Painting Tatty Teddies In Oil Colours Part 1 of 2

My friend's twins are having their very first birthday. I wanted to give them something special and decided that it would be a great idea to paint each of them a picture of the ever popular Tatty Teddies to decorate their room. I went online to search for images with two teddies and found quite a few that I liked. Let me show you how easy it is to do an oil painting for decorative purposes over the following two blogs.
Part 1
Part 2

I prepare two canvasses by painting them green using acrylic paint. This is simply a base colour that will be covered, but it will set a happy tone for the painting and the eye will be able to pick it up subliminally.

I don't want to stick to the conventional grey tones of the tatty teddies and decide to mix my own purple to pain the teddies with. I start by mixing a blue, a red and a green.

Blue and red gives me this.

Adding the green gives me this.

I decide to add white.

The white brings it closer to what I am looking for, but now I want it somewhat darker.

I add Payne's Grey before I am happy with the colour.

I use charcoal to draw the image on the canvas.

I use a palette knife to plaster the paint on quite thick.

I then use an old brush, on which the bristles are hard and in disarry. I simply dab with the dry brush on the wet paint, pulling it away with the brush to create this 'curly-haired' texture on the teddies.

When I am done, my teddies look like this.

I then use black to outline the edges of the teddies so that they will appear more rounded, as well as to define the lines better.

I use white to create highlights.

The feet and mouths are also painted white, dragging some of the surrounding purple into the white so it does not appear quite so stark.

I use a small brush to paint the scars and stitching in black.

The noses are painted pink.

The patches are painted blue.

I paint the tree stump shades of brown and add highlights with white.

I paint the grass a vibrant green.

The leaves are painted a darker shade of green.

I finally decide that I find the flowers too distracting and cover them, before painting the background a pale blue. I add yellow touches to the grass.

All that is left to do, is to sign my name before the painting is done. In this painting the bears dominate the scene. In tomorrow's blog, we do much the same thing, but our focal bears take up much less space, allowing the background to add charm to the picture.

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy the books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.

Jy kan Kom Ons Teken en Verf Tuinstories hier koop.
Jy kan Kom Ons Kleur Tuinstories In hier koop.
Jy kan Tuinstories hier koop.
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