In this video I’m going to give a quick time-lapse overview of how I created this pet portrait … or as I like to call them “Pawtraits”. I’ll also show how I paint animal fur.
If you’d like to commission a pet pawtrait of your best friend, drop me a line at matt@mattelder.com . A watercolor A3 (12×16 inches) one like this at time of recording would be around the £199.00 mark.
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Transcript from the Show
G’day Everyone, Matt Elder here and in this video I’m going to give a quick time-lapse overview of how I created this pet portrait … or as I like to call them “Pawtraits”. If you’d like to commission a pet pawtrait of your best friend, drop me a line at matt@mattelder.com . A watercolor A3 (12×16 inches) one like this at time of recording would be around the £199.00 mark.
I start out with a drawing and then block in the background, it’s the quickest way to get the shape of the dog to read well. As this dog is largely oranges and warm colours, I’m going cool and complimentary in the background with blues and greens.
I randomly squirt masking fluid using an old toothbrush as this will help give some texture and love having a randon, incomplete feeling.
I start laying down some base colours and like to build the colours up in several layers. This helps to keep your dancing across the colours. For the shadow colours I like to push into the cool purples and keeps life, rather than going for dull blacks and the like.
I’ll spot in some of the darkest blacks in key features of the eyes, nose and lower jaw. It helps to set the darkest points of the image so when building up the other colours, I tonally know where my range can get to.
Continue to layer in colours to give variety. Then I start in on some individual fur hairs to really give the pet its individual characteristic the owner would recognize.
Then it is just a matter to continue drawing out these individual hair strands and adding in fine detail as you go along. Then working around the muzzle and more individual hair strands.
From here I really want to separate out the side of the head into shadow and get the form reading better, so adding in some darker colours.
I want to have the far side of the head more suggested, particularly around the eye with the long hairs, so never really touch this area of the painting. I remove the masking fluid from below the jaw and lightly knock back the white of the paper so the bottom jaw is more clearly defined. Noodle out a few more details and call it done.
Here we have the finalized image. If you’d like to commission a pet pawtrait of your best friend, drop an email to matt@mattelder.com . Also works great as a gift to your significant other or family member. Here are some other videos you might be interested in.
Most Saturday nights at 8pm UK time I have a “You Say I Draw “ livestream on Youtube. You come along in the chat and tell me what to draw, and I do some quick sketches. Be sure to pop by and say G’day.
If you enjoyed this video, hit that thumbs up. Until next time when we talk about all things lifestyle.
