Painting Wildlife: Acrylic & Mixed Media

Paint vivid, lifelike animals as award-winning artist Sharlena Wood guides you through a variety of accessible acrylic, charcoal and pastel techniques. Discover how to render accurate proportions, build dimensional form and convey drama as you create your own unique wildlife images. Learn to depict distinctive fur and feather textures using wet and dry media, and enhance your work with luminous highlights. Integrate textural medium with delicate acrylic washes for captivating contrast, and bring expressive energy to your creations with Sharlena’s tips for painting realistic animal eyes and features. Bring the power and excitement of wildlife to your easel with essential mixed media skills! View video about this class here.

Materials Needed

• Watercolor paper, 140 pounds to 200 pounds
• Liquid/fluid acrylic (the colors Sharlena uses are included in your downloadable class materials)
• Dry media ground or pastel ground (acrylic medium)
• Matte polymer medium
• Nepheline gel
• Acrylic texture medium: coarse or extra coarse
• Synthetic acrylic paint brushes: a variety of small and medium brushes, including a 2” (5.1 cm) wash brush
• Palette knife
• A variety of hog-bristle brushes for drawing media: small, medium and large; at least one of each, new or clean hog-bristle hair
• Soft pastels (basic set of colors or a selection of your choice)
• 4B graphite pencil
• 6B black charcoal pencil
• White charcoal pencil, or a white pastel pencil
• 6 ounce (170 g) jar of charcoal powder
• Soft-lead pencil sharpener
• Kneadable eraser