Sketch Friday

After reading an article about what differentiates a professional artist from the amateur, I decided that I would get out my sketchbook and draw, even if what I really wanted to do was pass out, face down, on my desk.  But, the professional artist does not wait for inspiration to strike.  Instead, she works at something every day.

The first drawing was so-so.  I drew this Newfoundland's face quickly, focusing on how large different patches of fur were and the lighting of each to determine my proportions.  As you can see, I ended up drawing over the original sketch.  For a little bit, I had a lopsided, four-eyed dog staring back at me from the page.  It was pretty trippy.  Now the dog is only slightly lop-sided, and because I did everything in pen, you can see that the dog's face was just a little too wide at first.  Okay, a lot too wide.  It doesn't have to be perfect, I chanted to myself as I slogged away at it.

Why do you do this to me.

It may be much less than perfect, but that dog is looking at you exactly the way that I wanted to look at everyone yesterday.

Ugh.  Feed me and tuck me in someplace cozy already.

That took roughly an hour and a half, and I had plenty of drawing time left.  It was time to go back to the old standby topic of interest- horses!  I was much more satisfied with this one, and I even reminded myself of Wesley Dennis's illustrations, who is best known today for his work with author Marguerite Henry.  Dapple gray is a difficult coat pattern to draw, by the way.  It requires quite a lot of patience and concentration for all of that detail.  That is where the beauty of suggestion comes in handy.  I think that this is the first drawing of two horses doing something other than standing around looking pretty that I've done in a while, and I used two reference photos for the composition.

"Tag"
graphite
small leather sketchbook