VIDEO TUTORIAL: Snow Leopard (Patreon)

This week we are painting a realistic snow leopard portrait, and it is one of the more challenging realism projects we have done. The focus is on the face, those intense eyes, the nose, and that beautiful spotted muzzle.

The approach is layered: we start with a loose underpainting to build up color and shadow, then work on the eyes and nose first to bring the painting to life, and then slowly build up the fur texture across the whole face using the Smudgy Hairbrush from the Treasure Chest brush pack. We also use a multiply layer and a screen layer at the end to sculpt the light and shadow without losing any of the texture we built up.

The color palette and the reference photo we'll be using are attached to the post (as always, make sure to use a browser like Safari or Chrome when downloading, the Patreon app won't let you download attachments unfortunately).

DOWNLOAD COLOR PALETTE

DOWNLOAD REFERENCE PHOTO

Canvas size: 4000 X 3000

Layers: 7

*Grab all the Patreon brushes