How to paint whiskers in watercolor

Watch the quick overview video:

Supplies

• Your painting, drawn out but not yet painted

• Palette knife

• Masking fluid

• Optional: Masking fluid remover tool or kneaded eraser to remove masking fluid, fine point black marker to draw black whiskers

Steps

1. I typically don’t draw out my whiskers in pencil, because it is too difficult to follow the lines using this method, so you can skip that part.

2. Dip your palette knife into your bottle of masking fluid so there is a nice coating on the backside.

3. Then use the backside of the pointy end of your palette knife to make swiping motions across your painting to create whiskers.

4. Let the masking fluid dry. Use your fingers, an eraser, or a masking fluid remover tool to remove any masked areas that you don’t like. You can also easily clean off your palette knife after the masking fluid has dried on it.

When you’ve finished painting

1. Use your fingers, an eraser, or a masking fluid remover tool to remove all the masking fluid from your painting.

2. Load a brush with plain water and gently scrub the ends of the whiskers (especially where they meet the face of the pet) to soften them. You can also let the dried paint surrounding the whiskers blend into the whiskers a little bit to give them a soft tint so they aren’t so bright white.

3. If you need to add black whiskers too, just use a fine point marker.

That’s it!

I know what you’re thinking- this is amazing! I want to mask out all the white areas of my painting with masking fluid! And I suppose you could- but you don’t have to. I typically only mask out areas that I want to have sharp edges, which rules out a lot of white areas in a painting.

Happy painting!

Questions? Ideas? - contact me! Lots of my tutorial ideas come straight from other watercolor artists- so please reach out using the contact form here.