Tiger Painting Steps

Some guys said they would like to see how I progressed with this
Even though this was done in Paint Tool SAI, the approach is identical for Photoshop.
I didn't use any special brushes, just the default airbrush.
I am using a pressure sensitive tablet for painting, wacom intuos4 (Photoshop seems to have a bug with brush strokes so I prefer to use SAI to make nice strokes)
The canvas size is 2000x1332 in this case, make sure your image is above 2000px in some dimension.

Finished piece (sort of): Tiger Painting 2
Reference: tiger

I hate it when these kinds of things get called Tutorials, because they are not tutorials, they are merely the steps taken, which you can look at and try and repeat with a different painting (which is what I did), but for a proper explanation I would have to go into depth on how and why certain things are done, and oh boy, there are tons of fun things to learn when learning to paint!
So the most I can do is share some tips that would have helped me out when I first started:

- The background, tiger, whiskers are on separate layers
- Start with solid shapes and carve them out, like sculpturing!
- Getting the right shape at the start is very important, it's usually better to restart entirely if you make too many mistakes, so do it quickly to save time!
- Use reference points on the image and draw dots to orient yourself if you have to, possibly use a ruler.
- Look at what angles things are in 2D space (image that it's a 2D shape, not a 3D one)
- After you get the shape right, throw in paint of dark and light and colors wherever, don't worry about accuracy, as long as it makes the image less flat.
- Notice how everything is blurry, this is not a soft brush, this is a hard semi-transparent brush (around 30-70% opacity)
- Sharp brushes give a focused look, soft brushes are good for gradients and blurry backgrounds (although here I worked very little on the background)
- Using a semi transparent brush makes things look blurry, interestingly using even a tiny bit of a hard brush tricks the eye into thinking that the picture is sharp. (Try and imagine the eyes without the highlight, please tell me if you want that as a separate step)
- The iris is a crazy mix of colors with a tiny brush.
- A blurry background makes sharp things look sharper! (Even if they aren't)
- Practice picking colors by picking the color by eye, then use the color picker and compare, try to remember where every color is located in the color picker tool, for example I was thinking of red-ish bark and sand while picking colors for this, since I knew where those colors were.
- Time your work! The faster you paint, the more you can paint and thus practice, do a drawing, then do it again in half the time. (Thinking of shortcuts is when you actually learn) Anyone can draw anything given enough time, but masters are able paint incredible things quickly. (Also if you do it faster, you can quickly place your idea on paper and get bored less)
- Painting from a reference allows you to learn how things look like in real life, it's easier to remember the shapes if you actually draw them. If you like an artists work, you can just copy their work, there is no shame in this as long as you credit where credit is due.

Hope you like this guys, and good luck!