Pet Portrait Walkthrough (of sorts)

In this "tutorial", I will show you how I did this particular pet portrait:

So here are my tools. This is a colored pencil portrait, so no graphite pencils here! Except for the one I outline with typically, my trusty ol' mechanical pencil. 80% of the time I use Crayola and some variant of Prismacolor (Verithins are good for small areas/detail work, Premiers are good for blending/large areas, and any Prismacolor is just a really good colored pencil to have in general). You will see that I also have a Rosart! Boo, hiss. I'll be the first to tell you that Rosart colored pencils usually suck monkey butts, however they are good for layering. Which I do a lot of. It's an important part of how I use colored pencils. Moving along, now.

These are my reference pictures. As you can see, for one of the dogs I have three different light sources from which I must composite one for the actual portrait. I essentially take bits and pieces from all three in order to create the most pleasing image. The other dog is only seen in one picture, but luckily it's one with good lighting and a workable angle, so I don't have to worry about him.

So here's my underlying sketch! This is not a how-to-draw dogs tutorial, in case you were hoping for that...Dogs are fairly easy though, especially from the front! You can probably still see my foundational lines--a big circle for the head, with a cylinder shape for the muzzle, and two triangles for the ears. Now that I've placed them both on the page decently (as asked for by the client), mapped out the most important features (eyes, nose, direction of fur), let's go on to the next step.

It looks as though I've erased everything I just did. I did! I did erase everything. Well, mostly. It's hard to see in this photo, but there is still a faint outline--residue of the pencil that's more or less part of the paper now. It's all I need to continue. If you leave too much graphite on the paper, it will not blend with your colored pencils, and you'll have these ugly little dark marks poking out of the color (this is especially bad when you have lighter colors). Besides, at this point, we do not want to lean on our lines so much as building these dogs up by shape and color.

I always start of portraits with the nose. When you get that one figured out, it makes the rest of your color blocking easier--like having a center. Then I fill in the eyes. In the photos, these dogs had a bad case of the demon glow, but I'd asked the client as to their real color beforehand! (always a good idea) The key here is to make the pupils a darker color than the iris, as is the case with human eyes, but it's not always black.

Now I've started blocking in some of the color shapes for this dog's face. He's got typical German Shepard coloring, a mix of black/dark brown/tan. The one next to him is a solid black, and I've only just blocked him in (being a southpaw, I thought it better to work from the right side of the page over to reduce the chance of smudging). You can also see where the white gel pen makes its value known. I like to add little dots on the nose to punch in highlights, and also add a little eye shine. This eye shine can really make your subject look alive.

Here's an unfinished ear. I use a cool gray to help blend the peach with the black (warm gray works just as well).

And here's the finished ear! I've brought in some dark brown as well, to help blend, and because it adds a richer quality to the black.

There you have it! I've laid down the first (and second) layers for the facial markings and his neck fur. I typically use wider, longer strokes for the first layer, but when you're blending colors or when you're adding the final layer of color, I use smaller, quicker strokes to mimic the look of actual fur. Unless the fur is longer.

That dark brown really comes in handy for blending black with tan. Wooo! This dog is now completed, so we move onto his friend!

Rinse and repeat for this dog. He is a solid black unlike his friend, so the only colors I use here are black and a cool gray for some of the lighter spots.

Even though he's completely black, it's important to show the direction his fur grows in, instead of just coloring in the area. I left his fur with that shiny quality as it looks in the photos.

And wa-la! We are done! I've gone in with my white gel pen and added little highlights of fur in some places, and also included a sort of dividing line between the dogs so they stand out from each other. Unfortunately, my camera's chosen to reflect most of its light off of the black dog so he looks really washed out in this picture, but rest assured, the portraits almost always have richer color in real life. I hope this has been enlightening and somewhat helpful and useful; if nothing else, then a window into the way I work. :)