As I said in my previous post, by doing the eyes first all the fear goes out of the painting as he already looked real. When I moved to using oil paints over the acrylic I also painted in the white areas first as white gets easily ruined by other paints so I wanted to get a good layer of clean white in before I proceeded. When I moved to doing the darker colours and the black I put more white spirit in a new jar and kept that only for the darker colours as I knew at the very end that the final touches would be the pure white whiskers.
Using white spirit really speeds up the drying process and by putting the painting out in the sun, in half an hour I could put on a new colour, but this only works if the paint is applied in thin glazes or washes. If you slap it on with a pallet knife oil paint will take ages to dry. In any painting I am always thinking in layers. I did the background first because the tiger is in the front, I then did the orange which would go under the black and the final touches would be the white whiskers and the edges of the ruff. As the sun moved round the garden I realised that the light was much better right opposite the door so set up an impromptu easel on a chair. I have made the mistake in the past of sitting in the wrong place just because that is where the desk is and it pays to be adaptable.
When it came to doing the final whiskers I needed to prop the canvas up in order to paint right to and off the edge of the frame. These photos show the final stages of the painting.
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