Weekly Face

I don't usually attempt animals, the fur scares me, I really have no clue what I am doing. but a very good friend of mine recently lost her dog of 14yrs. I kept thinking about her, and wanted to have a go at doing her portrait. 

So here for Gina, is her lovely old girl MEG. 

I did take a photo of the initial sketch, but it was so faint it didn't show up, so here is the next stage. i started adding the very darkest patches, and then worked on the eyes. 

Adding more dark patches. As this dog is black and white, I had to figure out a way for both to show, with detail and shading and not have it just look stripey.. 

So I blended out the darkest darks, and even though the area next to them was also black, I shaded them much lighter. 

I  love how the eyes turned out.. 

Bringing in more of the mid shading..

 Adding, shading,refining.. At this point I was perplexed as to how I was going to create white whiskers? the only way seemed to darken the background and then pull out the whiskers with an eraser. I didn't want a very dark background as I thought that might dull the whole picture, so I dipped my finger into graphite and rubbed it onto the page. This darkened the paper just enough. 

 The final stage was to pull out all the highlights and white fur with a sharp eraser. The mouth area could be improved but on the whole I am pleased with it. 

RIP MEG. 

Darcy x