Brian & His Dog

This portrait was done for a customer which was my sister in-law and was a gift for her fiance for Christmas. The only picture I could get for this was a small picture which she blew up at a wal-greens type of store.

The portrait was done on Strathmore Bristol Vellum(heavy weight) and is 11x14, But the actually drawing was 8x10. The pencils I used were Derwent Graphic pencils. I used different hardnesses for my shading which were... well to tell you the truth I didn't recall. You'll find with this work in progress that I was not very organized. Hopefully with the next one I will be.


Here you can see I started just as normal. This is my line drawing and basic layout of the drawing.



Like most of my portraits I start with the eyes. I usually start with the left eye and move on to the right eye. Once I'm done with these I'll move onto the nose. At this stage the portrait looks kind of goofy because the whole face isn't complete. I always get my wife's opinion at this point to see how it looks. All I get is "i don't know, I need to see it done cause that's when it always looks good" lol.


Once I get the eyes & nose two where I like it I move on to the mouth. At this point I gradually work out to the rest of the face as I do the mouth. I just kinda go with the flow.


I usually save the hair for the last thing on the head. For the most part it will be where the darkest shadows are in the drawing. First, as in the image, I layout the dark shadows lightly.


Here I completed the hair. Once I have all the dark areas shaded I go back over them with a dark/softer lead and go into the highlights with it a bit. This gives me the illusion of bright high lights.


And this is the final drawing. I know, you are like "WHERE'S THE DOG'S WORK IN PROGRESS!!!" Like I said I was unorganized with this WIP. When I got to the dog I got into it and was determined to get it done fast. So I didn't even stop to snap a few pictures. This is actually my first time drawing a dog and I think it turned out pretty nice. It was hard to tell what direction the hair was going in the original picture. So I used my artistic license(you can buy them off me for 10 bucks each) and tried to guess. The dog is a short haired dog so it wasn't all that big of deal, but I wanted to give it some hairy feeling to it... since... dogs are hairy lol.

Any way I hope you enjoyed and I will really be more organized and more detailed in the next one which should be soon.