Though I call this painting "The Snow Tiger" there really is no such thing as a snow tiger and I think some people get a white tiger mixed up with snow leopards.
When I painted my first tiger painting I did a lot a research as was amazed to find out there were more than one kind of tiger even though I had seen white tigers at the Sigmund and Roy Tiger show in Las Vegas.
White tigers differ from other normally colored tigers in respect that they have blue eyes, creamy white fur with black stripes and a pink nose. I discovered that a tiger's stripes are like a human's fingerprint. There are no two stripe patterns alike!
It was interesting to learn that white tigers are not born from white tigers. Tigers get their color by a process called a double recessive allele thus a Bengal tiger with one normal allele and one white allele or two normal alleles are born orange. A white tiger is born when it has a double dose of mutant alleles and is born to a Bengal tiger that carries the unusual gene that is needed to produce the coloring of a white tiger.
Basically a snow tiger is really a white Bengal Tiger and they are good swimmers, but poor climbers and they are slower than other tigers, but stealthy enough to catch their prey. They are solitary cats and hunt by night. Their bodies grow to about nine feet and their tail can be 3 or 4 feet long. In the wild they live to about 10 years and their age is doubled in a zoo.
With all that in mind I proceeded to do my painting and decided to just do the head. First I drew my outline on 100% hand made cotton rag watercolor paper which I cut with a deckle edger. This painting is 11" x 7.5".
Then I made a wash of apple green and burnt umber and painted in my background in 2 layers letting the first layer dry before I applied the second layer.
Next I made a wash of burnt umber and ultramarine blue to create a grey wash and I painted in all the shadows where I wanted them. This I repeated in areas where I wanted darker shadows.
Next I painted in the stripes where I wanted them and repeatedly painted the stripes as each layer dried to get them as dark as I wanted.
I then painted in the eyes and the nose in as many layers of watercolor wash until I got them to look the way I wanted them to.
Next I mixed Payne's grey to create the grey areas where I wanted them to be.
I used number 8 brush on most of the painting, but I used my special brushes and for the life of me can never remember the correct name of them except they have spaces cut down between the bristles and I have several sizes of them that I use for grass, fur etc. These were the brushes I used to create the fur.
The white I used sometimes is a very watered down acrylic white or watered down gesso white and I apply this white in layers building up the fur alternately between the white, grey and black until I am satisfied. I find the Chinese white that comes in the water color section really is not anything that I can find satisfaction with. Here and there I added a wash of orange and burnt umber where I wanted it. Often I use an old hair dryer to speed the process along.
This is the result.
"Tread the Earth Lightly" and in the meantime May your day be filled with
Peace, Light and Love,
Sign up Now to be a SearchWarp author:
http://SearchWarp.com/Register.asp
