How to Paint a Lion in Acrylics

Hey everyone, Cassie Draws here and welcome to today's video. Today I'm going to be teaching you how to paint a basic lion portrait with acrylics. A quick note before we get started, a big shout out to our channel sponsors Chartpak, Grumbacher and Molotow for sponsoring today's video. Thank you so much for your support and without further ado, let's grab your paints and go ahead and get started. So the first step in today's tutorial is to go ahead and get your preliminary sketch down on your canvas. So I have chosen to use the grid method for this painting and 98% of my paintings that I do, I use the grid method. It is something that I'm comfortable with. I love to work with the grid method and it really allows for a nice, strong foundation for my paintings. I will cover a video on this later in 2022, but for now you can see that I've completed the sketch off screen. Now also here is a reference that I'm working from for today's painting. It is a beautiful front facing well lit photograph and most of my references come from wildlife references for artists. However, there are some free alternatives like Pixabay and Unsplash that I encourage you to check out as well that have great options for references. So whether you're following along with me today, I will have this reference periodically put up on the screen for you or if you were using this video as a tips and tricks video and you're going to paint your own lion head, by all means, grab that reference, get your sketch completed and now we can go ahead and start putting down some base layers. The first step in our painting together is to outline the eyes, the nose and the mouth area. And the reason why I choose to do this first is so that no matter how messy my painting may get with these base layers and kind of changing back and forth colors and adding shadow and light, no matter how messy my painting will get, these areas will always manage to shine through and be able to be seen. There have been a lot of times where I've been painting a subject and when I did not do this, I've lost track of that foundation, that anatomy, that sketch that we worked really hard to get down onto our canvas somehow just manages to disappear. And so my solution to this was to start by outlining the darkest areas on my portrait and that's the eyes, the nostrils, the mouth and then the tip of the ears on this lion portrait as well. So the next step in our painting, once you have those key areas defined, we can go ahead now and start working on the shadows of our portrait as well. So keep in mind, this is just our first base layer. So I'm watering down my paint basically to a wash and I'm just studying my reference to see where all of these dark shadows are. So you can see in the center there, I'm adding quite a big stripe or a lot of volume, if you will, of a shadow. The sides of the cheek, where the cheekbone is kind of sunken in and then throughout the mane as well, this lion has a beautifully gorgeous colored mane that has a lot of different colors. So I'm not getting caught up in details at this point. I am just looking at your lighting and your shadow. It does not have to be perfect. You can see here that my painting looks a little messy. It looks a little rough right now and that is exactly what we're looking for. Organic, sort of fun, natural, really keeping it light. We have many more layers to go. So really just study your reference, focus on where those shadowed elements are and slowly start to get those blocked in. Now the bottom of this painting, I am doing a lot more opaque and the reason being is because this area of the lion is a very dark, dark mane with not a lot of detail in it or layering really. So I knew that I could fill this in with a full opaque sort of brown color and not have to worry about fussing with layers later on. It was pretty much one or two colors. All right, so once your base shadow layers have dried, we can go ahead now and start working on the mid-tone section of this painting. Now when I'm choosing a mid-tone color, I'm basically looking at my reference and choosing a color that is right in the middle between my light and my dark values. So you don't wanna go too dark, but you don't wanna go too light unless of course you have a really, really dramatically lit portrait. Then we're talking about a completely different ball game. But for this one, because it is a very nice well-lit photograph across the board, the photo is really nice and crisp, detailed and in great lighting. I chose something that's right in the middle that I can add some darker values to or lighter values to down the road when I start to work on the second, third and fourth layers. So just keep that in mind. You don't wanna work too dark, but you don't wanna also go too light as well. And for the face area, I have used more of a wash and you will see a comparison between the main and the face as well in terms of the opaqueness. And the reason why I'm going a little bit more opaque with the main is because I want the main to be really nicely blended and have a lot of cool, nice color shifts. You can see that I'm adding multiple colors to this mixture to kind of create some really nice variations. And with the face, I want it to be a little bit more conservative. I wanted that anatomy still to shine through. I know you can't really see it that well on this kind of camera angle, but I can still see my sketch at this point. Whereas with the main, I wanted it to be a little bit more, not abstract, but if it went a little bit awry with it or a little bit strained from the reference, I was comfortable that I could be able to bring that back to the reference and kind of fix any areas that needed to be adjusted really by the end of the portrait. So I'm having much more fun with the main and a little bit more conservative on the face, but please feel free, use whatever brushes you prefer for this section and kind of just really have fun with it. So the next step, once our shadows and our mid-tones are completed, we can go ahead now and start filling in the background. And the reason why I'm doing the background now is so that once I start working on those further main details, working on some more layering and the more highlighted areas, we don't have to worry about trying to fuss with the background. We're working from the back to the front. So I'm just roughly haphazardly drawing this in with my paint, and then I'll go ahead and refine it even further later on in the painting. The next step in our painting together is to work on getting the eyes completed. And the reason why I like to complete the eyes as soon as possible is because they are the window to the soul. It doesn't matter whether it is a pet or a wild animal or even a human portrait, most viewers of artwork will connect with the eyes right away. That is the area that they are gravitated to the most. So I like to set the tone for the rest of my painting. And I find that if I really nail the way that the eyes look compared to the reference, the rest of the reference kind of just falls into place and you really manage to capture that realism. So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to start looking at your reference and work from back to front. So we're going to drop in all of those shadow layers. We're going to work on getting a lot of that texture in as well with those shadows. So if you Google eyes up close, you can actually see them where they're in like a macro lens or a microscope, if you will, really, really close up irises. You can see that they have a lot of texture in them. So they have almost like these spider-like qualities, almost like a spiderweb. I call them veins. It's definitely not scientific at all, but they have these little veins and sort of markings throughout. And one thing that I find really amps up my realism in my portrait is including that in the eyes. So you can see around the left and the right hand side of my eyes that I have these kind of brown little markings there that I'm trying to illustrate as best as possible. So keep that in mind as you're working through your eyes and just really focus on layering, layering, layering. I completed these eyes in six to seven layers of different colors of oranges and browns and adding that catch light on the top as well as my final layer really brings them together. So just keep that in mind. I'm ranting about eyes, but I think it's so important. And so just keep that in mind when you're painting yours. Layer, layer, layer, and really focus on what colors are present and switching up that color value every so often to make it much more realistic. This next part in the painting, I get a lot of comments and questions asking about fur and how I go about painting it and how to make it a little bit easier because it is, in my opinion, aside from the eyes, the most complex part of this painting. So how I like to go about creating fur is I basically, once my base layers are dry, I go ahead and I take a darker color than the base layer and I slowly start to block in the direction that the hair is moving the direction of it. I am not worrying about every single strand of hair. I used to do this a lot with my wildlife art and it's something that I'm still trying to break. It's a habit that I'm still trying to work on. And so with this painting, I was really focused on only getting the movement and the direction of the hair. So much like a human, we have our hair that grows on our head in a certain direction from like the crown of your head. There's like a whole scientific part of it, but it grows in a certain way, just like we have curly or straight hair. Lions do as well or big cats in general. Anything with fur has a direction that it grows on the face. So I'm looking at the area of the cheek and the top of the eyebrow. It's moving up towards the top of the mane or the cheek is moving out to the left and to the bottom. So how that fur moves, I am just tracking with this darker color. Once I have my darker color the way that I want, you can see that I'm slowly starting to add in a mid tone on top and a little bit of a highlight. I am not worrying about those top final layers at this point. I've got a lot more work to do on this portrait, so I'm not focused on that. But my biggest piece of advice with any kind of big cat painting or wildlife painting in general is try not to get caught up in just painting individual hairs. Work on finding the clumps first. So is there a chunk of hair as you can see here under that eye? There's kind of a chunk of hair there that dips into a shadow, but the top parts of it are much more light and much more highlighted under that eye. So I'm focusing on the chunks that I see, not necessarily individual fine hairs. We can go and do that afterwards and to taste. We don't want our entire portrait to be pin sharp. If you look at photography in general, there are a lot of areas or even other paintings, other artists that you may be inspired by. There are areas of their paintings or photography that is out of focus. Maybe the subject has moved. Maybe it is jumping in motion. So the bottom part, the legs and the tail are out of focus, but the front part with the face is in focus. So keep that in mind as you are painting. I'm trying to really make the eyes and the nose area pin sharp, very focused, very highly detailed. But as I move out towards the side of the face here, you can see that the chunks of hair are getting wider. I am not being as precise. I'm kind of a little bit more messy with it and blending this out with either a blender brush or doing some glazes after, which we're going to talk further in the video about really glazing that out is super important and really helps create a nice faded effect, which sometimes can be very tough to find and to nail with acrylics. Acrylic can be very contrast. So really trying to blend that out can be difficult. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later on in the video. This next step in our painting together is to start working on some more shadow details. So I'm going to start adding in this darker wash to the left hand side of the canvas. So the main area, the inside of the ear, the top of the forehead and the canvas right as well. So those have some really dark elements. And I wanted to make sure I got those in first before I started working on any other details on the face. I'm going to take this exact same value now and I'm going to add in the whisker holes on the face. So I'm not drawing perfect circles. I'm just kind of blocking in their general shapes. You can see I've added those in and I'm also going to take this color and put it across the bridge of the nose as well. And based on my reference, I know that the bridge of the nose has a much darker tone to it. So I can just go ahead and fill this all in and then worry about doing the fur details later on. Next for this portrait, we're going to go ahead and work on the nose and get that completed now. So what you're going to do is you're going to take a darker color than our original base color that we used. And you're just going to go in and start blocking in where these shadowed elements are. Now I am using two to three layers of different shadow colors. I'm not jumping into the darkest value first. I'm kind of slowly, gradually building up the shadow so that it makes it a little bit more realistic. And it's not quite contrast of just pink and black, if you will. There's some grays and some brown tones as well. So I'm just slowly starting to step up this shadow. And I'm also using what I call a nice little stippling technique to get those really beautiful age spots or freckles on my lion nose as well. So I'm lightly touching the canvas with a really small brush and just kind of illustrating those details. And you can see already that it has made quite a difference and looks really quite realistic. The next step in our painting is to start working on the fur details on the bridge of the nose and then slowly working down towards the mouth area. And what I'm doing is I'm just taking a really small brush here and I'm just working in the direction of the fur. Now it's important to keep in mind as well, with these areas across the bridge of the nose in and around the eyes, lions do have these really short, spiky hairs. And so it's really important to let the brush do the work for you. Just lightly tapping the canvas with this paint, dragging just a touch. The more you drag, the longer the hair is. So I'm just basically lightly touching this canvas and you can see that it gets a really cool kind of spiky, short haired effect. It's also very important to keep in mind, too, that sometimes less is more. And I used to do this a lot with my paintings is I would get so excited at this stage in the painting. You can see it come to life. You see your lion there in front of you. You're proud of it. You're having a blast. You're enjoying yourself. And then we realize, oh, my gosh, I did way too many layers here. All of that information underneath has disappeared. So it's very important to remember less is more. Keep some of that information underneath, like that big kind of you can see there on the bridge of the nose. There's this really big stripe of brown there that is a fold of skin. So this lion has a lot of skin on its nose. And so that is a wrinkle that I want to keep there and not cover with this short, spiky hair. Now, again, I like to work in many different areas. So while this nose is drying, I'm just going to jump over to the right. But basically, and I always feel bad saying this, a lot of these paintings are rinse and repeat. Once you get a handle of these techniques and these sort of methods of painting, it really is just doing the same thing around the entire canvas. So I'm taking this dark shadow color. And while the nose is drying, I'm working on the muzzle area. And you could also see that I added in some details on the right hand side with a light wash as well. So to taste, go around the right hand side of your canvas and really just block in that information. And you can see that I'm just doing again those short, spiky hairs on the muzzle. And it's really starting to come together. Now, glazing is something very important that I wanted to talk about in today's video. It is something very new to me that I actually hadn't done in my artwork prior to this piece. So this is something new and I'm excited to share. Glazing is essentially using a liquefied or watered down acrylic paint in any color and covering over white paint to create a new color on your canvas. So you can see at one time our bridge of our nose was white or it was a very, very light kind of like ivory color. And now by taking a watered down brown color, I'm just going over top with my brush and really covering over it to create a new color. So rather than worrying about having to mix all of these individual colors and to get them right, we can use glazing to go over top and actually change its properties. So you can see that the bridge of the nose now is much, much more muted. It is not as bright, not as contrast as when that white paint was there. It's just kind of beautiful sort of silky brown color. So you'll see throughout when I bring out my big filbert brush and I'm just lightly passing over the canvas, I am doing some washes and I will do them on the muzzle as well to kind of tone down some of these tones. So glazing I'll cover a few times. Very, very important. And just keep that in mind if you ever need to make a color or your lion is not orange enough or your lion is not a yellow enough or golden hour color, you can always add that in over top and to change what you've actually put down on your canvas. So what I'd like to do now is I would like to work on some of the main information on the left hand side. So you're going to want to mix a bunch of different brown tones and have them already sort of premixed on your palette paper. And you can see on the bottom left that I have about four or five different shades that I have mixed. And I'm just going to go ahead and block in all of the shadows that I am seeing on the left hand side of this main. Now I am varying these colors every single time that I jump back onto my palette paper. I am adding a little bit of a different tone to get some really nice variation in this main section. Now, of course, in the Cassie Draws fashion, once that dries, I get distracted and I go off onto my merry way and pick something else on the canvas. So we're going to slowly finish off this muzzle area. You're going to add all the highlights now on top with some white paint. And I'm just going in and kind of radiating it out to the left where it starts to get a little bit more brown. And then, of course, adding in a little bit more highlight onto the bridge of the nose as well. So this is kind of what I call the noodling stage. So the left hand side of this face is pretty well completed. I'm very happy with it. But now it's my job to connect it to the right hand side of the canvas. So I'm kind of noodling around on the left, any sort of details that I'm seeing that I maybe left out. I didn't see in my first pass. I'm adding that in and then I'm going to go ahead and finish the right hand side now with the same technique. So I'm using my shadow color. I'm blocking in all of those shadowed elements that I'm seeing. And once I'm happy with those shadows, I can go in and add my mid tone and my highlight. Now, with this portrait, I decided that the right hand side of my face would be a little bit more highlighted, as well as the main. So you will see that there is not the same amount of shadows as there is on the left. You can choose whichever you prefer if you'd like a little bit more dramatic portrait. Maybe the whole face is in the lighting, whereas the main and the bottom part of the painting is really dark or maybe one half of the face like I chose. Whatever you prefer, you are more than welcome to do so. You will just change the position and change the potency of those shadows and their placement. If you're enjoying today's video, please consider heading over to my Ko-fi page. In 2022, I started an art lesson library there that features videos just like this one at a much more in-depth real-time experience. My voiceovers include color selection, brush selection, and just my step-by-step process at a much slower pace. If you're interested and want to join as a member, you can go over to ko-fi.com slash CassieDraws and for as low as $5 a month, you can join and support my artwork. There are many different tiers available, so be sure to check out our varying memberships and I hope to see you soon on Ko-fi and our community Discord. Thank you, guys, and let's continue this painting. All right, so let's get to the meat and potatoes of this painting, shall we? The part we've all been waiting for is this beautiful lion's mane. Now, we did a lot of work on the left-hand side of the painting earlier, so there wasn't a lot left for me to do other than bumping up some of those shadows, making them a little bit richer, a little bit more dark, and now I can go ahead and start working on the mid-tone. Now, I'm going to sound like a broken record for the remainder of this video, so I want to apologize. However, finding the clumps of hair and the groupings of hair is the most important part when illustrating a lion's mane. If we focus on every single individual hair, what would have been a 20-hour painting becomes now an 80-hour painting. And again, every style is different. Every artist is different. I would never tell you not to do something. However, I am a big fan of working smarter, not harder. So by finding the groupings of hair, we are creating a really beautiful 3D effect. Lots of color changes, lots of lighting changes, and it looks more natural and more free and organic. I love the word organic. It looks because not everybody is striving for hyperrealism. It just looks more organic and real and natural. So you can see after those preliminary layers have dried. I'm basically taking a really thin brush now, and I'm just going over top with a lighter color. Now I am letting my brush do the work for me. I wish there was a way on YouTube that I could have like a grip pressure meter that shows you just how lightly I am holding this paintbrush, but I am letting it do the work. This brush has very long bristles, and so I'm kind of just letting them go all over the place. I think it's important to note as well, especially with the main and this part in the painting is to let some of that shadow shine through. So really keeping in mind the clumps that you have painted and really just being selective with those highlights on top. You can see here that I'm really only going up maybe 10-20% in lightness every time I touch my brush to the canvas, especially in these darker areas. I'm really being selective with these highlights, and if at any time you feel as though your painting has gone too light, your lighting source is no longer correct, or an area is just too blown out, you can really take a glaze again over top. Really water down that paint in like a burnt umber or Mars black. Really water it down and then go ahead and get those shadows back in. And also too, it's important to note you can always add in a touch of highlight over top of your glaze element as well to kind of bring some areas back into the light. So it really is to taste every artist's style will be different, and of course your reference too. That is a huge factor, but keeping in mind your shadows, your lights, all that information, you can always go back and add things in. That's the beauty of acrylic. We can really add in all of these elements and rather quite quickly. Now at this point, before I get the top of the main completed, I do want to go over this background as well. Up until this point, it was very splotchy. A lot of the white canvas was shining through, so I'm just remixing that color. So whatever color you decided for your background, you're going to want to remix it. And what I like to do to kind of create some visually appealing elements in my painting as well is to add a darker area to it towards the bottom, a little bit of a gradient. Alright, so while the main is drying, we can go ahead now and work on the bottom of the mouth. So I'm starting off with some short spiky hairs, kind of really sparse looking, and then followed by some really long brushstrokes with a fully loaded brush. And I always say, make sure your brush is fully loaded with paint before you go ahead and do this step. I find it much easier and that way I don't have to dunk back into this color multiple times. I can get and get this whole chin done, except for the very long chin hairs that I'll put in at the end when I do the whiskers. If you feel as though it gets a little bit too white or too cream, you can go ahead with a glaze on top or just put in some of those short spiky black areas as well down towards the frown of the mouth. Now the rest of this video, admittedly, is very rinse and repeat. I'm just working my way throughout the top of the main now. I finished the ear for the most part because this is really sunken back into this main. So before I go ahead and do the main that is on the top part by the forehead that kind of curls over, I want to make sure that this ear element is done. So I'm doing my dark shadow for that inner sort of really cavernous area and then going in with a really nice kind of middle tone ochre color for the edges as well. Now one thing I like to do with my paintings as well is to extend some of the hairs, especially on lions or maybe there's like a branch in a bird portrait or anything like that. What I really like to do is I like to extend the hair beyond the canvas. And what I mean by that is basically I'm thinking about my client receiving this painting and getting it framed. I've had many of my paintings framed even from my own personal collection that I keep. And the one thing that I noticed that happens with framing, especially with canvas, is because canvas is so thick. Not always does the mat butt up against the canvas correctly. Sometimes there's a little bit of a gap. Sometimes it's a little bit more shifted to like include your signature. I've done that a few times where the framer was like, I wanted to get your signature on this piece and so that you could see it. So I didn't cover it. So the top part of your canvas is kind of not but up to the mat correctly. And you could actually see where I painted in the solid color and where my illustration or my painting stopped. So from there and you can see that I'm starting to do this now. From there, I learned to extend some of that information beyond the canvas. You don't have to spend all this time painting on the sides of your canvas if you don't want to. But just by having some of this hair extend beyond, I know that if this mat doesn't kind of sit properly, then some of those hairs will kind of cover that area. And I hope that makes sense. And it's just something that I've kind of added in and learned. And I will do the same on the bottom and the sides as well. I was always have some sort of element kind of extending beyond just for that fact, just in case it's kind of like a little full, foolproof plan from the Cassie Draws, you know, big brain kind of thing. So hopefully that helps. And, you know, even better paint, paint the sides if you want to and have that image completely on the side as well. Totally up to you. Now, what I'm doing here is you can see that I've added in a lot of this ivory color. And the reason why I'm doing that is because I have chosen to make this side of the painting much more light and much more illuminated. So I am using much less shadow. My shadows are much more muted, not as dark. And then I'm just going in with a brighter sort of lighter tone. And again, I recommend changing up your brushes as well. I didn't really touch on this throughout the video, but I think I just had this moment where I thought about it. It's very important. Changing up your brushes and your shape of your brushes is very important. And it's something that I wasn't always great with. I've done paintings all in small round brushes before, and you can definitely tell. So by using your different shapes and sizes, whether it's an angled brush or a dagger brush, a fan brush, you know, around, etc., it's all super, super important and gives you a really nice variation in your brushstrokes that your hand alone cannot achieve. So keep that in mind. Try something new and let me know in the comments below maybe your favorite brushes that you use and ones that you use in today's video. Now, also, as I've been blabbing here, you can see that I added in the whisker elements as well. So I always get asked about the whiskers and how I do them. And I will give you the best explanation possible how it was explained to me. Load up your brush with water and just dab a little bit of it off so you don't want it sopping wet, but you do want it to be damp. From there, you're going to roll it in your color of choice. So white, white, gray, black, whatever it may be. And then you're going to slowly drag. You're going to brace your wrist on your canvas in your hand and you're going to drag it across in the direction that you want your whisker to be. And again, not every whisker is the same color. So again, really change those tones up. So you might have a black whisker. You might have a gray whisker. Some whiskers are white in the where the follicle is, but they get grayer as they go out. So keep that in mind as well and really just work on having those different tones. Brace your hand, drag across. And I find the damper the brush, the better. It seems to make a smoother line. I have a lot of people ask me about getting acrylic to be smooth. And the most simple answer I can give is add water to it. Don't be afraid. You don't have to go too far. It turns into more of a glaze or a wash. But if you do add a little bit to it, I find that it really does help. As I've been blabbing here, I talk a lot. You guys know this, but I have just ended up finishing the right side of the mane. I've added in a lot of this beautiful sort of white ivory color and then gone in with a glaze over top to kind of bring back and pull back some of those shadows and fade it out, as I mentioned earlier, finishing up those last whiskers and adding in those chin hairs. And that is pretty much it for this tutorial. All right, everyone, that is it for today's video. Here is the finished piece titled Your Majesty. 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