Jasmina Susak - How to draw Pets: with colored pencils

Howto draw pets with colored pencils

Introduction:

Inthis book you will find seven unique step-by-step drawing tutorials:puppy portrait, flying parrot, cat with aquarium fish, Germanshepherd, cat's face and two horses and learn how to draw them withcolored pencils. At the end of the book you can find two bonustutorials with wild animals: tiger and leopard, drawn on toned paper.I hope you will find them interesting and try to draw them too.

Afew tips that I want you to follow for a successful drawing:

-Don'tcompare yourself with those who draw worse than you. This way you canbe satisfied, although you still have a lot to improve.

-The more detailed, the better drawing.

-Patience and commitment are the most important in drawing. If youwant success, you have to work on drawing with patience, to love andenjoy what you do, to do that for yourself in the first place.

-Becritical with yourself. If you think that your drawing is not good,you are in the right direction, because you see your mistakes and youtend to improve on them. I've seen people being totally satisfiedwith their bad drawings and that's why they won't get better .

Weare going to draw the puppy portrait using only few pencils:

Touse a vivid color:

Tocreate a shadowed area, using darker nuances:

Todraw on toned paper having fun starting with white:

Todraw close-up cat's eyes:

Iwould recommend a two types of colored pencils: for the thinner partsand edges use the harder colored pencils such as Faber-Castell orLyra and for creating a smooth texture (skin, larger areas) use asoft colored pencil such as Prismacolors. You can also use acolorless blender, but for blending the drawn areas you can use evena white colored pencil. You don't have to get all the existingnuances of colored pencils; learn to mix them up and create a colorthat you don't even have. Of course, it's easier if you can afford abigger set of pencils. If you are not much experienced in drawing,you should use a graphite pencil for sketching, because unlike thecolored pencils they can be easily erased. I suggest having a tonedpaper and blending stump on hand.

Thisbook is about drawing with colored pencils, but I would recommend awhite ink gel pen, which is very useful for drawing over alreadydrawn dark areas. We can achieve it with white colored pencil, butit's really difficult, so this pen is great. It costs about $2 andlasts long.

Asa first you should draw a sketch and make it as proportional aspossible. Take time and patience for drawing the main lines, becausethey are the base of your drawing. If you find difficult to create aproportional sketch, you can use a grid-method as many artists do. Actually, always try to draw a main lines freehand and use the gridonly if the things don't look good and proportional in your sketch.Some of the advanced artists use only two-three lines in their grid,because this is enough for the orientation. If you're using thegrid-method, your sketching can go much faster, not to mention thatthere's much less erasing and the paper stays smooth and clear. Inthe next image you can see how it works, I've made one sample of mydrawing. Draw a grid, with mechanical pencil using a ruler, over thereference photo and draw a grid on a blank paper. Keep in mind thatif you press hard you will leave an impressed lines on your paperthat will show up after applying your colored pencil on top, so keepthe pressure light. So,draw the main lines of the squares ofreference photo to the squares of your paper. Once you're finishedwith your sketch, erase the grid lines.

* * *

Usethe next image as a reference photo and draw the main lines.

Youcan see in the next image my sketch, which contains only the mostimportant lines. You can draw more fur in your sketch if you want.

Let'sstart with the darkest parts. Using black colored pencil, draw thedarkest areas such as pupils, nostrils and the circles around theirises. Leave white color of paper for reflection of light in thepuppy's eyes. When you look at the reference photo you can see thatthose reflections of light appear as two white squares and usingblack colored pencil, draw around them. Also,you can draw the fullpupils and irises and then draw the reflections of light over them,using white ink gel pen.

Usinggrey colored pencil, draw the dog's nose. Highlight the parts of thenose where the light falls, using the light grey pencil. Draw a skinaround the eyes using grey pencil.

Now,using the same grey colored pencil, draw the shadowed parts of thewhite hair, under its nose, chin and mouth. Draw the lines followingthe direction of the hair growth. Always look at the reference phototo check the position of the hair. If you have a pet, you've alreadyknown about the direction of their hair growth. Using dark brown colored pencil, draw the irises and use the lighternuance of brown for drawing the irises next to the pupils. I usewhite colored pencil to whiten the dark brown areas to achieve this.

Inthe next image you can see these steps together, so maybe you canbetter notice how we were drawing the eyes in the previous steps.

Usinglight brown colored pencil,draw the lightest parts of the fur. Alwaystry to start your drawing different way. Once start with darkestparts, once with lightest ones. Also, you can try to draw an area byarea and I'm going to lead you into many methods in this book, so youcan find out which one way is the most appropriate for you. The pointis to try as much things as possible and to experiment with methods.This way you'll find your own style. In this tutorial,we're startingwith the lightest areas. Draw around the white fur, leaving ituntouched.