Drawing Misty

A good friend of mine asked me to draw Misty. Misty was a loved and respected dog and will always be remembered. Once I learned the story of Misty I was honored to do her portrait.

The first thing to do as in all of my hubs, was to get the outline exactly right. For this I use a number of techniques, mainly a lot of measuring and comparing the outline to the original drawing. It MUST be right, or the finished drawing will not look like the photo.

Once I had the entire outline completed, I picked a spot to begin adding detail or shadows. I chose the cabinet with the dishes to begin. I chose it because I am right handed and as I am shading my drawing, I have a tendency to drag my hand across the drawing. This might smudge your work, so be careful. By starting on the left I can protect the detail work from being smudged.

I enjoyed drawing the dishes in this drawing. They are old fashioned with a nice pattern on the surface. In order to make them look realistic, you have to understand the pattern and copy it as close as you can on your drawing. I look for shapes and try and make them appear as close as I can. I found that the same shape came up over and over on all of the china. Once I had one of them correct it was easier to repeat it.

So many people have difficulty making their drawing look 3 dimensional, but if you listen to what I am about to tell you, you will be amazed just how easy it really is. All you have to do is use a tool that is relatively inexpensive. It's called a tortillion. Basically it's just a tightly rolled up piece of paper that resembles a pencil. You hold it like a pencil and use it the same way. The difference is that there's no lead! You are using the pencil marks on the paper and smudging or smearing them around with the point of the tortillion. This takes a lot of practice, but the results are incredible! Look through my individual photos on the right and see how the pictures begin to shape up, using the tortillion.

Once I had the dishes pretty much complete, I moved down to begin on Misty herself. I had already outline her, I just needed to begin with the shadowing and detail. The reference photo was hard for me to make out the detail in her face. Her hair, nose and eyes all seemed to blend together. The only way around this was to get another photograph, or try and lighten up the original to where I could see some differences. In this case, tightening it up did the trick!

If you look at the next picture, you will see Misty or at least part of her! I blew up the picture so that I could see her eyes better. This made it easier to transfer the shapes over to my drawing.

The following group of pictures shows the final stages of how the drawing came together. You can scroll through the slide show for this.

Below that is the finished portrait of Misty!

I have other portraits if you want to see them at www.soulreflectionsbyjeff.com