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Acrylic Wildlife Portrait Painting
[225]
$30.00USD

$6 off 2 or more Acrylic Painting classes with coupon code PAINTING

Course Description
Acrylic paints are made by suspending pigment (or color) in synthetic polymer emulsified by water. They are basically plastic, water-soluble paints that have good adhesive qualities, and are very stable. They don’t oxidize, decompose or turn yellow over time.

Come join us on a painting safari! This class is a lot of fun and is geared for beginners and artists alike.

Can’t draw? No problem. So you have a nice photo and you want to paint it; how do you get it on the canvas or whatever you’re going to paint on? There are those little machines that have the light bulb in them that you put a pattern under and it enlarges things. Do they work? Yes, but it’s hard to work with because the projected image is very faint unless you’re in the dark and then how do you work when you can’t see anything and you’re always in front of the image. If you have Windows XP, the printing wizard will print different sizes up to a page size. If you have Paint Shop Pro or similar programs you can set the print size but what if your printer won’t print anything but regular page sizes? Luckily, there are poster printing software programs that are really cheap that will print out photographs on several sheets of paper and then you tape them together, lay it on the piece you want to paint and trace in the details where you want them. How does that work? BEAUTIFULLY!

I can’t emphasize enough that you must really learn to “see” how things are put together. What makes a dog face look like a dog face? What do all cat faces have in common? Which way does the fur or hair grow? How to colors and patterns blend in with other colors so they look like they are all one. What makes muscles look defined? How would you color a wrinkle so it really looks like one? Being a good artist means looking at things in a different way. It means that you no longer see an object as a whole but are capable of seeing all the subtle things that go into making that object a whole and actually that’s a beautiful thing to do. You will find nature opening up right before your eyes as you see flowers and trees, bees and everything else with all their myriad parts instead of just taking for granted that they are what they are. If you can’t see it, you can’t paint it, so practice, practice, practice looking at everything with the mind set of seeing what makes it what it is and how’s it put together.

This class takes you through step by step the process of painting beautiful acrylic wildlife portraits.

Patterns are provided for you to trace onto the painting background you wish to use. Easy to follow guidelines begin with tracing the pattern and guide you progressively through each step to the complete painting.

By the time you finish with the class you should be able to apply the painting principles to any other animal you want to paint. Each lesson adds new elements and challenges.

Online art supply:
The following are places that I deal with and have had very good results. The prices are good, service is great and shipping is fast. These are by no means the ONLY online art supply stores and neither I or LVS can guarantee any transactions with these companies.

Blick Art Materials Large selection of art supplies.


This is a self-paced, online course. You have 6 weeks to finish. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area.

LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details.

LVS students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration.

If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements
Although this course is written for traditional paint on canvas instruction, digital artists are welcome to join us. Former students have taken the class and adapted the techniques taught to their digital paintings. Please be advised that you must know your program, as no advice as to the use of any digital program can be given, only the techniques used in the creation of the painting.

Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Students have the option of using the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom.

If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available:
Basic HTML page
WS_FTP
SmartFTP
Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files.
Winzip Tutorial Here
Windows Compression

Supplies: I am providing a list of supplies that you will need. You can probably get them from your local art supply store but I will give you online links to art supply sites that I have been happy with.

  • What to paint on? The patterns supplied are sized 8 x 10. You can use stretched canvas, canvas boards or even if you want to start out very inexpensively canvas paper pads.
  • Brushes:
    • An absolute must for this class are rake or comb brushes and detail brushes. If you are going to a local store to buy your brushes, see if you can find two types of the rake or comb. These brushes look like this:

      You can see that they look uneven and a little raggedy on the ends. Some are more "toothy" than others. You need at least one as "toothy" as you can get it to get some real fur detail. You should try and get a set of rakes, at least 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 inch.
    • You will need several detail brushes that make into a fine point. There is nothing more annoying that trying to do very fine detail, like whiskers with a brush that won't hold a nice sharp point.
    • You will also probably need a set of filberts for shading and putting in background, starting at at least 1 inch down.
    • Other than the detail and the rakes you can use whatever you are comfortable with. Many of the local stores as well as the online stores have brush sets that are very reasonable.
    • For acrylic work, you can use natural or synthetic bristles, but the natural bristle do not hold up as well with acrylic paint.
  • You will also need transfer (tracing paper) to put the patterns on whatever you've chosen to paint on. You can use regular carbon but it makes a horrible mess. Art stores have artist transfer paper in many colors, but just get black for now.
  • A cheap plastic palette is nice. You can just scrap off the dried paint but in a pinch just use some wax paper.
  • If you plan on keeping your artwork or hanging it you should have a varnish fixative. I personally like Grumbacher or Blair spray varnish for acrylics. It comes in matte or gloss. Both are excellent and make the colors very vibrant.
  • Now for paint. There is a big controversy that you must use the top quality, most expensive paint on the market. Well, that's nice but, just starting out you don't need to spend a lot of money. The cheapest paint I have found is not worth buying. It's hard to work with and the colors are not so bright and vivid. Personally, I like Folk Art (they also have artist's quality pigments), Americana, Ceramcoat. I will give you a list of the paint that I used to create these lessons. You do not need to use these exact colors. If you want to try to conserve and just want to buy one green and dilute it with white to make the medium and light colors, that's fine too, but here's what you'll need to complete these paintings.

    • White
    • Black
    • Dark Gray
    • Light Gray
    • Medium Gray
    • Blues:
      Ceramcoat Ocean Reef Blue
      Light blue (Americana Baby Blue)
      Medium blue ( Folk Art True Blue), Phalo Blue, Ceramcoat Azure Blue, Ceramcoat Ocean Reef, Prussian Blue
    • Greens:
      Dark green ( Ceramcoat Dk Foliage Green), (Ceramcoat Forest Green)
      Medium green ( Ceramcoat Foliage Green)
      Light green ( Ceramcoat Light Foliage Green)
      Yellow green( Americana Citron Green)
      Bright green (Ceramcoat Jubilee Green)
      Silver Green (Americana Silver Sage Green)
    • Browns:
      Tan: (Folk Art Camel)
      Tan: (Americana Khaki Tan)
      Beige: ( Folk Art Parchment)
      Beige: (Folk Art Linen)
      Dark Brown: ( Americana Dark Umber), (Americana Raw Umber), (Ceramcoat Brown Velvet)
      Medium Brown: Burnt Sienna, ( Americana Sable Brown)
      Light Brown: (Americana Toffee)
      Golden Brown: (American Honey Brown)
      Terra Cotta
      Raw Umber
    • Yellow: (Ceramcoat Luscious Lemon)
      Gold: (Ceramcoat Antique Gold)
      Yellow Ochre
    • Pink
    • Bright Red
    • Bright Orange

Online art supply:
The following are places that I deal with and have had very good results. The prices are good, service is great and shipping is fast. These are by no means the ONLY online art supply stores and neither I or LVS can guarantee any transactions with these companies.

Blick Art Materials Large selection of art supplies.

Plan to devote approximately 3 - 4 hrs per week on the lesson and assignment.


Course Prerequisites
Students should have working knowledge of their operating system:
Free Windows Class Here
Directory Structure Tutorial Here

Course Syllabus
Lesson 1 - Zebra
  • Learn shading and definition with only 3 colors
Lesson 2 - Koala Bear
  • Cute and cuddly koala bear sitting in a tree
  • Learn basic shading and blending
  • Lean how to make background foliage
Lesson 3 - Lion
  • Magnificent male lion
  • Learn to make long, flowing fur using the rake brushes
  • Shading and blending
  • Learn how to manage light sources
Lesson 4 - Tiger
  • Regal Tiger
  • Learn foliage background
  • Learn how to paint realistic stripes
  • Learn how blend colors and handle long and short fur
Lesson 5 - Wolf
  • Gorgeous gray wolf
  • Learn highly color, blended background, more detailed foreground
  • Learn to use color and blend rough coated fur to look natural
Lesson 6 - Elephant
  • Elephant eating lunch
  • Learn simple realistic foliage and trees background
  • Learn how to blend and shade an animal with no fur or hair but lots of wrinkled skin

Course Excerpt
LESSON 1
Perhaps the most important part of an animal painting is the eyes. You almost MUST get the eyes right or no matter how good the rest of the painting is your painting will never have “soul”. Eyes aren’t just two colored things sitting on a face; they show feeling, depth, emotions. Take few minutes and just doodle eyes that you think show emotion and why. Doodle some eyes that show fear, anger, irritation, happiness and see what you are doing to make the eyes show this.

Basic eye rules: These go for just about any animal you're going to paint.
  1. Eyes are not a solid color. If you get some really close up photos of the iris you will see many different colors. While we can't copy every color in the eye we can make them multi colored. You can put a sloppy wash on and immediately run another color into it so it all melds together. You can put several colors on the brush and paint it that way. You can "dry brush" different colors over the top one. In case you don't know what dry brush is, it's taking a color that's not thinned or not thinned that much and wiping most of it off so there's just a little bit on the brush and sort of scrub it where you want it.
  2. Eyes have reflection. Using a very dilute, almost transparent wash and putting it in the eye will make it shiny. Then put a bright white single dot gives the highlight. There can be an extra highlight on the opposite side of the eye from where the dot is or under the iris.
  3. Shading. Many eyes have darker shading, especially close to the eye lid. A dilute, also almost transparent wash over part of the eye will give it depth.
  4. Outline. Most eyes are outlined in black to some extent; cats sometimes have a lot of black around the eyes. Always outline the eye, even if it's just a thin line with black which will help pull it back it the head rather than look like it's stuck on the body. Soften the outline by pulling tiny bits of fur or hair into or over parts of it.
For those that are just beginning to paint, don't be too hard on yourselves. Painting is something, like any other skill that has to be practiced over and over again. I can guarantee that if you stick with it and keep looking at how things are put together, how shading affects shape and contours and just practice, practice, practice, you will see your work improve dramatically. Remember, most artists hate their own work anyway. We are overly picky about every little thing we see wrong even though no one else sees it.

Step1:

Trace the zebra pattern onto what you have decided to paint on.
Continued...


Course Goals
At the end of this course you will be able to apply the painting principles to any other animal you want to paint.

Course Reviews
New Class May 2007
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$6 off 2 or more Acrylic Painting classes with coupon code PAINTING

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Dia Spriggs
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