and thought into your fur and not just plonked it down all in one random direction, all in the same length, all in the same sort of pattern, and we don't want that. We want lots and lots of variation in the fur. And then that's pretty much it. That's pretty much the whole process. That's my thought process and my technique for painting fur. Doesn't matter what it is I'm painting, whether it's a pet portrait, whether it's tigers, whether it's lions, whether it's bears, whether it's a fox, whether it's a cat or a dog, I always follow this process. Obviously different animals have different lengths of fur and different types of fur. Some are thicker than others, some are thinner than others, but I just take that into account while I am painting and just look at my reference photo as closely as possible and really just think about what that fur is doing. If it's wet, it's obviously going to behave differently. If it's dry, it's going to behave differently. If it's flattened back, it's going to be different. If it's short and spiky, it's going to have a different texture to something that is long and thin, and it's just about looking and studying at that reference photo. Not necessarily trying to match it as closely as possible, but trying to match the texture of that fur as closely as possible. Sometimes it's not about the details as such, it's more about the colours that you use and the impression of details, which is what I've done here. It seems like it's really detailed, but really it's just layers of abstract shapes placed on top of each other to give the appearance of detailed fur. And that's pretty much it, that's how I paint fur and give a realistic texture. If you want to see more tips like this, please head over to studiowildlife.com where I've got loads more blog posts about it, and check out the videos on the channel. Don't forget to subscribe and like the videos because it means so much to us. As always, thank you so much and I'll see you next time!