Drybrushing to add details to faux fur
Drybrushing is a great alternative or compliment to airbrushing that everyone has access to! Its easy, and gives you very similar results on faux fur, for nicely blended colors and transitions for natural-looking fur patterns.
First and foremost you want a stiff-bristled paintbrush that has relatively short fibers. Here’s a close-up of my favorite one for drybrushing.
Also pictured in the background: Acrylic paint, scrap of fur to test on, project you want to paint, and a surface to mix paint on. If you are trying this project at home, you will also want a pet slicker brush to comb out your fur as you go.
Mix your acrylic paint with no additional water, the primary tip for drybrushing is the paint remains dry! Dry out your brush bristles with a towel if you need to change colors, too.
Pull your paint onto your brush to thin out the quantity of paint on your bristles. You only want to get a little bit of paint clinging to the brush bristles.
Use your scrap fur to get the right ratio of paint on your brush! This is also GREAT PRACTICE!!! Take this opportunity to get your color mixing matched up just right, you can see my first attempt (left) was a little too orange, so I toned it down in the 2nd try (right).
Note: In this photo I started applying paint at the bottom where the paint is thicker, and as the paint spreads out on the brush and the fur, it becomes the perfect ratio to apply to fur to blend it in! Always do a bit of dabbing on nearby scraps before you take it to your final project so you don’t apply too much. Layering many light layers with this technique is the way to go! Light layers of paint preserve the original fur texture the best!
Use puffs of your breath (or a comb, brush, etc) to part the fur and begin at the base of your marking change where you want it to blend. Then allow your paint to get thinner and thinner as you blend your layers outward.
Use a slicker pet brush, in a normal fashion, to fluff out your fur to see how your colors lay and separate the fur fibers. You’ll know right away if you need to add more layers of paint to make it more obvious! Many light layers are the key to beautifully blended drybrushed fur.
Even a subtle amount of paint drybrushed on fur between markings can soften an otherwise hard edge! I just wanted a little bit of blending (after drybrushing shown in the top) for my set of paws (before drybrushing shown on bottom).
Use this technique anywhere you want your character’s markings to blend in! Once dry, acrylic paint can fade through friction or from scrubbing during washing, but it does bond quite well with the plastic faux fur fibers and does last and looks great for accents and shading even through the test of time!
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