How to Draw a Realistic Dog Portrait | Colored Pencil Tutorial

Let's talk today about drawing dogs with coloured pencils. This is something that I think can feel very tricky but isn't as hard as you might think, particularly if you follow a series of key steps. So let's go through the most important things that you need to know in order to draw a realistic dog and I'll show you we can draw this cute little dog here. So let's talk about the materials you'll need and some are more important than others. Obviously you'll need a set of coloured pencils. I'm drawing here with Prismacolour pencils but you don't need exactly these pencils. In fact you could create a great drawing of a dog with something cheaper like Crayola. What's more important is getting the right kind of paper. Now I frequently see people trying to create drawings on printer paper or sketch paper. You want to have a really good thick drawing paper that you're able to build up a series of light layers on. Now I like working on something called Bristol board. This is a very smooth paper. It's definitely worth investing in the paper if you want to get good results. Now beyond that you will need a pencil sharpener. Again it's really important that we have nice and sharp pencils, particularly if we want to be making really soft and light thin lines when we're building up our fur. And I also want some way of looking at a reference photo. So because I'm focusing on drawing dogs realistically, I want to work from a reference photo. That is going to give me the most realistic results. Now I always look at my reference photo on an iPad. I particularly like that I can zoom in to see all of the details. But you want some way of looking at a reference photo. Now the reference photo is actually one of the most important parts of drawing a realistic dog, particularly getting the right kind of reference photo. You could be an absolutely amazing artist but if you're working from a bad reference photo it's never going to create a good drawing. So the key things I'm looking for in a reference photo is firstly a really good level of detail. Some of the reference photos that I see people working from you can just see nothing. You want to be able to see all of the detail of the fur because we need to be able to see the direction that it's going in. And details like the details of the eyes. You also want your reference photo to have really good contrast. You want to have really nice lights, a good amount of mid-tones and some really good dark values. Now this reference photo here is a really good example of this. If you're taking your own reference photo I do find getting your dog to sit by the window with the window to the side just creates some really nice and quite soft lighting. Finally I find that the drawings come out much better if you are working from a reference photo at the dog's eye level. If you're looking down on the dog it just never comes out as nicely in a drawing. Now once you've got the right reference photo you can then start creating the drawing. And whenever I'm drawing a dog I always like to start with the eyes, nose and mouth. Simply because I think it looks a bit odd if you don't. Now before I talk you through this dog in detail I do have a full course of this dog available on my Patreon. I go through in a huge amount of detail, much more detail than I can fit in this video, on how to draw dogs. And I have not only this dog drawing but loads of different subjects in both coloured pencil, watercolour pencil and graphite pencil. For every drawing I include really in-depth instructions, all of the real-time footage, details of all the materials I'll be using, sketch outlines and the reference photo. I have some nice and quick drawings and some much longer more detailed drawings. Check out the link in the description. So let's start off by looking at this dog's face. And I want to start this in the way that I start all of my drawings. I want to be looking at the eyes, nose and mouth and working from the lighter colours towards the darker colours. So I'm starting off with the eyes here and the lightest colour I can see within the eyes is a very light grey. Particularly of the patches of light. So I can mark in the patches of light with a light grey and then move on to a slightly darker grey. Before mapping in the main colour of the iris this reddish brown is the lightest colour I can see in this section. And I'm literally going to break down the eyes, nose and mouth into a series of shapes looking at this in one section at a time. So filling in the lightest colour in each area. And actually most of the colour within the dog's eyes I would say is pretty dark. So once I've filled in the grey and the brown of the eye I can then use a particularly dark brown to start filling in around the edge of the eye. And you literally for now want to get something on the eyes and then we can always adjust it and add to it a little bit later. But as I say I just think it looks a little bit odd if you don't put something down on the eyes, nose and mouth before building up the bear. So let's build up the nose in the same way looking for the lightest colour and blocking that in. So this is again a grey, a slightly different grey this time. And then I can mark in the darkest colours again with that same dark brown that we used for the eyes. Filling in the nostrils, the line down the centre of the nose and just generally adding some shading literally just looking at those lights and darks and roughly mapping this in. Now generally speaking there is a lot of detail to the nose of a dog. There's generally a lot of kind of little dots built up on it. I'm not worrying about building that in at this point particularly because the nose actually, although I'm quite zoomed in right now, the nose is quite a small part of the drawing and when you look at the drawing from a normal viewing distance you're not actually going to be able to see all of that detail. So on the nose right now I really need to only focus on blocking in the shapes. I don't need to worry about those sorts of detail. There is the sort of detail that we need to be adding on the fur but we won't be able to really see it on the nose. And then let's do the same for the mouth. Again I'm looking for the lightest colour within the tongue here which is quite a light pink. I can block in all of the tongue with this pink colour and then start using that same pink to map in some of the shapes, some of the kind of creases on the tongue before moving on to a darker kind of purpley pink just going over these colours. I'm literally just looking at each area like it is a series of shapes and lights and darks and putting something down and as I say we can tweak it a bit later. I always think when you first draw in the eyes, nose and mouth of a dog it's always going to look a little bit odd because you haven't got all of the context of the fur around it but it will start to make more sense as we add in that fur. So you can see me working through from those lightest colours towards the darker colours just using that dark brown once again to block in the shapes. And so reasonably quickly we've got our first aspects of the dog marked in. We've got something down for the face. Let's make a start on the largest part of the drawing which is adding in the fur and what I always like to do is start off by building up some base layers. To begin with I'm not worrying about adding in any fur texture, I literally want to get some colour down on the paper. So I can start off by looking for the lightest colour that is within the fur and I would say that that in this dog is a very light cream and I'm just going to put a really nice smooth even layer of this colour over the whole of the dog. I want to be putting this down really nice and lightly because I will need to build up a lot of colour and texture over the top of this and I just want to apply it in as consistent way as possible. So you'll see that I'm working in some kind of circular motions to try and get the pencil down nice and smooth. Once I put down this first colour what I now want to do is start mapping in the key shapes of the fur. So the fur is made up of a series of lighter patches and darker patches. I want to look for the next darkest colour so this is still a yellow but an earthier slightly darker yellow and I can use that to map in the colours underlying the fur. So sometimes it's helpful to kind of squint at the reference photo and it will stop you from being able to see all of that detail and I'm literally putting this colour down anywhere there is this colour or darker. I'm still not worrying about building up any fur texture, I still want to put this pencil down nice and smoothly and you can see because this is quite a light colour I have to put down a large amount of this pencil but quite quickly this is looking like a dog. Obviously it's not looking very realistic, it's only made up of two colours on the fur right now but it is kind of getting the rough template of a dog. So I can now move on to a darker colour and I'm literally working from those lighter colours towards the darker colours mapping in those underlying colours of the fur. I'm looking for the most obvious underlying colours of the fur, I'm not worrying about all of the different sort of obscure colours that you can see, I'm just looking for the main colours. So here I'm applying a light brown and again I'm putting this anywhere where I can see this colour or darker and I think it's really coming together quite quick. I kind of think of this as me getting my bearings and working out what needs to go where and it's going to make building up that fur texture 10 times easier. So I can add a kind of reddish brown still nice and smoothly before moving on to a very dark brown to go over those darkest shadows. Now do notice that I am still pressing nice and lightly, at no point particularly to start with do we want to be pressing hard, we still have a lot of pencil to build up and this is my first step. By the time that I've built up all of these underlying colours I do have something that looks like the dog I want to end up with. What I can now think about now I've built up all of these base layers is adding in some of the fur texture. So what I want to do is work through those same colours adding in some of that fur texture. So I'm starting off with the light brown that I used in the base layers and I want to be mapping in this fur. Now all I'm doing here is gently brushing my pencil against the paper to create some very soft and light flicks. Now the most important thing that I'm doing here beyond making light flicks is working in the direction of the fur. When you look at a dog's fur you'll notice that it's not all going in one direction. Above the eyebrows are curving round for example and the cheeks are generally going out to the side whereas the chest of the dog is generally pointing downwards. I want to be looking at those directions and making flicks in those directions. You also to make the soft flicks want to make sure that you've got a really sharp pencil. Do frequently sharpen it. It will make much softer fur flicks. Now after the first few colours it's not looking amazing. We need to keep working our way through the same colours that we did for the base layers to build up all of this texture. So I'm using more of the reddish brown here and then I can use the much darker brown next. Still again working in those small flicks. You can see here the fur around the top of the eye is flicking round so I'm making some kind of curved flicks here and I only need to build up the darker pencil on areas where there is darker fur. I do think it builds up reasonably quickly. Now I am actually also going to use the black pencil to add some flicks in the absolute darkest areas. I don't generally like to use too much black on animal drawings. I just think it's a little bit harsh but actually we will be putting more colours over the top of this to tone it down and in actuality I don't have a pencil dark enough without using the black. Now once I'm happy with all of the fur texture what I now want to do is start smoothing out the fur and brightening everything up. When I first built up the fur texture I think it can look pretty kind of scratchy so I want to smooth everything out. Now I'm starting off here by focusing on the eyes, nose and mouth. I think that they're not looking dark enough, they're not popping enough so I can go back over all of these areas with very similar colours to what I did at the very beginning. I just need more and it's much easier to see that now that I have built up a decent amount of the fur. I also want to smooth out the fur itself so I'm once again going to work through those same colours and go over the fur with the circular motions like we used at the very beginning. You can see that I need to make the side of the face here look a little bit darker, it's looking too light at the moment so I'm lightly going over this area with circular motions and you can still see the fur texture through here, it's just a little bit softer and less scratchy. You can see me going over that area where we put the black to tone down that black but also make the whole area look a bit softer and more consistent and although it looks a little bit odd to start with, let's start really working through those colours. So I can work with circular motions going over a lot of, particularly the left hand side which is generally the lighter side of the dog, with this kind of yellowy colour and that's going to brighten up a lot of the fur but I'm still doing this with those circular motions. In some areas of the fur actually I can see quite a lot which I haven't added any in yet so let's build up a little bit of that grey colour, particularly on the shadowed half of the dog and then I'm always comparing my drawing to the reference photo and thinking about the main colour that's missing. So for example on the left side of the fur it kind of has a little bit of pink on then the tongue is really standing out, it's not looking quite right and the tongue has a lot of purple in it that I haven't added yet and I would say that I'm pretty much working on the drawing as a whole now, I'm not looking at the eyes, nose and mouth and fur separately anymore, I want to be gradually building up the colours and smoothing it all out. Now this beige pencil I found particularly good for this colour fur where I want it to keep how light it is but just brighten it up and then I can maybe add a little bit more flicking motion, just a tiny bit with this dark brown, just particularly on the darker areas I feel like some of it's got a little bit lost or maybe needs to be made a little bit darker but the key thing is that we want to adjust all of these colours so that it's looking much more vibrant. Now at this point the drawing could be finished but what I want to do now is add in some whiskers and I'm going to use a craft knife to do this, so this is very much an optional step, I think it looks fine without the whiskers. What I'm doing is very gently using the craft knife to scrape away the top layers of pencil to show the lighter under layer, you can see a little bit better on this side, I'm just very gently scraping away that pencil and it's making a very light line where I will want that whisker to be. Once I've gone over and gently scraped away all of the pencil leaving these very light whisker marks, what I can then do is go over these whiskers with the white pencil just to help them pop a little bit more and maybe use quite a dark pencil to add a very light shadow underneath those whiskers just to help them pop a little bit more and maybe make them a little bit more defined. But then that is it, that is the full process that I use to draw a dog. Start off by picking the right materials and selecting the right reference photo before building up the eyes, nose and mouth first, then the underlying colours of the fur, building up the fur texture and then adjusting all of the colours. Now if you do want to go through this with me in a lot more detail, it is available on my Patreon and if you want to go through the general fur texture that I use in a bit more detail, I do have a full video explaining it here. Happy drawing guys and I'll see you in the next one!