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Wolf head and fur tutorial

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Well, :iconobsidianwolfess: commented saying I should do a fur tutorial, well, I did this wolf head tutorial with some fur tutorialness as well.

1. I drew a wolf face on from some reference (I don't care what some artists may say, using reference is the best way to get an accurate drawing. As soon as your drawing from memory, you lose that accuracy)

2. I started coloring with my most base color. In this case it was a yellow creamy color. I just colored the areas that i would like to see that color as a highlight.

3. I started coloring in my secondary base colors. Since I wanted the nose to have a brown tint to it, I started my second lair on the nose. As I put the second and third and so on layers down I no longer just color the area in, I start doing short strokes over the first layer. Doing this assures that the bottom layer will show through as you apply more and more layers over top. For the grey layer I just did quick short squiqqly lines in the direction the fur will be going.

I also start layering over between the wolf's eyes (keep in mind as you color this area, it will be one of the darkest fur areas on the face of a wolf) and the tuffs in the outside of the ears

4. Now I started layering up the grey fur over the wolf's face with a darker grey. Again I just do short sharp strokes using a wolf picture as reference to remind me how long the fur is in certain parts of the face. The length of your pencil stroke should be directly related to the length of the fur in that area.

I also layered some grey over the brown on his nose. I wanted the nose to have a greyish brown color to it, and since I have no colored pencil that color (some people may) I have to add some grey to the nose. Keep in mind that when doing pencil coloring to always start with the lightest layer first because it is extremely difficult to layer a lighter color over a darker color with pencil crayon.

In this layer I also started adding some shadow to the wolf's face. It's important to know which direction you would like your light to be before you start coloring because if you don't plan for it, you may end up with a picture that has a light pattern that doesn't look quite natural

5. In this layer I started adding black to the grey fur. I colored between the eyes a bit darker and I also added to the darker parts of the wolf's fur (depending on the coloring of the wolf you want depends on where these darker areas are)

I also started adding in the shades to the inner ear and to the nose.

6. I added the black to the inside of the ears. the shadow from the long fur inside the ears usually seems to make this a dark spot. I also colored the rims of the eyes. Sometimes if you look closely at a wolf picture you will see that they have a tiny wet reflection in the corner of their eye. Not always though. I put this here cause I like that look. :giggle:

I also colored the base color of the outer ear and added some shadow and grey fur to the light color around the eye and added the whisker area around the nose. I colored the darkest lair onto the nose, leaving a little bit light to show the reflection on the wet nose.

7. Here is the finished product. I lastly colored the eyes (a greyish blue color cause I think it's pretty) and colored the area round the lip of the wolf's mouth black, seeing as they have what I call black lips. :)

I also touched up the overall furr with a few short black strokes to bring out the highlights of some areas of the fur.

And I'm done. I've never done a tutorial before so I hope it may help some people. If not at least it shows the steps i go though to color pictures.
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SagwaX89's avatar
So true what you say about using a reference! Some of my (in my opinion) best works are based off of some kind of reference :) 
Also, great tutorial :D a lot of helpful tips and nice visual^^