Troublesome Leopard
This was only my second attempt at painting an animal but was particularly new to me in terms of the techniques in building up layers.
Oil paintings usually build up in layers, with an underpainting to start, then successive layers building up later. For the underlayers, the paint needs to be thinned with a fast drying medium like turpentine. Later layers add an increasing ratio of linseed oil to the mix and later layers are mainly thinned only with slow drying oil (linseed, walnut, safflower depending on drying time). This 'fat over lean' layering is key to prevent paint cracking or wrinkling caused by lower layers drying slower than top layers. New synthetic mediums (alkyd, liquin) are fast drying. This painting involved multiple layers.
The initial sketch outlines the geometries, then the first undercoat blocks out the key colours as a guide.
Starting sketch
Blocking out base colours
It became clear that there needed to be a black under-base to the lighter fur to give a dark base to build up layers of fur - leopard fur is light but short over blackish skin so needs dark base. So marking out the existing spots with white pencil was needed to preserve the locations of these.
Adding black undercoat for lighter fur
Lamp black paint thinned with Liquin medium (fast drying) was used as base layer for lighter fur colour - the liquin gave a more glossy appearance to help differentiate from the leopard spot locations.
The direction of fur changes rapidly to define the sculptured shape of the face. This rapid direction change was quite challenging to paint. It is always difficult to visualise what the final painting looks like at this point.
Very much learning as I was going along how to paint this type of short fur. Quite a lot of colour variation but at this point thinking it should look dramatic once complete. it was quite challenging painting light over black as needs opaque light colours which are not common, so using opaque titanium white as a mixer to help. Pleased with how colours were working on the face by this point as i thought I would need to glaze colour over top to get variation. So was happy to use colours directly.
Painting first layer of fur
Palette for fur
By this point I was experiencing some issues with the black paint ‘sinking in’ in places, leaving matte areas in patches and an uneven sheen. What happens here is the oil binder in the paint is being drawn out into the layer below, likely because I added too much thinner to the lower layer, so a lesson to learn. Should be able to restore this by ‘oiling out’ these areas, applying a layer of oil (such as linseed) to add oil back in to this surface to even out the sheen. Could also add a semi transparent glaze later which will make the black even deeper. Should also be solved later too with a varnish added.
Top section now oiled-out with mix of stand oil and Sansodor which has resolved the sinking-in issues by replenishing oil in the matte areas and now gives an even sheen.
Session 4 - most of the face completed and happy with the very short hair on nose bridge which is difficult to get right and important as a focal point.
Final painting