tiger / big cat digital painting wip

#1

very early start…

haven’t even roughed out the rest of the piece or really decided the extent…

#2

Um. . . cat’s eye.

Since you’re still in the planning stage, might I suggest doing a number of thumbnail sketches? It will help you brainstorm and find a pose you like.

#3

Ilikesoup - that sounds like an excellent idea, I did the eyes from a tut and I was planning on continuing it into a portrait style digital painting of a tiger / leopard / jaguar or the like… I’ll post thumbnails soon, thanks for the ref image btw

any suggestions on where to find a fur tut would be appreciated

#4

Re: Ilikesoup cough Tiger’s eye…

UNlike small cats they don’t have slit-eyes. Common mistake :wink:

Moving on, I’d suggest what I suggest to most people who post WIPs here: don’t paint on white! It throws off all your colours. Block in where the tiger’shead is: use the darkest colour of its fur to get the mass and shapes of its head, then you can paint the fur on top without worrying about anatomy and palette so much.

Also, did you just paint one eye and flip it? if so, I’d scrub it and paint the other eye from reference. The catchlights (sparkly bits) would probably be in a different place, and unless the pupil is starting straight at the viewer, flipping eyes is a fine way to make a cross-eyed cat/person

#5

the-small-print - thanks for the imput, I am very new to digital painting so I greatly appreciate all the advice you can give…

yeah you caught me, the lefty is a copy, it wasn’t meant to stay that way but I kinda thought it would help me visualize the head as a whole, then replace it when I got a basic outline.

yeah cross-eyed ppl are certainly no fun X-(

#6

just a quick doodle, I had something like this in mind…

#7

:blush: I suck. Sorry about that, dk13.

#8

Ilikesoup - No worries, happens to the best of us

#9

love to see a digital painting of a tiger. the sketch you did looked more human with the perportion of the neck but i guess you just figureing out the face and the neck was not planned.

Depending on the style of the painting you can either do the tiger in a cartoon style giving the tiger a smile in water soaking up the good life wich meens it doesn’t have to be spot on correct to what a tiger would look like. I would if i had the skill would do a tiger coming out of the forest stalking stance focusing on its face more than the body like if it was coming into focus of a camera with rain droplets coming down leaves of the forest.

#10

all c&c welcome and appreciated

very low res for the reason that I am emailing it to my image host for the time being, actual image is of a greater resolution

#11

Do the eyes seem too small to anyone else?

#12

No, not particularly. Big male lions have small eyes. especially if they’re in evening sunlight as your colours suggest. More importantly though, if you’re going to use those kinds of rich golds, block out a base area of a shadow colour before you do, or you’ll lose the impact of the saturated gold from little bits of grey showing through. For these kinds of saturated images it’s better to block the whole thing out in the right palette before you begin even thinking about anything else. Define the main flows of anatomy and colour at the same time, and be sure to squint and measure.

It’s really useful to have a palette handy so you can go ahead and make shapes without doing what you’ve done, which is define everything in the same colour. Presumably you are using a reference? if not, then do. You can take a palette from the reference: choose a shadow, a few midtones and a highlight or two, then try to determine where to put them by eye

I’ve done a brief example of the sort of stage you should go to before you start going into much detail:

You don’t, of course have to go for that kind of style, but the important bits to take away are the fact that the whole canvas is in the right palette, so not incorrect colours are shining through; that various bits of anatomy are outlined in appropriate colours, so the lighting is set up right from the off, and that the main structure of the anatomy is marked out in more or less the right places so you’ve got a good foundation to go on with.

A note on measuring (incase you weren’t already doing it): If on your piece something looks wrong, then close one eye, and hold up something straight at arm’s length (like your wacom pen) and see what that bit e.g. the corner of an eye is parallel to. Establish these as landmarks, so for example, I found that the inner corners of a lion’s eye, and the outer corners of its nostrils and mouth are very nearly in a straight line - something I didn’t know before.

You can do this with angles too, hold up your pen to mimic an angle on the reference, then move it across to your painting and try to fix that line in your mind’s eye for long enough to sketch in the angle, then refine it.

You can also do literal measurements by using the end of your pen (or whatever) and marking the end of something with your thumb. Remember that it’s relative distance that’s important, since your painting might not be on exactly the same scale as your reference, so for example on a figure drawing you might look at what’s wrong with the proportions of your legs, then check your reference and find that the length of heel to knee should be the same as the length of knee to navel, and the same as the length of navel to shoulder. This kind of thing is really important and very useful, so you should definitely get into the habit of doing it, if you weren’t already.

Hope this helps.

#13

the-small-print - wow so much good advice in one comment! seriously I really appreciate all the feedback and guidance, the image really helps to illustrate your points also…pure gold, I can’t thank you enough for your help.

I’ll work on implementing all your guidelines and update again soon

update below

#14


(very) small update

#15

New Update, starting to get the different values blocked in, still very rough. Also started a little bit on the fur, may scrap that and start over with a hair brush tho…

c&c welcome and appreciated

#16

Dead link. Try again :wink:

#17

oh geeze…thanks for mentioning that,

ok relinked, how’s that?

#18

great stuff cant wait to see the rest of the lion :applause:

#19

thanks phi1618, I haven’t had very much time to work on it lately, hopefully I will soon tho…

#20

New update, blocking in some more stripes, starting some hair texture work, per some brushes provided by a colleague…c&c welcome