My goal this year is to do more portraits in graphite. After spending three years on Sadie Valeri online drawing/painting program, I finally finished up this year.  I wanted to apply the techniques and concepts that I had learned to this drawing.

This portrait of Tara, a black lab, took about six hours to do. I’ve worked from a photo that a client had provided (though I had used a different photo to complete a commission for this client).

In the photo there is lighting coming from the right side but reflective light all around. So there is a slight change from dark to light. Here I did a lot of squinting to simplify the dark and light shapes. Those shapes I identified as planes. So I worked on the concept of the value sphere – establishing the core shadow, getting lighter as the shape come to the light.

What I would like to do is to learn about animals head anatomy. It would help to understand the planes more.

photo reference

first pass with graphite

more layering with graphite