Animal and Wildlife Art Lessons

"The Menu" - Painting Demonstration

By G. Heaton

See how this wildlife painting of a lion develops from the preliminary sketches to the finished result

The starting point for this painting is a page from one of my safari sketch books. These are just very quick pen drawings of a male lion seen in the Maasai Mara, Kenya.

I have chosen a panoramic format for this painting, my initial plan is to paint the lion overlooking the african plains. If the idea dosn't work I have the option of cropping the painting later.

I start by first putting a background colour down, in this case a mixture of utramarine and coeruleum blue mixed with white (the sooner you get rid of that daunting white background the better!) I start to block in the lions head very loosely with mixtures of naples yellow, yellow ochre, burnt umber, ultramarine, raw umber and buff titanium

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The lion has his back to the viewer so using the same colours I paint in the rest of the lion including a suggestion of his tail, detail is not important at this stage but my brushstrokes follow the general direction of the fur.

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