I was inspired by Shana Rowe Jackson’s drawing to do my own road scene. I wanted to depict a street that’s pretty significant to me in my neighborhood.

On Thursday, November 19, on my afternoon walk, I took pics of Park Boulevard with Twiggs Coffeehouse visible. Twiggs is one of my favorite haunts. I know the owners and they’re great people.

So far I’ve made two sketches to get the feel for the layout. For both, I started with a horizon line, but for the second, I made the adjoining diagonal lines come to a much more narrow point. I drew tiny fuzzy trees and cars close along the horizon line to signify that that was far away from the viewer. For the coffeehouse itself, the front and left-hand side was visible. The distance of the left-hand side was signified by the slanting and sizes of the windows, narrower on the outer edge, and getting wider toward the front of the building. In my second sketch, I also drew the road slanting slightly upward on the horizontal.

On Monday, November 23, I decided it was time to start on the actual drawing. My plan was to go slow and focus on getting the perspective of the sidewalk right, then move on to the coffeehouse, which I want to be the main point of focus, and so on, but things are moving a little faster than I anticipated. I’m not hesitating to erase and redraw something if I think it’s too big or my perspective’s off.

Speaking of too big, the farther things are away from the viewer, the smaller, and less detailed I want to make them. Groups of things in the distance will also be closer together than ones close up. There’s a liquor store across the street from the coffeehouse and they’re quite a bit closer in my drawing than they are in real life. I don’t know yet if I want to change that or keep it the way it is.

So far, I’m happy with the perspective of the sidewalk near the coffeehouse. I have some trees, a lamppost and someone walking there.

On Tuesday November 24, I began shading the drawing. I redrew the person walking. I wanted to change the positioning of his legs in particular. It was important to me to keep the shading in the windows smooth because those are reflections that will show the transparency of the windows. I shaded the curtains in the windows of the apartment above the coffee house.

On Dec 6, I got back to this drawing after a short hiatus. I decided I should probably shade in the street before anything else so it doesn’t look like the buildings and cars are floating in the air. I started out shading the street by making big sweeping horizontal motions with my pencil across the paper. The most important thing to me, was that the paper was complete covered with pencil. I didn’t want to leave any white showing. Accomplishing this required several layers.

The road was not all one shade either. There was a shadow close to the edge of where the paved part of the road met the concrete part and I wanted an obvious contrast between that shadow and the part of the road around it.

I shaded all the trees, the lamp post, the trash can, and the man walking so they would stand out. I started by putting a base layer down. I’ll go back and look at each one and see how I can build on it.

I shaded the leaves of the big tree in front of the coffeehouse by making squiggles with my wrist. I did not cover up all of the white of the paper. This time, I was concerned with leaving some of it showing. The leaves need to have separation. After I put down my initial layers, I went over them with more squiggles with a pencil one shade darker. When I thought I was done, I looked at it and it didn’t look right. I realized that was because I wasn’t really done. The tree needed more of that darker color on it. Even now, think it needs more shading. I’ll fill it in more and may use either my tombow mono eraser or my needed eraser to open up the little white spots that I need.

For the things like tree leaves, I kept my edges very soft. I almost didn’t pay too much attention to the lines I was making and even moved my pencil in squiggles or circles. This was to give them a softer look. For things like the over hangs of buildings and the rims of pots, I kept my shading as straight as possible to show the solid nature of these items.

I didn’t think I would, but I shaded the clouds in the sky. For the first layers, I just followed what I saw in my reference photo, which was mostly varieties of “V” shapes. For the layers below those, I used a slightly lighter pencil and made quick zig zag motions with my hand. I thought my top layers were darker than I wanted so I lightened them with my kneaded eraser.

After looking at the piece again, I saw that there wasn’t enough of a separation between the street the coffeehouse was on and the road, so I put a shadow between those two things.


Like I promised myself earlier, I revisited the tree in front of the coffeehouse and added more squiggles. I think I have still more work to do on it, but I feel it looks better already.

I saw this bird once in a tree in a park near my house. It didn’t look like any common city bird you see around, so understandably, I was surprised to see it just chilling in a tree. I thought, that bird looks like something I might see in a zoo. How did it get in this park. I didn’t even know what kind of bird it was at the time. I guessed it was a kookaburra because it made a noise like one.

I readjusted the lines of his body, particularly his head and the right-hand side of chest several times before starting on the details.

While drawing his feathers, I made little flicks of my wrist. I almost drew them randomly instead of trying to draw each one in the exact right spot. By being overly careful, I could’ve easily fallen into the trap of drawing the feathers in rows and that wouldn’t have looked natural. You can be too careful sometimes.

I drew my outline onto a separate piece of paper and transferred it onto my drawing paper using tracing and transfer paper. I don’t think I could’ve said the word paper more times in one sentence. When I started shading, I went right in with a 5b pencil, keeping a light grip on the pencil and going in little circles. This seems to make the shading more uniform than going back and forth. I blocked in his entire body with a 3b pencil.

When it came time to add the feathers, I did so by shading in shapes that I saw in my reference photos. A lot of these were little triangles. Some of the feathers seemed to be groups of horizontal lines in rows. To draw these, I didn’t take my pencil and drag it from one end to the other in one motion. I made vertical back and forth motions with the side of my pencil in horizontal rows, keeping my wrist moving rapidly. Almost like scribbling, but not quite. It’s important that these lines curve in the right direction and that they’re approximately the right distance apart.

Day Two

I’m continuing to shade the feathers. It gets tiring staring so closely at all this detail.  I look for where certain shapes of shading are in relation to each other and this helps me make the shapes of the feathers. I think more needs to be done on the tail, so tomorrow I’ll focus more on that in my reference photo.

I’ve taken a closer look at his eye and the patch around it, which I can see now is not really white, and in fact, had much more shadow on it then I thought. The eye itself is very white and is surrounded by a ring of black, which gave it an eerie glow.

I’ve started to fill in the tree branches with a 3b pencil as a base.

Day Three

Getting back to the branches, I drew the details on them by holding the pencil way back on the handle, using the side of the pencil, and wiggling my wrist back and forth. This made my strokes come out kind of zigzaggy. I didn’t want to take too much control and I didn’t want anything very uniform or perfect. I made sure to vary the size and thickness of my marks.

Day Three

Sometimes you try something new and it doesn’t work. I tried to create the texture of the feathers using only shading and no lines. It turns out though that, while the viewer doesn’t to see them, I needed some lines to guide me not only in the direction the feathers should go, but in how they should be shaded in the first place. Example: I drew in a feather with my 6h pencil next to one I already shaded. Immediately, I knew that there was a small area between the feather I’d already shaded and the one I’d just drawn that needed to be lighter than the surrounding area, significantly lighter in fact.


Some things started to stand out to me during this drawing session, like the bird’s tail feathers and the underside of his belly.


When I started to feel fatigued working on the details of the feathers, I thought it would be a good idea to direct my attention to the background. I was ready to start shading it in when I noticed the thinner branches in between the thick ones I’d already drawn. I drew those in with my 6h pencil and filled them in with a 6b as base.

Day Four

I finished filling in the background with my 3b pencil. I had no idea what I was going to do after that, so I looked at my reference photo to give me some guidance. I went to work drawing more thistles on the branches. I just let my wrist flick as I did so, not being too careful to put every line in the right place. The only thing I was concerned about was that they were adequately filled in. I didn’t want a lot of space between my lines.

Day Five

After a little break, it was time to get back to work on this. WOW! It’s amazing what a little sharpening can do! I just went over a lot of what was already on the paper with sharpened pencils and it looks so much smoother.

Day Six

​I figured out I needed to go over things with more layers. Just because there’s pencil on the paper, doesn’t mean something’s finished. There shouldn’t be any white of the paper showing, unless, I, the artist, want there to be. There certainly shouldn’t be any white of the paper showing just because I don’t have enough pencil on the paper. I don’t push as hard as I can and go at it with the pencil, though. I build it up a little at a time, keeping a light hand.

Day One:
​I gessoed a piece of sketching paper because I want to do some experimenting with acrylics. I don’t have boards I feel comfortable experimenting on and guessing sketching paper makes it suitable for acrylic and even oil paint, if you use the right gesso. Little tip there.

What I want to experiment with is mixing flesh tone from red and green, plus black and white. I’m going to be using one shade of red and one shade of green and trying to mix as many flesh tones as I can just by varying the ratio of red to green and how much black and white I add. I’ve been inspired by this video from HappydArtist.

Day Two

​I ended up using carmine from Amsterdam Standard Series as my red and Permanent Green Deep from Liquitex Basics as my green. It soon became clear to me though, that mixing skin those shades was not going to work. I remembered hearing that quinacridone was a more neutral red and I knew I had some in my paint box, so I decided to try it. Carmine leans very much toward the blue side, which probably accounted for the purple tone I kept getting.

I did like my initial results with the quinacridone much better. I felt I was getting an actual neutral brown instead the obvious purple I’d gotten before. But I still wasn’t happy with my results. It seems no matter how I mix these colors, they’re either too rosy or too gray. By the time I got up from trying this experiment for the first time, I spent almost thirty minutes just mixing colors. I’m not willing to spend that much time coming up with a flesh color when I know I have faster methods.

I have mixed red and green in the past, but I usually mix a green from yellow and blue instead of using a green from a tube. It’s more time consuming, but I think I actually get better results this way because of how I can control the outcome of the color and make it more neutral. I think, like the carmine, the deep green permanent just leans a bit too much to the blue side.

Day Three

​​Coming back to this experiment, having taken another look at Happyd’s video, I decided to try using sap green instead while still using the quinacridone. After some further fiddling, I came up with a color that I think I would be happy to use on someone’s face. My next challenge is to take skin photos I’ve cropped and come up with a colors that match, as closely as I can, each of the people’s skin tones in these photos, using only the two colors of sap green and quinacridone red, plus black and white.

Day Four

​Now I’ve switched from using quinacridone now to using cadmium red medium. Now I’m using both colors that Happyd was using in her video, the cadmium red medium and the sap green. I think these colors work very well for mixing a fair or Caucasian skin tone. I’m not sure about other colors, though. I’m debating with myself whether or not to even try.

Day Five

I decided not to try to mix the specific shades of skin that were in my downloaded reference phots, but to instead try mixing darker values. I did this by just mixing more of the red and the green into my mixture and then some mars black when I wanted it to be really dark.

Conclusion

​I will likely not be adopting mixing red and green as my go to method for mixing skin tone. I enjoy using a range of colors. I don't feel that just two colors give me the range I want. For my most recent portrait, I mixed the skin from cadmium red medium and deep green permanent, but I added some yellow to neutralize it because my original mixture was too purple.  Then, there’s my trusty raw Sienna. Even so, it was nice to do this experiment and I plan on testing out other mixes of complementary colors for skin. I might find these different combinations work better for different ethnicities of people, for instance.

Here's a gallery of the pictures I took during the course of this experiment.

I decided on a bluish purple background for this portrait. I decided to mix ultramarine into my dioxazine purple and see how I liked that. I didn't mix any white into it, though, because I wanted it to be extra dark and, more importantly, I didn't want to dull the color. 

​​I painted my background in two layers using a large filbert brush and blending out my strokes with a mop brush. ​As I was putting the final layers on my background, I really started to notice how pleasant the texture of this canvas is.

​

Fast forward, and now I’m building up depth in her eyes and mouth with shadows and highlights. Using a liner brush, I painted highlights on her eyelids, being careful to avoid the creases I’d painted. Where you place these shadows and highlights is just as important, if not more so, than how dark or light they are in terms of the structure of the face. Painting something a shade or two darker than it is in the reference photo won’t throw off the structure of your face as much as putting that same mark a centimeter or two of from where it should be.

​I’ve been making a point to keep my hand moving continuously while making most of my strokes, rather than stopping and starting. This creates a much smoother appearance. Making those smooth lines is also very easy on this canvas.

​I’m especially proud of the way her eyes have come out. I made her cheek rounder by painting another stroke on the outside. On the topic of her eyes, I ended up enlarging both of her pupils to open her eyes more. Pupil size can really effect the overall expression of the subject. Advertisers know this

Last night it was time to add the lightest shades to her hair. I knew I wanted a lot of contrast between these and the darkest shades, but I went a little overboard with how light I made it to begin with, so I needed to add more black to my mixture. As with every other part of the hair, I was careful to place these strands in the right places in relation to each other. That went a long way in giving the hair the texture I wanted it to have, and the volume.


I worked on painting her chest too, particular around her neck and shoulder, which I see both need to have brighter highlights than they have now.

Her chest is the main thing now keeping me from moving on to the color. I haven’t gotten it to the point where I feel that the definition in her shoulder and collarbone is defined to my satisfaction. I’ve been working on making the highlights brighter that need to be and I think now I need some highlights that are just a touch brighter over very small areas, such as above and below her collarbone. I’m going to keep layering. 

I’ve filled in her teeth using my liner brush.

For the first layers of color on her face, I knew I wanted a pale muted pinky color. I tried mixing cadmium red deep, because it has more blue than cadmium red medium, which is more orange, with deep green permanent. This color came out too purple, though, so I mixed some yellow in to take care of that.

​​I thinned this mixture down with water applied it in two thin layers all over the subject’s face and neck.

I’ll add more layers to the skin later, but the next thing I did was paint the irises. I did this by mixing a touch of the deep green permanent into some gray that I made by mixing zinc white ​and ivory black. Even though the subject has green eyes, I didn’t want to use straight green. That would’ve looked cartoonish.

I mixed a darker version of the same color I used for the base color of her skin for the shadows under her cheekbones, the sides of her forehead and around her nose. Before I did that, though, I glazed some zinc white over the middle of her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, and on the apples of her cheeks. This small change gave her face a lot more definition.

While I was painting what I thought would be the darkest shadows on her face, still using my brownish pink mixture, I realized I would need to include some blue shadows. I mixed those from ultramarine blue and an orange made with magenta and glazed them over the shadows I’d just painted. I feel I should point out that I was able to blend out the edges of these shadows very easily on this canvas.

Painting pale gray on the outer corner of her right eye seemed to open it up more. I also painted a mars black line underneath and gave her some lashes. When I go to work on the piece again, I will glaze some bluish gray over the cornea of her right eye, too.

I felt that her lips needed to be lighter, so I started by glazing some zinc white over them. I tried twice, thinking it was too light both times. The white was completely covering my color and all my details, which was not what I wanted. I decided to just start by glazing a streak of white in the center. I’ll probably go back and glaze some pink over that to help it blend in more with the rest of her mouth.

Today’s painting session started with that glazing of pale pink over the white of the mouth I predicted. I decided I was going to add some small areas of titanium white with my liner brush for extra glossiness, but that would have to wait.

In the meantime, I directed my attention to her eyes and started by applying the streak of dark blue gray under her right eye that I’d known needed to be there since yesterday.

I added some pale yellow to her left shoulder and her chin to show them catching the light more.

When I started my latest painting session, I sat down with the intention of painting the shadow the rim on the outer corner of her right eye, then moving on to her mouth. While I was putting my paint onto the palette, though, I thought it would make more sense to start with the mouth, since I would need a lighter color for that, so that’s what I did. I glazed a pale pink over the white marks on I’d painted on her mouth, blending them in much more with the rest of it. This greatly improved the look of her lower lip in my eyes.

Then I mixed more red and more green into my color and did what needed to be done on her eye.

I’d known for a while that I’d need to paint some titanium white on her left shoulder, just a small spot, to show where the light was reflecting. I took care of that with a liner brush.

It was at this point that I started struggling to find things to do on the painting, but I saw that her eyes needed a dark gray rim, very thin, around the edge of each iris. I really struggled to get these lines thin enough. I mixed my gray from ivory black and zinc white, by the way, the transparent versions of black and white. Anyway, I put just a touch of paint on the tip of my liner brush and was careful to let just that touch my canvas. Even so, my lines were still too thick. I had to wash most of the outer edges of them with water. I noticed in my reference photo that there was a similar line going all the way across her lower lash line on her right eye. This also came out thicker than the reference photo, but this time I didn’t mind.

Today I glazed more of my flesh color over the spot on her chin, which I felt was standing out to much, drawing too much attention to that area.

I directed my attention, now, to her chest and saw that there was some pinkish color reflected around her collar bone. I also added wisps around her hair with my liner brush.

I had a very short painting session. I started by painting a bit of gray on her strap for a highlight. I’ll add more to that later, but I needed it to dry, so I moved on to another section of the piece. I noticed that the highlights on the right side of her hair needed to come down farther on her face, so, using my round brush and the gray that was still on my palette, I did just that.

My reference photo for this piece came from Lisa Clough of Lachri Fine Art.

I’m starting by painting the whole canvas blue for this painting. I haven’t figured the whole background out yet, but as of writing this, I’ve decided to paint some dirt along the bottom quarter of the canvas, leaving a couple wholes for the blue to show through.

​Today I painted some leaves on the painting. I used my small round brush for most of the body of the leaves, switching to my liner brush for the tips in order to have more control over the shapes. I worked with my hand back on the brush handle, allowing it to move freely across the shapes of the leaves. This will be it for the background.

​I’ve transferred my flamingo onto the canvas. I decided to keep things simple to start with when it came to the underpainting. I blocked in the entire body, including the neck, except for the bottom quarter of the stomach, with a very light, almost white, shade of gray, leaving openings for feathers. I blocked in that bottom quarter with a much darker gray. I used my small filbert brush for all of this. Using my small round and my liner brushes, I painted feather texture where I saw it in my reference photo.I used  the tip of my liner brush and some dark gray and started to paint some dense feather texture on his head. After taking another look at my reference photo, I saw that there was some pretty apparent feather texture in the flamingo’s belly, so I mixed some more black into the gray I’d already mixed for that section, making it even darker and painted that texture with my small round brush. Except for the tiniest details, I held my brushes with my hand back on the handle and let it move across the canvas in one fluid motion as much as possible. I didn’t worry too much at this point whether the shades were right. I was just concerned with putting my strokes where they should go.

Today I continued with the feathers, starting by adding some highlighted ones to his belly.

I thought by now that it was time to whip his beak into shape. I started by drawing in the division of the beak with my charcoal pencil. Then, when the paint was dry, I took my liner brush and some light gray paint, and being careful to keep my hand steady, and going slowly, I made one fluid, continues motion down the dividing line. I used that same continuous motion, with my much darker gray, for the shade that was to be on the dividing line.

His belly needed more texture, so I mixed a shade that was in between the ones already on it, and looking at the shapes in my reference photo, I took my liner brush and did my best to copy these shapes on my canvas. I had to zone in on a particular square inch of the photo and give my full concentration to it before moving onto the next part.

Today I added still more texture to his belly. I find it a challenge at this stage to concentrate on all the details. My mind is lazy and I have to force it to concentrate sometimes. I also turned much of my attention to the eye and beak, working on creating texture in the latter with highlights. This is going to take a lot of work.

For my first layers of color, I mixed a bit of yellow into my red and white, because I could see some warmth in the flamingo’s feathers. Using my filbert brush, I glazed light layers of this color all over the flamingo. I kept my hand going in one direction and was careful not to go over the same place more than once while the paint was wet.

Today I glazed zinc white over the upper half of my flamingo to create more contrast between it and the bottom third. While that first layer was drying, I decided my flamingo’s beak needed some more contrast. I started by mixing some dark red into the white I already had on my palette and glazed this over the parts I’d already painted pink. I wanted them to have a rosier cast, though, than what they had. The blue part in the upper part of the beak also needed to be darker. I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot of layers in that beak to give it the sleekness I want it to have.

Now I directed my attention again to the flamingo’s body. I already had a grayish blue out on my palette, so I added some zinc white into that, thinned it some more with water, and used my filbert brush to glaze it over the flamingo’s stomach, which I knew needed some blue in it.

I painted some yellow on his eye and also glazed it along the edge of the pink part of his beak.

Today I found a way to tone down those feathers on the stomach that were too bright. I did this by painting green over one feather and then thinning that out with water and using it on as many of the others as I could until I couldn’t see the green any more. When I ran out of green paint, I repeated the process with another feather.

His beak needed some more color in it too. I glazed purple and blue over parts of it, being careful to blend out any harsh edges, as I wanted the colors to look hazy. I also used my liner brush and some titanium white to paint some lines and speckles. I’m especially proud of the white speckles I painted in the little bit of yellow I’d glazed on the edge of his beak.

Lastly, I glazed a few layers of zinc white over most of the top half of the flamingo’s body.

Last night, it was time to glaze some blush gray in the feathers that are showing in the upper half of the flamingo’s body. I directed my attention to the texture on his neck, which up until now, was pure gray. I didn’t think it was suitable to leave it like that, and I still had a ton of grayish blue out, so, I took my liner brush and…you can probably guess the rest.

I worked more on the beak. I used my liner brush and titanium white to paint some more speckles. I started to paint a shadow of pink down the edge of the bottom, which is too dark at this point.

​Last night, I started by glazing zinc white over the pink strip along the bottom of the flamingo’s lower beak. I was delighted at how much of a difference just one layer made.

I’d known for a while that his eye needed some red around it and I decided now was the time. I also, saw however,  that it had a thick band of pale pink above it, so I painted that with some paint that I already had on my palette. I glazed more yellow over the cornea to brighten it.

While working on the eye, I also noticed that there needed to be another pale pink ridge above it, as well as a shadow above that, the latter of which I painted with my liner brush and some zinc white mixed with red.

Today I applied titanium white to part of the outer edge of the rim I’d painted above his eye. I used my liner brush, but pressed harder on the canvas, so my line would be thicker.


I saw that the bottom ridge needed to be darker to contrast with the top. I decided I would take care of this by glazing a bluish gray over it. I mixed my color too dark to begin with, but solved this by mixing my concoction into some more zinc white. I painted this onto the lower ridge of the eye with my liner brush. My too-dark color didn’t go completely to waste, though, because I used it to paint the blue streak right above the upper eye ridge.

​I saw that the blue strip above his eye needed some more blue in it, so I made a muted version by mixing ultramarine with an orange made from carmine and yellow. The blue strip isn’t exactly like it is in the reference photo, but I like it. 

Today I added more pink to the feathers on his tail, because I thought they were looking a bit dull. I glazed zinc white over the upper half of his body again, and ivory black over his belly to increase the contrast between those two. I also mixed some ultramarine into my gray and glazed that over some of the upper feathers.


I thought the feathers toward his tail were looking too flat. I wanted them to look like they were sticking up a bit from the rest of his body. I tried painting some titanium white over the edges of them with my liner brush, first going with the form, then going across it, wiggling my wrist as I went. I also painted some more ivory black right along the outer edges, using that same wiggle motion. After looking at my white lines though, I thought they were too harsh. I wasn’t immediately sure what to do about them, though, so I took a break. It was while doing a crossword puzzle on my phone, that I got the idea to glaze some more blue gray over part of my white marks.

To finish it off, I painted some layers of black under these feathers for more contrast.

When I’m walking, I look to the side. I look at the sidewalk because sometimes a squirrel comes by. I actually got a good photo of a squirrel on the ground at the zoo and it became this painting.

 Remember to look up into the sky too. I caught a crow flying above this fountain. It perched to take a drink and I was able to get a pic.

Try slowing down. You’re not racing to be somewhere.​Walk at a leisurely pace. This is the thing I often have the hardest time with because I'm a naturally fast walker.

​It goes without saying that you probably don’t want to be looking at your phone, but try taking it a step further and skipping the headphones too. Yes, I walk with headphones a lot. I like to listen to music or audiobooks when I walk, but these things can sometimes keep me from being in my most creative space. Music without lyrics might be an exception to this. I think it's nice to just be with your own thoughts during this time. I find that when I have someone else's words to hold my interest, though, I don't pay as much attention to my surroundings, just looking out for what I need to keep myself safe.

Even if you don’t see anything you want to take a picture of, walking can still be great for creativity. Many famous creatives swore by long walks. Beethoven, for example, would take two hour walks in nature after he finished working for the day. During these walks, Beethoven always had pen and paper on him so he could write down any ideas that came to him. He also took frequent short walks during his working hours.

​Dickens was known to take incredibly long walks through London. These walks were apparently so long that people wondered about Dickens’ mental health.

Me, I like to break up most days with a fifteen to twenty minute walk in my neighborhood in the afternoon. It gets me away from my desk and refreshes me.

Do you like to walk for creativity? Tell me how it helps you in the comments and about any interesting things you saw.

Last week I published a post on painting a panda in acrylics. In this post, I'm going to focus on tips for painting white fur in acrylics.

Be prepared for very little of the fur to actually be white. In fact, the shades I’ve used for my panda go all the way to a dark gray. I’m only using white for my brightest highlights. When I painted the underpainting for this guy, in fact, I painted his entire back a medium to dark gray as my base shade. I used a similar shade of gray on the right side of his face.

​Make sure to bring surrounding colors into the fur. For example, white fur almost always has blue in because it’s reflecting the sky. In the case of my panda, though, because I used an entirely green background and there’s no blue in it, bringing blue into the panda’s fur wouldn’t have made much sense. Instead, I mixed a lighter version of the same green I’d used for the background and brought that into the panda’s fur. I also brought some brown light brown in because of the bamboo.

​Even though you will be bringing surrounding colors into your white fur, make sure to keep them muted and transparent. If you make them bright or opaque, it won’t look realistic.

Make sure your strokes are going in the right direction. You’re not necessarily going to paint in every strand of fur. That will look artificial, and in fact, I only put in little touches of individual hairs on his back and legs. I did a lot more on his face, though, and I suspect that was because he was probably wet when I took this photo. Getting back to what I was saying, though, make sure your strokes go in the right direction, because this not only will give you a hint of the texture of the fur, but will ultimately form the animal’s body, ie, his bones and muscles.

Make friends with your liner brush. I have a video that I think will help you learn how to use it. You’ll need to learn to be able to use a liner brush properly to make whatever individual fur strokes you’ll need.

I'm going to copy and paste a paragraph from my post on painting this panda in full, which I would like to remind you of, since it's very relevant here. 

I want to point out that when I’m painting all these fur lines, I find that, as much as I like to maintain control, when I make quick strokes, often with a little wrist flick, I’m happier with my results than when I go real slow and try to control everything. Maybe that’s because most things in nature are rough and uncontrolled. I hope that makes sense. I followed this principal of not trying to control things too much to paint extra fur texture around his left ear, his eye, and again, where the black on his fur meets the white.

Again, though make sure, though, that your strokes are going in the general right direction and that they're approximately the right size and shape. Also, pay attention to how much of your brush is touching the canvas as this will determine how thick your lines are. If you want extremely thin lines, barely let the tip of your brush touch the canvas. 

You can read my post about this entire painting here.

I’m starting by painting the bamboo and branches. This is so that when I add the panda over them, they’ll look like they’re behind him instead of growing out of him, if you know what I mean. I can see that most of the bamboo is very light, so I used a light gray as my base. I look at the shapes I see in my reference photo and mimic them. Painting all these shapes and keeping track of them requires a lot of concentration, but this allows me to almost turn painting into a mindfulness practice. Little by little, the shapes start to become the object I’m painting.

​Today I finished the underpainting of the bamboo and transfer the giant panda on. I positioned my transfer paper so that he would be walking into the scene from the right hand edge. Once the major form of the panda was on the canvas, I refined the shapes of his head, back, and right hind leg. After that, since I still had quite a lot of paint on my palette, I started to use block in areas of the panda’s body that were similar in value.

Today I painted more fur texture. I wasn’t worried about painting in every individual strand. I only painted those pieces that really stood out. What I did worry about, was making sure my strokes were going to in the general direction of the fur. Paying attention to the direction of your strokes can give you a fairly realistic, three dimensional look, even without spending a lot of time on individual strands of hair or fur.

I started by glazing grayish brown all over the bamboo stalks. Later on, I brought this same color into the panda’s face and upper back.
I was trying to glaze a grayish blue over the panda’s back, I can’t get the blue to show up now. I’ll have to try again on Monday.

At this, I’ve started to reach the “I know this painting isn’t finished, but I don’t know what else it needs” phase. I pulled the reference photo up on my phone and took a close look at it. I saw that I needed some more pale grey fur strokes where the white meets the black on his back. I sat down to paint with the intention of just painting those strokes and while doing that, I also noticed some grayish brown marks and painted those. Sometimes you can sit down to paint one thing and see other things while you’re at it that can keep you going.

​What helps in this case, is, instead of looking at the photo as a whole, closely examine one part of it. In this case, I honed in one the panda’s back, ignoring everything else for the time being. The next time I work in this piece, I’m thinking I’ll do the same thing with his face.

You might notice by now that even though pandas are technically black and white, there’s hardly any white in this guy and there’s less and, barring tiny highlights, the more I work on him. I covered up most of the white I had in his face yesterday. Nothing that’s three dimensional is ever going to be totally black or white, because, by it’s very nature, it’s going to have shadows and highlights.


White fur is also going to reflect the colors around it. You can see that I’ve brought the grayish tan of the bamboo into his fur. If he’d been under a blue sky, I would’ve brought that into his fur, but since I used a green background, I brought that in instead.


On the topic of white highlights, I’ve been using those to add more fur texture.

In my latest painting session, I directed my attention to this,

and this.

I noticed that there was lots of texture in both that I hadn’t painted yet. I mixed some light gray paint. The fur looked almost white here, but I didn’t want to jump to white just yet. I used my liner brush, and doing my best to load the paint on evenly and without clumps, touched just the tip of it to the canvas. Even with my best efforts, though, a lot of my lines came out thicker than I wanted, so I came back with my liner brush wet, but devoid of paint, and came back over those lines to thin them. I made similar strokes with both a darker, and a lighter shade of gray than that of my initial layers.

It’s becoming more apparent to me that the texture of the black part of his fur is very coarse, but also shiny near his ankle. To achieve the shine, I started by putting little dots of titanium white with the tip of my liner brush on the ends of the fur texture lines I’d already painted in that area. To achieve the coarse look throughout the fur there is going to be more of a challenge. I don’t want to paint lots of very thing lines because that will just make him look wiry. Also, the shade I used for the strokes had to be very dark, as to almost blend in with the black. I couldn’t have high contrast here. So I mixed a gray using mostly mars black and a little bit of titanium white. Then, using my liner brush again, but pressing harder with it, using more of the body of it, so the lines would be thicker, I painted dark gray texture lines on his leg, all going in the same direction.

​I want to point out that when I’m painting all these fur lines, I find that, as much as I like to maintain control, when I make quick strokes, often with a little wrist flick, I’m happier with my results than when I go real slow and try to control everything. Maybe that’s because most things in nature are rough and uncontrolled. I hope that makes sense. I followed this principal of not trying to control things too much to paint extra fur texture around his left ear, his eye, and again, where the black on his fur meets the white.

I’d known for a while that there needed to be a blue highlight on the lower part of his left foreleg. I couldn’t just paint it straight blue, though. It would have to be mixed with orange of course to tone it down. I had been frustrated with trying to tone down blue with orange because my blue would always turn purple.

I was watching a video on YouTube from my friend Shana Rowe Jackson in which she was painting some blueberries and she was mixing all her colors from cyan, magenta, and yellow. I wrote to her in the comments about the same struggle I just described here and she encouraged me to try using magenta, instead of red, to mix my orange. I did just that with this painting and was thrilled with the results. I now realize that the red I was using was too warm. I was adding yellow to my blue without realizing it. The magenta has a blue undertone, so it doesn’t give me that issue.

I took my liner brush and gave him some shaggy fur on his right foreleg.

Here's the finished piece. To touch it up, I added some more intensity to the green shadow on his back. I made this decision after playing with the painting in my phone. When I turned up the color saturation, I realized I liked it. His neck had been way too transparent for a long time and I fixed that also.

I was a guest speaker for a zoom art class and the teacher asked me if I have any advice on how to get inspired. I don't go looking for inspiration. I just try to stay aware of when it comes to me. Trying to get inspired is like trying to go to sleep. The more you chase it, the further it gets from you. Remember, nothing will hinder your ability to get inspired more than stress, including stressing about getting inspired.

I have to admit, I’m a huge homebody, but I know that in my experience, the most inspiring moments often come when I’m out and about. There may be a place that is a source of inspiration for you and you know what that place is better than I do. 

Take this drawing for instance.

​The people in it are my aunt and her knitting instructor. When I took the photo that became the reference for this drawing, I was visiting my aunt in New Jersey. We were out and about and she wanted to stop and see her knitting instructor about something. When I saw my aunt and her instructor working together, I thought the situation looked like it could be a piece of art. I took out my phone, took a pic of what was in front of me, and the rest is history. So, I guess if I had to give advice about how to get inspired it would be to go for a walk, or run errands.

I tend to find those moments when people, and even more so, animals, are going about their business the most inspiring now that I think about it. I can’t remember the last time I tried to pose someone for a photo and when people pose on their own, I try to get them to stop. People just aren’t themselves when they’re posing.

Picasso said “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” I made a YouTube video elaborating on my thoughts on this quote. I say, don’t wait to be inspired to start working. Thomas Frank reiterated in the video that inspired my last post on this blog, that amateurs wait to be inspired to create, while professionals create on a consistent schedule. He quoted a writer friend of his as saying, “I wait for inspiration to work. It just so happens that my inspiration comes every morning at 8 a.m.” Is Thomas’s friend really struck with inspiration every morning consistently at 8 a.m? I doubt it. Rather, what he’s more likely saying is that he does his writing every day at that time, whether he’s actually inspired or not.

Getting back to what Picasso said, the more you work at your craft, the more inspired you will be. As Maya Angelou said, "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

There's a video I watched recently called "'I Don't Feel Like It' Is A Mindset For Amateurs"​. The video is over five years old, but it was brought to my attention again within the past week. The video, which was made by a youtuber who teaches productivity named Thomas Frank, has made me feel even more driven to work on a consistent schedule, although I'd believed in disciplined work for a long time. 

​More importantly I think, this video made me realize, though, was that it's okay to make imperfect, even downright bad work, as long as I'm still working. I decided to take that approach when I sat down to right my newsletter this week. I didn't know everything I wanted to put in it. I'd just write what came to me. Anything that I decide I didn't want in when it was time to send it out, could be deleted. By the way, if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter, there's a form where you can do to the side of this post. I always include at least one in progress pic of whatever I'm working on that week and a lot of times I include my future plans.

Anyway I'm grateful for this mindset shift before I would feel bad if I did work that I thought was not up to par. Of course, I want to make good work, but things can be done over and revised. They don't have to be just right the first time and I don't have to share those crappy first layers or what have you with anyone if I don't want to. But I have to make them in order to make the good stuff.

Here is Thomas's channel. He has a lot of useful tips on productivity and time management.