★ The painting process

Step by step.

A closer look at how an original acrylic painting actually comes together — twelve stages, from blank canvas to finished piece. No digital steps, no shortcuts. Real paint, real time, all by hand.

Step one of the painting process

Step one: Rough shapes

In this case, I just used sausages to represent the reindeer bodies. Simple shapes helped me to focus on the movement and direction without getting distracted by detail.

Step two of the painting process

Step two: Add features

Basically just adding rough heads, necks and legs onto the sausages and getting an idea of body shape. Both steps 1 and 2 use a lightened version of the background colour.

Step three of the painting process

Step three: Refine features

Here I used a white paint to get the features more dialed-in. The white stands out against the light grey sketch paint from steps 1 and 2.

Step four of the painting process

Step four: Mute the sketch lines

I applied a semi-thin layer of the light grey sketch colour over the whole piece. This effectively killed my initial sketch lines, but the white lines remain visible.

Step five of the painting process

Step five: Get the animals locked-in

Using the faint white lines as a guide, I made painted black outlines to define the reindeer as best as I could. The black will be visible once the colour gradient is applied.

Step six of the painting process

Step six: Add extra features (optional)

Sketched and lined the antlers. I wrote "optional" since now I might opt to skip this step and just freehand the antlers later once all the colour has been applied.

Step seven of the painting process

Step seven: Apply main colour

Add colour gradient. Must be thick enough to convey richness, but thin enough to let the black lines show through.

Step eight of the painting process

Step eight: Add light colour

Light colour, in this case the white fur on the reindeer.

Step nine of the painting process

Step nine: Add dark colour

Dark colour — faces and dark fur patches. These steps are probably the most confusing and messy. Keep pushing, it'll be worth it.

Step ten of the painting process

Step ten: Paint extra feature

Paint the antlers colour. This is where I'd probably just freestyle them on, but the guidelines underneath are handy if you lack confidence.

Step eleven of the painting process

Step eleven: Add outlines and highlights

This is where the magic happens. Add separation between subjects, and sculpt contours with thin lines.

Step twelve of the painting process

Step twelve: Complete

Hey presto! This is usually the point where I can't stand looking at the painting anymore. Usually takes me about 3 months until I can start to think it looks ok.

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