I would like to start to paint animals in acrylic paint, mainly cats and dogs, has anyone got any tips? is there a particular or specialist brush I should use to paint a fur effect?, and how is it best to mix a natural blue/black.
Many thanks for your help.

Hi Ian1! I really like using Acrylics and tackle many subjects, animals included. The best advice I can offer is to practice a few basic exercises on some scrap watercolour paper, or card, and try the following;
Lay a coat of something like a Burnt Umber / Yellow Ochre mix - at this stage, the colour isn't too important, and then using either a Flat or a Filbert, stroke a darker mix of the Brown / Yellow mixture with the side if the brush, quite dry, and with light pressure, in the direction of the "fur" and note the result.
Try the same thing with a dry (ish) Fan Brush, and also try then using a lighter mixture (use a little white in this) of the two colours, again "stroking the fur" in its growing direction.
Only by playing like this will you get the feel of what you can do, and end up with your favourite method.
For using a Blue Black for fur, note that the sheen of black fur reflects light for things around it. Try the same exercise as above with a mixture of Ultramarine Blue Burnt Umber, which makes a good "colourful" black which is not as "dead" as straight black. Try the same stoking exercises with the two colours again, dark and light, and lets know how you go on.
Come back to me if you need more, and I'll do my best to help.
Good luck and very best wishes,

Steve Williams

PA & RSC Wigan area

Thanks Steve.

That has certainly been a great help and has given me lots of things to try, you never know if I have some success I might post it on the site., in any event I will give some feed back.

Best Wishes
Ian

Hi Ian
Animals are my main subjects. Try working in layers and slowly building up strokes of varying shades This gives the illusion of depth in the fur. You don't need to do every hair, concentrate the finest details around the face to focus attention on the expression. If you are on Facebook check out my page (www.facebook.com/JulieNashArtistandTutor) I have an album showing a step by step lion portrait.

Julie