HOW I PAINT
BELOW Jaguar at
Rest, pastel on
museum board,
45.7x76.2cm
ABOVE Cheetah –
Large as Life VII,
pastel on museum
board, 51.5x31.8cm
to go without the darker tones down
first as a guide. Press down lightly
with the pastels until you have
established what those values are.
Once everything is blocked in,
you can then go full strength.
While drawing the big cats, I have
grown to love the ochre pigments.
They range from yellow to deeporange to brown, and all the big cat
species – whether a lion, tiger or
leopard – will require a fine blend
of these pigments, just in different
strengths and with the addition of
white or a straw colour. I often add
an odd stroke of blue or green to the
fur to suggest the reflected light.
To get the colours right, I do a lot of
blending – it’s one colour on top of
another, constantly. I lose count of
how many layers I apply to a single
painting. You must still be careful not
to overwork it. You don’t want to get
to a point where the surface won’t
take anymore pigment. If you do
make a mistake, use a dry brush to
remove the loose pigment and then
mop it up with a damp cloth.FOLLOW THE FORM
In order to make fur look realistic,
you’ve got to know the direction in
which it naturally runs. There’s no
need to paint every single hair either,
the trick is just a gradual build-up of
colour instead. Using gentle strokes,
blend more colours on top of one
another to create texture. The hardest
thing to paint is a lion’s mane, such asthe one in Panthera Leo. It’s such
a tangled, random, complex mess,
and it requires endless colours, which
often seem to disappear. Eventually,
however, it all comes together.
After the blocking in, I concentrate
on the details, such as the cat’s facial
features. For the whiskers, you need
to have a sharp pastel – I use Stabilo
CarbOthello chalk-pastel pencils, as
well as a handful of Conté à Paris
hard pastels [also known as carres
crayons]. As I work on such a big
scale, regular soft pastels are
suitable for all the other small details.
As for creating realistic eyes, you’ve
got to know how the light hits them.
It enters the cornea on one side and
illuminates the other, which is where
that white spot of light shows up.
A good example of this is in my
painting Cheetah – Large as Life VII.
Working on my portraits is intense
as there’s a lot of precision involved.
A change is as good as a rest for me
though, so I always have several
paintings on the go at once. It always
helps to return to something and look
at it with a fresh eye.
http://www.jonathancooper.co.uk