Polar Bear Dozing

​I finished a new painting! This one is called “Polar Bear Dozing” and it’s an 11×14 acrylic on a Belgian Linen canvas. This is another one of those paintings done from a pic I took at the San Diego Zoo. Here’s the finished painting.

​To paint the polar bear, I first filled him in with a single thin layer of hansa yellow light mixed with zinc white.The most challenging part was capturing the shadows on his side. To do that, I ended up using a combination of strokes of yellow, sheer grey(grey made by mixing zinc white and mars black0, and sheer purple along with opaque grey(gray made by mixing titanium white and ivory black), as well as opaque grey brown.

​For the logs, I mixed titanium white with a tiny amount of burnt umber and applied it in a single layer all over. I tried to mix a peach color by mixing yellow and pink into this color, scrapped it and just mixed cadmium red medium into my original color and applied this in the appropriate places. I put some van dyke brown on my palette and mixed titanium white and ivory black into it. I painted this in very thin lines using  a small round brush across some of the logs and around the fronts. I also mixed red and titanium white into this color and painted the appropriate parts of the fronts of the logs. I also mixed a grey brown from burnt umber, titanium white and ivory black and applied this where it was needed.

​To paint the rock, I mixed zinc white and mars black with dioxazine purple, thinned it with matte medium and applied a singe thin layer of this color all over the rock. I darkened this color with more mars black and applied this darker color only on top of the dark grey spots. I mixed titanium white with ivory black and applied this opaque grey color following my reference photo. I painted thin lines of different lengths of this color using a small round brush. I mixed zinc white and Mars black and applied this thinned down sheer grey in a single layer all over the rock.

The water was the most intricate part of this composition because it had to have some color in it from everything else in the painting. I first mixed mars black zinc white and deep green permanent and painted a single strip of this color right under the rock. I mixed more zinc white into the original color then painted a strip of this color under the first one. I mixed more zinc white and phthalo blue into the first color and applied another strip of this color. Finally I mixed more zinc white and more medium into this color so it was very sheer and applied it all over the water. I mixed zinc white with a very small amount of burnt umber and applied this color in patches all over the water using a small filbert brush. I painted thinned down zinc white randomly all over the water. I mixed deep green permanent with phthalo blue and applied this color to the dark grey squiggly marks. I also mixed zinc white with burnt umber and cadmium red medium and applied patches of this color to the water. I mixed zinc white with mars black and applied a single thin strip of this right under the rock to show it’s reflection in the water. I mixed zinc white with dioxazine purple and put touches of this in the squiggly bits.

​I mixed zinc white, Mars black, and ultramarine blue, thinned with matte medium and applied this color all over my building. I mixed zinc white, Mars black and dioxazine purple and used this color for the darker shadows of the building.

That’s all for now. I’ll talk to you again next week.