Stylized Watercolor Animal Portraits

Hatchmarks are a fun addition to our portraits! They can suggest fur or other textures. They can fill in shaded areas. They can just add an interesting dimension to our work. Have fun making marks!

Draw with me in real time. Your drawing doesn't have to be perfect! Mine isn't, but that's what makes him charming! The image of the rabbit is a downloadable resource for you.

After erasing our pencil lines a little, we're ready to paint!

Part two of painting. It takes some time!

Inking gets things crisp and in focus! And we can do some hatching!

Colored pencils give us another chance to get the colors how we want them to be. And we can do more hatching!

This last little step really brings the animals to life. I had some trouble with my white because the jar was old and it had turned "gloopy". It was good for dots, but I struggled with making lines for the whiskers. Time to buy another jar!

For this next practice, we'll make some watercolor marks, then use those marks to inform where the ink should go. This is a fun technique that helps define areas within the artwork.

Now let's draw a toad. Watch me struggle through! You can find the toad image for download here.

Let's add some color to our toad!

Adding some color with watercolors, part two.

The texture on a toad is different than a rabbit. How will we tackle that problem?

How will we apply the pencil marks to accentuate the texture?

Have you ever used a nib before? Give it a try in this practice. If you don't have these supplies, you can use a gel pen or a sharp white pencil to make the marks you'll need in your art.

Let's draw this handsome cat! You can use the downloadable cat resource image. Or you could work on a photo of your own cat!

After color choice, the biggest consideration is the direction of the fur.

Let's paint some more!

After lunch I decided to put some bright gouache in the background.

Here's where some of your practice outlining watercolor shapes will come in handy. And using hatchmarks!

We'll use colored pencils to add interest to our cat.

Just finishing up with the colored pencils.

Let's add some highlights and whiskers.

Check out this narrated time lapse of a lion. Feel free to hit pause at anytime to check out the lion's details.

I adore how this giraffe turned out! I think the ink and pencils added so much! Look at the space I left between the spots and the outline of the spots. Pause video as needed.

I didn't include the drawing in this video since you've seen plenty of that already. The main focus of this one is handling an animal that has light colored fur. And it's fun because I added extra details like a party blower and a couple of small flowers!

I encourage you to keep a finger on the pause button for this video. It's worth studying each one to see how ink and colored pencil marks are used to great effect in some different ways.

So you have finished a piece of beautiful art, but it's a little bit warped. What to do?

A short lesson on two ways to frame your art. Of course there are thousands of different ways to frame or mount your art that are not covered here, but this will get you going thinking about how you could frame your work. As I mentioned in the materials section, most store bought frames use more standard sizes, like 5x7 or 8x10. Keep that in mind when you prepare to do your next masterpiece. When I frame 9x6 art, I use custom mats ordered online.

Thank you so much for taking this course! You are now ready to fly! What animal will you create using all of your new skills?