Animal and Wildlife Art Lessons

Wildlife Art - Lion Cub In Oils Step by Step Demo

By Jason Morgan

Lion Cubs 2
Adding the Details

The cub in the background just needed to be suggested (too much detail and he would compete for attention with the nearer cub) but the foreground cub needed a different technique. To paint subjects with lots of fur details, I generally tone the under fur first with a dark colour, as you can see on the shoulder area below, and then paint in the fur texture with a much lighter paint, this allows the fur texture to show up very easily. I don't worry about the colour too much as this will be corrected later with glazes.

Tip - to paint fur it is ESSENTIAL that your brushstrokes are in the direction of fur growth, remember it's the fur texture that gives the body shape and form.

cubs3

With all the fur texture painted in, I then wait for the painting to dry before applying glazes to colour the cat. For the glaze, raw sienna plus other colours were added to Liquin painting medium to give a transparent colour, this was then brushed over the fur texture. When the glaze was dry I then went over some areas with even more fur texture - this layering of texture adds a real feeling of depth to the fur (below you can see the second layer of texture being painted on the head).

cubs4

The sandy texture of the soil was achieved by splattering paint from a toothbrush, some small sticks and stones were also suggested to add realism to the scene.

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