Tag Archives: portrait painting tips

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Painting Realistic Curly Fur in Oil – 9 Tips

graphic for Curly White Fur article on how to paint realistic curly white fur. 4 images of a painting of a dog with curly white hair. The largest image on the left is finished. The smaller 3 images are in various stages of painting. Text reads "Painting Realistic Curly Fur". Painting by Shelley Hanna.

Painting realistic curly fur is definitely not for the faint of heart. Painting straight white fur is hard enough, but conquering the twists and turns of realistic curly fur is a challenge that can level up your skills as an artist. I’ll share everything I learned while painting this Bichon Frise portrait with all his luscious locks so you can approach your own curly portrait paintings with confidence.

In this painting tutorial, I’ll cover the following topics:

  1. Understanding the Anatomy of Realistic Curly Fur
  2. Choosing the Right Materials
  3. Preparing the Canvas
  4. Sketching the Subject
  5. Laying Down the Base Colors
  6. Building Texture with Layers
  7. Adding Highlights and Shadows
  8. Finishing Touches and Fine Details
  9. Tips on Drying Time

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How To Paint A Pet Portrait – Limited Palette, Unlimited Possibilities

Pet portraits can be a big challenge for artists. In this article, I’ll take you through my step-by-step process for painting a realistic pet portrait using only four colors. Using a limited palette helps to eliminate some of the headaches while painting. This pet portrait is in oil, but I’ve used the same approach in acrylics and even while painting digitally.

I’ll begin with a quick overview highlighting the main steps. I’ve expanded the section on detail (step 10), giving extra tips.

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How To Paint A Realistic Portrait – Avoid These 11 Mistakes!

Realistic portrait painting has always been my favorite thing to do. However, getting a likeness can be a huge challenge due to simple mistakes. I’ll share with you a couple of the mistakes I made painting this portrait. I will also go over other common mistakes and helpful tips. This will help you to avoid some of the pain of painting portraits.

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I’ve drawn and painted portraits of people and pets for as long as I can remember. Fortunately, I’ve been able to capture a likeness with most of my subjects.

The only time I have trouble with a likeness is when I make some basic mistakes. With this realistic portrait of Dr. Claude Pressnell, I started out the painting with an inaccurate drawing. That was my first mistake. I also had

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Painting Wrinkles And Grey Hair – 12 Tips & Tricks

Painting wrinkles and grey hair have their own unique challenges. I’ve loved drawing and painting wrinkles ever since I was a kid. The more wrinkles, the better as far as I was concerned. Wrinkles add a lot of interest and character to a portrait.

painting wrinkles and grey hair article title graphic showing a man with grey hair and grey beard

In my portrait painting tips article, I gave a basic 3 step process for painting wrinkles. In this article, I’ll go over 12 tips for painting wrinkles and grey hair including how to think about wrinkles in a different way. If you are intimidated about painting wrinkles,

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How To Paint A Digital Portrait – Step-By-Step With Pictures

When I got my iPad, painting a realistic digital portrait was the first thing I wanted to try. As a traditional oil painter, I don’t want my digital portraits to look like digital paintings. I wanted them to look like real oil paintings. In this article, I’ll show you how I do it.

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Procreate was the first program I tried, but I didn’t get the results I wanted. After giving ArtRage a try, I found that painting a realistic digital portrait was much easier for me to achieve. It’s a program that just seemed to work for me. I know many artists that use Procreate and other painting programs with great success.

NOTE: If you don’t have a digital program to paint in, you can still follow along using whatever types of paint you have. The basics are still the same.

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What Is Alla Prima? All Your Questions Answered

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One thing that I’ve learned in doing oil painting is there are a lot of terms such as alla prima that can be a little confusing. It was a term being thrown around by other painters I knew and I had no clue what it meant.

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I have a clearer picture now but I thought I’d dive in a little deeper so I could answer any questions you may have.

First of all, the term alla prima is taken from the Italian phrase “at first attempt” and is a painting technique done in one layer in one sitting. The approach takes advantage of spontaneity and the artist must use their skill and intuition to match colors and value.

That seems simple enough, but there are a lot of other questions I had about this method of painting which I will share below.

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How To Paint A Senior Dog Portrait – Tips & Tricks

A senior dog portrait painting has a few unique challenges. But these sweet older faces are so rewarding to paint for a variety of reasons.

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When painting portraits of older people, you need to take into account how to paint wrinkles, grey hair and changing facial features. When you paint a senior dog portrait, having a plan for painting the white fur on their face as well as the changing skin on their nose can make your portrait a success.

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Should Artists Sign Their Paintings? Why is it important?

Whether an artist should or shouldn’t sign their paintings seems to create a lot of confusion, especially for beginning artists. When do you sign it? Where do you sign it? Why should you sign it? These are all questions I’ll answer today.

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Before getting into all the details, I’ll let you know a few basic things right now. An artist should always sign their paintings because it achieves 3 things: 

  • It creates authenticity
  • Helps future collectors identify the work and
  • Gives the artist a sense of completion

Of course, there is much more to it than the list above. There is also how to sign, where to sign, what to sign and when to sign along

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How To Paint White Fur – Painting A White German Shepherd Step-By-Step

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Knowing how to paint white fur may not seem like that big of a challenge until you try it. The trick is to not paint white fur with white paint – at least not at first.

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In today’s tutorial, I’ll walk you through step-by-step how I painted this beautiful white German Shepherd named Maiden. I’ll go over some of the challenges I had with the lighting of the fur and how to model it. I’ll also talk about how I decided when to

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Pet Portrait Painting: Watch Me Paint A Pug

Pet portrait painting a pug – it may not be easy to say three times fast, but I’ll make it easy to go through each step. You’ll learn my approach to painting black fur, creating a focal point, my painting challenges in oil and how I decide when the painting is “done”.

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All of the images from this article are screenshots from a video I did while painting this pug. The video should appear on the screen somewhere on this page, but you can always head over to my YouTube channel to see the full video.

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