Many years ago I attempted this Tiger painting which was the first time I had attempted to create a black and white painting. It was done on a canvas board using oil paints and I loved only limiting my colour palette to two colours – Black and white. It’s a really good way of teaching yourself how to judge values – getting your lights and darks accurate is what will make your piece look more realistic rather than colour. You could draw a purple Tiger and it still look realistic as long as you get your values right.
For this piece I used a lot of the background to work for me. Working on the mouth which in most cases takes just as long as the face when making sure all the gum reflections and details are included was a lot faster on this piece because I already had so much of that dark undertone done.
Now, if I were to paint something like this again I could improve on this piece so much. I have improved my technique, how I use my paintbrushes and just grown in confidence. I NEVER paint the same thing twice. But maybe for this piece I could do a before and now version.
——————————————————————————————————————————————–