i was wondering, if you're comfortable could u perhaps do a walkthrough on how you paint fur? maybe the detailed ones like your harlow fenrir painting or maybe the simpler ones like (https://64.media.tumblr.com/7e11bc9e776c7248fb380bf6073c4f95/e55a80327ebad261-ce/s2048x3072/40068cec7d9ea02a791bdb4c3f7036b748d8a1fc.png) i just think its really neat how you do the colors for them and how stylized yet realistic they look <3
Sure I can do a little walkthrough! This is kind of a crash course of my general gouache process as well, that's just my preferred medium but my approach is honestly pretty similar for other techniques as well including digital. It's kind of like a paint by number
I usually start with a pencil sketch, I am pretty reliant on this to get the shapes down I admit but it's ok. I did quite a rough/loose sketch here because fur is so organic but sometimes I make it more refined (or even outlined in ink) depending on how precise I want to be.
The shape of the fur is it own whole thing and it really depends on the texture/length/form/etc, but basically I approach it as layered clumps wrapping around the form, where gravity and fur growth influence the direction.
Also I always do a quick underpainting to help with the values and to make sure no white shows through at the end, I usually use a warm color but it really depends on the piece.
I start shading by adding the darkest shadows. On fur this is going to be the cast shadows under the biggest clumps, which creates these triangle-ish shapes. There will usually be more of these shadows toward the edges depending on where the light is located because of overall lighting and how the fur shapes overlap more toward the edges of the form.
Next I expand the shadows with a lighter color. Choosing colors for painting is an entire course in itself and depends on so many things but on a practical level the most basic thing I do is shift the hue along with the lightness of the color, so here I started out more purple for the darkest areas and get warmer as the shade is lighter which generally happens with a warm light source.
Usually I just kind of go for it when choosing colors and repaint them later if I change my mind but doing little thumbnail or test paintings can be beneficial if you're not sure about colors
This is usually the part where I start to go Oh my god this looks insane what have I done I have no idea how to paint. But you have to trust the process. Basically just continue the same thing keep your light source in mind etc. I tend to focus heavily on the cast shadows when painting fur so that's the main thing I'm building up
Here is the last layer of value, I tend not to do to many color layers because I like the more graphic look but you can easily alter this technique to be softer if you prefer. It's looking a lot better now we're in the final stretch
The last part is adding the finishing details, unfortunately this is a bit of a "draw the rest of the owl" situation as it's difficult to explain exactly what to do here. It depends on a lot on your technique and what needs to be corrected. I basically added additional highlights and went back over to neaten things up, add smaller fur details, and define the shapes. I switched to a smaller brush here which I recommend if you're like me and do the whole thing with too big of a brush and then go "wtf why is this a mess" at the end
But that's basically it! If there are different colors in the fur I will typically treat them as different sections . This is just the approach that I like best hopefully someone may find it helpful :-)
janainaart
jacobvanloon
germansingergirl
2087
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
