Watercolor Tips and Tricks for Painting Realistic Animals

Today I'm sharing some tips and techniques for painting a realistic African cheetah, while diving deeper into the importance of EDGES in your design. I'll show you how to achieve soft edges and hard edges in watercolor, why a variety of edges is important, and explain in more detail how you can use the wet in wet technique and the wet on dry technique in combination with each other for amazing and realistic results!

If you enjoy this video, please give it a 👍 and if you decide to try this painting for yourself, I'd love to see it! Just tag me on Instagram @e_olson_art and I'll check it out!
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Here is a full list of supplies used in this video (US Links):
1) Paints

UK/Worldwide Links (Jackson's Art Supply)
1) Watercolors

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- Editing Software: Adobe Premiere Pro

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[KimberlyCrick]

Great tips, I love how you present this in such a clear way to help artists easily understand and improve! Thank you for all the work that goes into your superbly made videos and art, beautiful work Emily :D

[indarranu]

I like the explanation you gave about hard and soft edges.

[charlottesmom]

Cheetahs are my favorite of the big kitties, love this!! 👍🏻🎨

[sayusayme]

Thank you, terrified about trying animals.
Great tutorial

[Camila-dboi]

Great tips!! I'll think of this during my next painting!

[lexispassion]

As a beginner myself, I'd really like to learn this kind of art. I have a few sketches done and I'm very exited to use watercolors. Thanks for the vid

[ohkart]

Awesome video and beautiful painting! Thanks for this. We love supporting fellow art channels! Best of luck in 2021, love from Canada

[geoffnunn]

Good advice and lovely painting. Thank you.

[crispycrumb]

thank you for the wonderful tips! i just know this will help my watercolor improve so much, so helpful! 💕

[ephraimudoka]

Thank you for the wonderful and useful tips 🙏🏾

[vixen]

merci beaucoup j'ai beaucoup de chance avec ce tuto je viens de m'acheter des faber castels durer (boite de 60) je vais tenter de reproduire votre peinture et je vais beaucoup apprendre 🙂✌

[manojkhalane]

This is just beautiful I am very happy

[bittencookiestudio]

I got water colors I’m so excited to use them😁❤️

[jilliancrawford]

This might seem weird but I am glad to know it's valid to paint fur patterns imperfectly. I tend to want to make something look like it was a 3D rendered model with each strand of fur being 100% accurate and that having brush strokes thinking that any ever so slightly imperfect brush stroke would destroy the illusion and ruin the subject or piece. It's something I still need to work on but it's very comforting to see that it's a lot more reasonable to do than I usually think it is.

[MyPaintingAffair]

Lovely tutorial.beautiful artwork. Thanks for sharing. Stay connected my friend.

[davidhorn]

Hi love your paintings but new to watercolour what would your tips be for portraits please thanks

[dessyedeeclark]

Great non-cutesy animal painting style, just what I've been looking for. I'd never heard of your Lebenzon brushes but this might be a helpful brand to try, as I frequently find my classic water color brushes slip in my hand, sometimes even fly across the room. I try to not overly grip my brushes to keep from painting to 'tight', but having the brush slip in my hand suddenly has caused many an "oops" event. The bamboo handles look more substantial, perhaps easier to grip? Have you painted with them long?

[EnjoyDrawingwithMary]

Wow! amazing painting! I have used this wet-on-wet technique on my fluffy cat painting and it looks so soft ;) Thank you for sharing this techniques and the explanations about the edges :) and I usualy paint all with ligher colors and then I paint the shadows at the end... what do you think, is that wrong? thank you Emily! :)

[camilastramandinoli]

I learned SO MUCH from your videos <3

[katesnow]

What did you paint the whiskers with? Was it acrylic?