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Description
Another warm-up painting, trying to find a balance between flow and clarity. I recorded the process and you can watch it at my tumblr here . Original time taken: 1 hour 12 minutes. Same as last time, I recorded my notes to share!

Notes:
-Creating a "flow" in the pose is as important as defining anatomy. Gesture should be simple, and all the aspects of the painting should lead back into the gesture. flow of the fur, tail, limbs, etc should support this gesture
-Variation of hue is key. Dull colors, or a 1-hue look, will kill the life and vibrance.
-Opposite colors on the color wheel create vibrance. The purple and yellow next to each other suggest gray without losing vibrance
-the eye will usually (almost always) become focal point in a portrait. always put extra effort into making it read realistically.
-Concerning the eye: specular highlights are opposite on the orb to the highlight on the iris
-Bleed the highlight color out to suggest warmth
-Reduce detail in either shadow areas or highlights to simplify; here I chose to reduce the detail in the shadows entirely. All the complexity of the piece is in the light area, and shadows are reduced to near black. In this piece I blew out the highlights to allow the detail to be concentrated in the shadow areas
-Hairs and whiskers that catch light need only be defined by their highlights in a simplified piece
-Beginning with a narrow but vibrant selection of carefully chosen hues, blended over time, leads to a dimensional result
-Shadows must lay across form 3-dimensionally, bending to the curve of the body
-Use different textures to separate areas of different fur lengths

Description
Another warm-up painting, trying to find a balance between flow and clarity. I recorded the process and you can watch it at my tumblr here . Original time taken: 1 hour 12 minutes. Same as last time, I recorded my notes to share!

Notes:
-Creating a "flow" in the pose is as important as defining anatomy. Gesture should be simple, and all the aspects of the painting should lead back into the gesture. flow of the fur, tail, limbs, etc should support this gesture
-Variation of hue is key. Dull colors, or a 1-hue look, will kill the life and vibrance.
-Opposite colors on the color wheel create vibrance. The purple and yellow next to each other suggest gray without losing vibrance
-the eye will usually (almost always) become focal point in a portrait. always put extra effort into making it read realistically.
-Concerning the eye: specular highlights are opposite on the orb to the highlight on the iris
-Bleed the highlight color out to suggest warmth
-Reduce detail in either shadow areas or highlights to simplify; here I chose to reduce the detail in the shadows entirely. All the complexity of the piece is in the light area, and shadows are reduced to near black. In this piece I blew out the highlights to allow the detail to be concentrated in the shadow areas
-Hairs and whiskers that catch light need only be defined by their highlights in a simplified piece
-Beginning with a narrow but vibrant selection of carefully chosen hues, blended over time, leads to a dimensional result
-Shadows must lay across form 3-dimensionally, bending to the curve of the body
-Use different textures to separate areas of different fur lengths