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This is a drawing of my dog that I did for the animal challenge on Discord. As I posted on the other site, it was done as a tribute to him. He was unfortunately killed by another dog and it took me almost a year before I could emotionally bring myself to attempt it. I actually found the process healing and I feel that I captured his likeness. I’m not sure how well the drawing works beyond that, however. During the critiques of the winning drawings, Joe Weatherly talked about “drawing form not fur”. I did begin with the skeleton and underlying forms but since I wanted to emphasize his coat, I tried to “construct” with his fur and use it as a design element. I’m wondering now if I lost the form in the process. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
In my opinion, you did achieve the goal of describing his form with the fur. You can definitely feel the skeleton and the muscle underneath the abundance and beauty of the fur. I also love his little face. You definitely feel a personality there, not just a drawing. Lovely! Are you going to paint him as well?
Thank you so much, Raven! I always value your comments. One of the recommendations in Glen’s Animal Drawing Course is to take the animal and actually feel it and then build it from the inside out. It’s encouraging that you could feel the structure underneath. I’m so glad you could sense his personality too. That means a lot. As far as painting him, I haven’t painted since college. Right now, I’ve been concentrating on improving my drawing skills with NMA lessons, Master Mondays and some of the Monthly Challenges but it could be fun to start working with color again. Your latest watercolors are quite beautiful!
Thanks, Jan! I haven’t taken Glen’s Animal Drawing course yet, but I love the way that sounds – feeling it and building from the inside out. Yes, it’s great to work on drawing, so that sounds like a good plan. However, at the same time, for me at least, sometimes I get so caught up in getting “good” that I forget that this is fun. I think a painting or series of paintings of your beloved late doggie friend would be really cool. It seems like your emotions really come through in your work. Like, when you enjoy a subject, it tends to be obvious in your results. So I’ll bet that if and when you decide to paint him, the work will be captivating.
I think this is great. The details of the fur are amazing and the form in terms of anatomy is accurate and well portrayed.
To improve on the form, you can increase the portrayal of light and shadow. While this picture has a strong cast shadow directly beneath the subject, the form shadow isn’t very visible and looks more like ambient lighting. Moreover, the cast shadows aren’t portrayed well on the body of the dog, i.e. the head blocks the light and will cast a shadow on the neck.
If you’d like, I can do a draw-over on your drawing to show what I mean.
It’s a great drawing and it has a lot of character, the only thing I would recomend is to add more dark values to create a more “round” and lustrous feeling
Thank you, Linyi and Edgar, for taking the time to critique my drawing! I just looked at both of your websites. Amazing work!!! I’m honored to receive your feedback. The advice from other NMA artists has been invaluable in helping me improve. I’ve been focusing on the fundamental drawing and anatomy courses since starting NMA. My interest was primarily portraiture, but I’m excited to pursue to animal courses as well now and am encouraged by all of your comments.
Linyi, I would absolutely love a draw-over! Value design and control is something I have been trying to work on along with construction and it has been a challenging area for me. I feel like I’m starting to understand light and shadow better but have difficulty executing especially dark areas as both you and Edgar pointed out. Thank you in advance for any additional recommendations!
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