work in progress

I have been asked to show my work in progress, so here is a WIP submission.

I'll try to explain what I did, from left to right, top to bottom:

1) All outlines in pencil. I try to make this as accurate as possible, so I can see if all the proportions are right. If they don't, not much is lost at this stage, I can correct it easily. I consider this the most important part of the whole process of painting, if the sketch looks wrong, it will look crap in colour as well - or even worse. So: this has to be spot on!

2) Now I fill out the background and all the dark parts. I'm not very accurate at that stage, it's just to define the dark and light areas of the picture.

3) Adding shadows in the fur with a watered down brown colour to shape the tiger.

4) More detailed shadows in the fur, eyes, mouth and paws. This time I used watered down "Paynes Grey", which looks very natural. By the way, the only colours I used until this stage were "Burnt Sienna" and "Paynes Grey"

5) Now I add the orange parts of the tiger. I used a watered down mix of "Burnt Sienna" and "yellow". Because I watered it down, I could paint over the already painted parts, the shadows which I applied earlier can shine through.

6) Now I add the rough colour of the eyes, nose and the mouth. I try to get more and more accurate.

7) More detail work in the fur. All the hair in the ears, on his head and his paws needs to be worked out, while the fur on his back and the back legs need to be softened. I want these parts in the background to appear out of focus to set the focus on his head. As you can see, I had finished the right side of the painting while the left side still needs to be done when I took this photo.

8) Working on the details in his eyes. I left the paint and the brushed on the picture to give an idea how big it is....

9) The last bit is the background and the whiskers. By the way, I never use black, in none of my pictures. I find black looks always a bit dirty, I prefer a mix of "Paynes Grey" and "Burnt Umber", that's as dark as black but gives a great depths to it that only black just can't display.

I hope you liked it!

Acrylic on canvas, 90cm x 90cm