Quilt Barn Pencil Drawing

Hello, last week’s I devoted my blog post to a charcoal drawing that I did of our dog Lucy. Just to be fair and so our other dog Anna would not be jealous, I am devoting this week’s blog to her. The charcoal drawing of Anna was done just after the one I did of Lucy. The goal of the two drawings were to practice and to get a get an idea on how to approach a drawing with both Anna and Lucy together. Hopefully, I will be working on that later this summer or next fall. In the meantime, I will give a short overview of the drawing of Anna.

Like the drawing I did of Lucy, I started by taking several photos of Anna and then selected the pose that I liked best. The photos were taken all had a single light source. I bring this up because when doing a drawing from a reference photo, it is easier if there is only a single light source. A reference photo with multiple light sources or lighting either directly in front or behind the subject, makes it harder to get an accurate drawing. Using a reference photo taken with a single light source will give strong shadows. The strong shadows will give you the ability to see and define the shapes. I would also not recommend using a flash when taking reference photos. These can make the image look flat and will make it harder to draw the subject.

After I selected the pose of Anna that I liked, I dropped the image into Adobe Photoshop and made several edits. The first thing I did was to cut Anna out of the image so I would not have the background as a distraction. The next thing I did was change the photo from color to grayscale. This will give a closer representation of what I want the final drawing to look like. The next thing I did, was save a few different copies of the grey scale image. I changed the brightness and contrast of each image and the levels. One image will focus on the darkest areas and another on the lightest areas. I also kept one with the values that I want to achieve in the final drawing. Doing this gave a better representations of some of the basic shapes that I used when drawing in the fur.

Once I was happy with my reference photos, I transferred a basic outline of Anna onto my drawing surface to ensure I had accurate proportions. Next, I started adding the darker values around the eyes. Then working from the top left to the lower right, I continued concentrating on the darkest areas first. Like the drawing I did of Lucy, I completed most of the dark areas using a blending stump rubbed across compressed charcoal. Using blending stumps, I can get a softer feel for the fur. Lucy and Anna are Snoodles (Poodle and Schnauzer cross) with exceptionally soft fur, so the blending stumps work well for rendering them. I only used charcoal pencils to really bring out the darkest values.

After finishing the darker areas, I moved to the lighter areas of Anna’s head and body. Anna has more white fur, so I was able to get more practice rendering lighter areas. For the light fur, I used a blending stump rubbed across a compressed charcoal stick. Then using very light pressure, I rendered the light fur. I would also use a kneadable eraser to lighten the fur and to give the impression of individual strands of fur.

Once that was completed, I went back over the entire drawing again several time with the eraser and blending stumps, working on pulling out more highlights and darkening other areas. Going back and forth between gently erasing and adding charcoal will also help give the fur depth. I also want to emphasize being gentle when doing this. If you get too aggressive with adding charcoal or erasing, you can damage the surface the paper. Then the drawing becomes difficult to work with.

Overall, I like how the drawing of Anna turned out. Hopefully, you enjoyed the charcoal drawing of Anna and my brief description of the drawing process as well. I would love to hear from you, so please leave any comments below. If you want to get weekly notices when I post a new article, please select the subscribe button. Thank you and have a good week.