Painting animals

Lilikins

My friend wants a painting of her corgi for Christmas and my brother in law wants one of his cats. I did a dog painting a few months ago for my neighbors when their dog passed away but I didn’t feel as much pressure because they didn’t know I was making it and I planned on chucking it if it didn’t turn out well. I’ve seen some amazing pet portraits on here. Does anyone have any advice or YouTube tutorials they could suggest? I’m so nervous. I don’t want their babies to end up looking like mutant cartoon animals 😬

doggymommee8301

Lilikins First of all, I saw the painting you did for your friend. I remember commenting on it when you first posted it. And no worries, it was amazing. So whatever you do paint, I am sure your family will love it. I have quite a few animals, and at some point I would like to paint them (shocker I know, since my tag name is Dog Mom, lol) so I recently purchased a book from Amazon. It details how to paint animals in several different medias. Here's the link if you are interested: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1600584764/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I should note, I have not yet even cracked it open, so I don't know how quality the instruction is. I am happy to take a look through it tonight and give you my thoughts if you want.

Lilikins

doggymommee8301 thank you so much! You are always so kind 😊yes please let me know if that book is helpful. I’m always interested in new learning material but there is no rush. I still need to get reference photos and materials before I can even start practicing. I did find this one artist on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vcawQH368d4&list=PLRV1jRlitTZC3stpTenXd5iEJumli61YH&index=17

Her animal artwork is amazing but it’s mostly just useful tips as a voiceover while she’s doing a time lapse of her paintings. I did find out some very useful suggestions though. It never occurred to me to use tracing paper and graphite paper to “draw” the outline of the animals onto the canvas directly. I can’t really draw so that should be really helpful for me!

doggymommee8301

Lilikins If you have a LinkedIn account, send me a message. Sorry, it's the only social media I have besides this site. linkedin.com/in/heather-williams-26751483

doggymommee8301

Lilikins watch this!!!!!! I want to try to paint my youngest dog in watercolor for the new challenge and it will probably look like what Comes out of a baby diaper but I’m watching this to try. https://youtu.be/KLaIo5uCyl8

doggymommee8301

Awe friend. You made me smile. Thank you.
I can’t draw worth beans either if I’m just doing my own thing. I followed YouTube for the eye. For the TARDIS paintings I drew the TARDIS out beforehand. Still need to actually paint the Halloween one lol. I haven’t had the energy. Stupid health issues. Anyway, I looked a bit more through the book. I’d like to share some of the content with you so you can see if it will work for you. So I’ll try to figure out how to do that this weekend.

Lilikins

doggymommee8301 no I don’t have one. Probably should but I’m lazy and terrible at networking😅 Impressive CV though! I imagine that you run samples through a mass spec rather than taste testing but it still sounds interesting working for a winery! I majored in biochemistry in undergrad at an engineering school. My husband is an engineer and my brother in law is a microbiology technician. I think the parallels in our lives is amusing.

The reviews for the book are overwhelmingly positive so I think I will probably end up getting it. I always enjoy learning something new. Today I found out that I have the completely wrong type of canvas for detail work - you want smooth which should have been obvious. But I learned how to gesso and sand it down to make it smooth. Also got to test out the chalk transfer paper. This is going to be a fun project!

doggymommee8301

Lilikins I can’t wait to see how it turns out!! I was going to offer we face time or something so I could show you some pages of the book, but I didn’t want to give out a lot of personal information right where it could be seen by all lol.

that is also amusing all of the parallels in our lives.

Lilikins

Oh nice! I’ve put the animal painting on hold just a bit because I really want to compete the next challenge. But I will have to look into that once I finish. As usual, things are taking me longer to complete than I estimated.