June's Tip of the Month...Painting Fur

I have had many e mails over the last few months asking me how I paint the fur on my Teds so for my June tip of the month here is a simple exercise to teach you one easy way to paint fur.

Please feel free to try the step by step below. 

The usual copyright rules do not apply to this exercise

 Painting a furry Cube

 Paint in washes of color on the cube. I have used quin red, quin gold and ultramarine blue for my cube but you can use any colours you would like. Apply a wash wet on damp on one side of the cube. Don't worry about getting a uniform covering. Once it is dry repeat this step on the other two sides.

Using a fine brush and moderately juicy paint, begin painting in the fur. Begin at the bottom of each section and work backwards following the direction of the fur. Unlike cotton like material, the fibers do not go neatly in one direction, so you can be haphazard with your brush as long as the general direction is similar.

 The effect of the fur develops with layering, so gradually add more layers with slightly different tones of paint or using a very similar pigment, e.g, for the red I used quin red and perylene maroon, for the blue, I used French Ultramarine blue and an indanthrene/ ultramarine violet mix. You can wash over the fur with a clear wash of water between layers to soften the look. Just make sure you really let the paper dry before adding the next layer of fur.


Repeat with each side of the cube...

...until you have finished

Happy Painting!