How to create fur using blue and yellow, without getting green
“Summer” l 10 x 10 inch l Oil Painting
The biggest challenge in painting Summer is that she has the typical Beardie Blue and Yellow coloration. In the reference photo, I could clearly see the blue hues in her coat, and the lighter fur definitely had a yellow tinge to it, especially on the side facing the sunlight. Since I obviously couldn’t end up with a green dog, this presented a problem. I decided to fall back on my tried and trusted painting method, which I aptly call the “creeping up” approach.
Reference photo for Summer
I started out by creating a simple line drawing using thinned Burnt Umber paint. I look mainly for the placement on the canvas, and make sure the eyes and nose are all roughly where they should be. I’m not too concerned about precision here.
Since I forgot to take a photo straight afterwards, I took it just after I started blocking in some colour….
Here you can see the blueish mixture I used to indicate where the darker fur will be and the Burnt Umber + white for the lighter fur.
In the “creeping up” method, I use every stage of the painting to find my way around - to get clarity on which colours I might use, refine placing of important bits and adjust where needed.
Here I tried out very diluted Burnt Umber to see if that will work instead of an Ochre, and thus avoiding the problem of potentially creating green when mixed with the blue. What I initially thought should be Ochre, turned out to be Umber, so problem solved - except for the sunlit bits. Those would still need yellow.
I continue creeping up on the painting, refining it as I go. The important thing to remember is that it’s only oil paint, and anything can be fixed if you have the patience to wait for it to dry. While blocking in, I accidentally mixed some of the Indigo/Black mixture I was using, with the Burnt Umber + Ochre + White mixture, and it created the exact colour I needed for the greyish bits of her fur above the left ear and down the side of her face. “Happy little accidents",” as Bob Ross would have said.
Obviously she looks a bit out of shape here, but it’s not a problem because I’ll fix her as I go. Here I’m just adding layers of paint, indicating some darker areas and starting to shape her. She might not look pretty or correct at this stage, but that’s not important. And because this is the creeping up approach, I decided to wait for her to dry because I wasn’t sure about the next step. I still felt I needed a bit of yellow….
Two days later she was dry (I used a Walnut Alkyd medium) so, because I still wasn’t exactly sure what to do, I just started painting in an area I felt confident in…. the darks. More layers, more toward the black less to the blue. She might have the blue coloration in her fur, but she isn’t actually a blue dog….
I decided to work on the eyes…. and then, finding some definite dark brown above the left eye, I start adding more browns to her fur. I don’t mind that she’s not actually brown on her muzzle, because dark colours are always imporant when you’re going to layer lighter ones on top. So I continued creating some darks, mixing the browns, blues, black…. whatever I had on my palette and felt right. I also worked on the lights in her fur, but that wasn’t quite the right things to do yet, so I left it to dry again before continuing.
After looking at her for a while, I decided it was time to go into the details. I felt that, unlike in most portraits, I would actually get the effect I wanted in the details, not the underwork. So I started layering fur lines, using a small brush, in blue + black, and Burnt Umber+white. I also addd in some Ochre and even Cadmium Yellow on the right side of her face where the sun gets her. I blended between every layer, as I did in all the previous stages.
Blending is lovely…. it creates beautiful soft fur, and smoothes out harsh paint lines…. I love blending, and I do it often, especially on fur. And when I don’t like the look of what I’ve created…..blending it out usually fixes many things.
I add some layers to the foreground, indicating dark and light areas.
I didn’t wait for her to dry between the last layer and this one. I just continued adding details until I was happy.
The important things to remember is that firstly, it’s just paint. If you make a mistake or you don’t know what to do next, just let it dry, and think about it. Usually, there will be one area where you will know what to do, so start there, and see what’s next. No need to panic.
Secondly, when doing fur, your underlayers can never be too dark. They’re needed for the illusion of depth. So just keep painting them, slowly working up into your detail layers.
Lastly, use your gut feeling. Just pick up the brush and start. You will be able to do more than you know, and remembering that you can always fix things, makes it easier to relax and enjoy painting.