oil on 18 ” x 24 ” artist canvas panel. after painting “ pair of rabbits”, “ mama mallard” and forbidden fruit” i kinda got tired of painting green. not that there is anything wrong with the color. i just wanted a different set of color hues on my glass palette. so i went with hues of yellows, oranges, reds and browns ang thought it would make a nice change. with this in mind i ended up painting a portrait of a snarling jaguar.
after drawing the jaguar in pencil i decided to try something new. based on an idea i got from reading whatever international artist or leisure painter magazine i could buy. in some articles, artists would talk about their process of painting in their desired medium in detail. from this i got the idea of toning the canvas with one color to unify all the colors in the painting. i experimented with this and toned my canvas with a thin glaze of light naples
the result made my pencil markings hazy so i decided to block in the darker parts of my painting before anymore details are lost. the last time i blocked in a painting with a darker color first was when i painted my seaturtle painting. this process seemed appropriate with this type of painting but unlike the seaturtle painting i used burnt umber color instead black. lately, i find myself shying away from black. i think i was because i read in an article that there isn’t anything really black on earth because of all the bouncing of light and color and somehow to me this made sense.
next i did a color test on the eyes then proceed painting the jaguars nose then facial fur, ears, teeth then body. my style in paintings as you would have noticed by now is the "by section" type. as you can see on the pictures i’ve divided the jaguar in half and painted the upper part first. this is due to my aversion of using easels especially when i’m painting the top part of the canvas. for me painting the upper part on an easel even with the use of a mahl stick is like exercising with your arms stretched out. after 5 to 10 minutes of this my arm start to ache so much that i can’t paint anymore! usually i paint on an inclined drawing table and when i’m painting the upper part of the canvas i usually put a towel on the lower part of the canvas so that i wont smudge the pencil marks.
the lower half is still painted on an inclined drawing table and the towel is folded as i paint towards the left part of the canvas.
i painted the tongue and jaw for last because this requires a different set of color and there wasn’t enough space again on my glass palette. this jaguar portrait kinda reminds me of my snow leopard painting. both of them show only the head and half of the body. if you haven’t noticed yet i have a different style in painting fur. i don’t lke to paint every strand. i always thought that painting every strand of fur makes the fur look poofy. Even though my paintings are said to be realistic-like i paint impressions of fur and it can be seen clearly on this painting when viewed live and up close. :p
