How to Paint Realistic Wildlife | Acrylic Painting

Hey everybody, my name is Chuck Black and in this video I'm going to be painting and adding in this white-tailed deer to this painting here. I'm going to show you the whole process from drawing the deer, transferring it to the painting itself, and then filling it in with color and adding those finishing touches. So let's get started. So one of my favorite ways to get reference material is the use of trail cameras. So if you're not familiar with a trail camera, it's simply a motion activated camera that you can strap to a tree trunk and place it in an area of high wildlife traffic. And so in this case, this camera was set up where a lot of deer are using the area. Scrape lines, this was all taken in the fall where the deer are very worked up so they're doing their thing. And the great thing about trail cameras these days is they take great video and video good enough that you can get all sorts of different positions and angles and see how the deer reacts to its surroundings, how they react with other deer. And this can be a great tool for finding that perfect reference pose that you can use to depict in your painting. Having a trail camera is also just a really fun way to see what types of wildlife are using your area and just watching them interact with each other. It's just always a pleasure. So trail cameras are one of my favorite things. So when I'm thinking about adding something such as a deer to a painting, what I'll do first is I want to get the scale right. I want that deer to be about the right size I envision in my mind. And so I'll use my fingers and sort of measure out how big I want it to be on the actual painting. And then I'll go back to the paper and sort of get a rough idea of how big I need to sketch this deer out. And then what I'll do is I'll go through several sketches. In this case I think I did five or six different sketches of a deer walking sort of trolling through the woods. And after three or four I start to really get it worked out in my mind of exactly how I want this to be. I already have a pretty good idea but doing it and repeating it over and over can help solidify that and and really get you ready for that that final drawing that you're going to be happy with. And so you'll see me work out this drawing with a few different examples and then at the end what I'll do is cut it with a scissors and take that and use it to transfer to the painting. So once I've cut the deer out with a pair of scissors what I'll then do is place it up against the canvas and I have my perfectly sized deer deer template and I'll position it how I want and then tape it on using a thin piece of painter's tape. And then what I'll do is proceed with a light white colored paint a very thin down wash of white paint and I'll trace the outline of this deer cutout to transfer the outline of this deer on canvas. And then once that's completed I have a perfectly drawn deer exactly how I wanted it to be and I'm ready to start painting it. All right so now that I've taken my cutout and I've transferred it to the canvas by just using some thinned down white paint and just basically followed the outline of the paper. So we've got the deer transferred now all we need to do is virtually color it in and then also we need to somehow tie it into its surroundings and I'll do that by just adding some shadows to the ground just make us believe that it's actually there in this scene. So let's move over to the palette and I've still got a mess from yesterday. I like to use my piece of plastic here as long as I can before I throw it away. So no I've got a mess here but bear with me. I'm going to be using the same colors that I've used throughout this painting. I've got raw umber, titanium white, naphthol crimson, and then this one is phthalo blue, green shade, and then cad orange. And I'm not sure if I'm using all the colors but we'll see. All right and I'm just going to use a liner brush here. So I'm going to grab, I'm just thinking about this, let's start with some blue and burnt or and raw umber. I always say burnt umber. Some blue and raw umber. Not a lot of blue, you don't need a lot. You see me adding all this umber to it. And I think I would also like some orange. Just a touch of red. Sort of neutralize the color out. A little bit yellow looking. Okay and then I'm going to pick up just a little bit of white. Just adding a small amount of white to that. There we go. A touch more red. I'm just playing it by ear. Just kind of seeing how this is looking as I'm getting it on. Okay that might be pretty good. Now what I'm going to do is go back over to the deer and I'm going to fill in the deer with this color. So there's not a lot of color here and I do want to create some highlight around the deer. So I'll leave a little bit of that white outline around the edge. Especially the top portion. So we want this deer to be back lit and that means that we're not going to have a lot of color because this is the shaded side of the deer. So hence the very neutral tone. It's pretty dark but it's not too dark. I create a little hoof there. I'm not sure how low I'm going to go with the hoof for the other one but leave it at that for right now. And I'm going to fill in the deer all the way to the eyeball and the nose. Both of those are going to be black. That ear is going to be a little bit white. So I'll leave some of that uncolored for now. Almost there. Okay and some of the legs maybe a little bit wide. Might need to be thinned down a little bit and I can do that. The lower legs I think a little bit wide. I can thin those down but for the most part it's pretty close. Okay I'm just going to let that dry and I'm going to move on. See I've got some darker color here. I didn't add any white left yet. Didn't add any white yet to that so I can take that darker color add it to the eye, to the nose and possibly a little bit on the ear. Perhaps a little bit underneath the bottom portion of this leg. I'm going to add some subtle shadows just to give it some definition. I'm just going to leave it for now. And what I also want to do is pick up some more white. Probably add some more blue to this. A little more white than that. So this is sort of neutral gray color. It's good for the antlers. The white around the eye and the nose. I want to have a little bit of a white patch under its chin. Okay I'm just going to go ahead and leave everything. I'll let that dry and we'll come back to it. I lied. One more thing we can get that shadow in under the legs. That's a good time to do that. So a little bit of blue. More red with that. There we go. Maybe even add more red and just kind of start to cover up some of this highlight as well. That gets us started. I'm going to leave it for now but that just starts to tie it in to the actual surroundings. So I'm going to let that dry and we'll come back in just a few minutes. Well this should be dry now. Just giving it a few minutes. Doesn't take very long. And basically let the first thing is let's shrink those legs down a bit like I talked about. Not all my paint is dry yet here. So I'm going to grab just kind of mix some darker pink. Kind of the color that's on the ground. And I'm just going to use this color to shrink those legs. Now there might be some lines that form because of this but I can take some red add it to the even darker color. Get some nice deep red and then I can fill in some of those areas that should be a darker color. And those lines will disappear and our leg is instantly narrower. And that will work. So our legs are now narrow. A little more accurate. Those legs get pretty skinny. And we also want to have some highlight to the deer. So I do want the deer. This deer blends into its background fairly well. If you stand back kind of look at this. It does. You don't notice it right away and I like that but we do want to have something going on. So I'm going to add. I think it'd be nice to have some highlight near the top. So I'm just going to take some white and some orange. I'm going to start with that. Just taking this liner brush. Sorry just taking this liner brush. I get lost as I'm doing this. And gently using the tip of the brush. I'm just sort of caking on this color. Anywhere where there could be a highlight. I'm going to try to get it on there. Okay. Looks pretty good. Now I'm going to take some more just a pure white. Just picked up some area that's just got more white in it. I'm going to add some brighter highlight but I'm going to be more careful with this. I'm not going to add it over the entire area that I just put on but I'll add it to try to kind of the add it to the outside edge. That's just about it. I don't want to do a lot. So now that just gives us a bit of highlight but we also need to address the issue of the body which looks looks good but I think we could add some highlight within that body. So I'm just mixing umber and blue and red and then white and I'm going to get kind of a gray tone and I get more umber and blue and get a darker tone. Add some red. Warm that back up. Okay. Maybe something like that. Let's try that and I'm going to take this brush. Put a little bit on. Blend it around my finger. Put a little bit on. Blend it around my finger. A little bit on. The thigh. The hip. Blend it around. Okay. So now that I got that blend going I'm going to add a little bit more. So there's not a lot of paint on the brush right now but there's just enough just enough to add some highlight. So now a little bit to the neck. Now we've got some shape to the deer. Very very subtle. This starts to make sense. Doesn't take a lot. Now just a slightly more amount of white in this. Add a little bit of highlight there. A little bit of highlight there. Really easy. Probably go back into here. Tie this area together. Okay. A little bit around the chin. The cheek area. So that gives it some three-dimensionality. We've got some subtle shades on the body now. Just sort of set that off. A little bit on the legs. Legs have some whiter fur as well. So we want to have some of that on the inside of the legs. On the inside. So we're going to add some of that to it. Perfect. I'm going to take some more of the umber and the blue. We're going to get a darker color. Add some red to that. I want to darken the hooves and then just kind of tap some of that away with my finger. I want it to be super obvious. Just slightly. And then we also have some dark fur. A couple of random spots. Tarsal gland. Right there. Kind of get that dark. Subtle details like that. There we go. That looks good. Make a big difference. Just kind of makes things really stand out. Maybe a dark acorn colored head patch. Forehead. Self a dark forehead. A little bit of dark on the ear. A little bit of dark right underneath on the chest. So I'm just looking for areas. A little bit of dark under the armpit. Looking for areas I can get away with and I can use my finger and just kind of pat it away. That just softens it up a bit. So now we've got a lot of shadows. Oh that forehead looks great. Everything's starting to look good now. Darken up the hooves just a little bit more. If we want to do cloth off the back of the hoof. A little bit of shading on this side of the legs. Some muscle groups right through here. The tendon is. And that's just about it. Now I might grab some lighter color. Just add it to this. A little bit of red. So this is slightly lighter than what I just put on but I'm going to shade some of the antler as well. Just like that. A little bit. And that is a completed deer. Looks great. I love it. Add a little bit more right underneath the hoofs. Just sort of blend that into the ground. Take some red. Add some red to this shadow here just so it blends into the leaves. And I'm happy with that. All right so I've sprayed this with a gloss finishing spray and I've unified the sheen by doing so and made the darks a little bit darker. The colors a little bit richer and that might in make the highlights appear a bit brighter as well. And after I've let this dry thoroughly would normally be when I would switch to oil paints. And the reason I might do some oil paints I keep getting questions about this so I'll just touch on this. And I know I have several videos so if you want to see me do that check out one of my previous videos about oil paint over acrylics. But the reason I might do that is because we can usually draw a little more luminosity by glazing maybe yellows over the top of the yellow paint. The portions that are yellow or maybe the reds. We could make the reds maybe a little bit deeper or the highlights seem a little bit brighter. We can also fan out and blend some of the soft glows maybe right above the road there make that glow appear just a little bit softer a little bit brighter. But after really stepping back and assessing and and thinking about this painting more and more I really like how this painting is. And sometimes that's it's worth going for it anyways even though you're happy with the painting how it is you can learn a lot by going for it anyways and just seeing what you could do by adding oils over the top. But I think with this one I might step back and leave it as is. I'm just thrilled with it and there's really no sense in continuing on with it. I just really like this one so I'm going to leave it as is and I hope you enjoyed this whole process. If you haven't checked out the two previous videos in this painting how I got started with it please check that out. I'll have some cards pop up at some point during this video which you might have seen also have the links in the description. But if you had any questions at all throughout this process please be sure to leave them in the comments below and if you'd like to support my channel check out my free print giveaway as well as my eBay auctions and website. All of the the paintings here on the videos are auctioned out through my eBay. Again guys thank you so much for watching we will see you next time with a new painting.