 Hello, artists of all levels and art lovers. This is Susan Jenkins and I'm here today in my home studio that I call Monet Cafe and I thought you might like to join me today because I'm going to be doing a dog portrait and this is a sweet fella that his his name is camo and his owners commissioned me to do a dog sketch of him. Sadly, he passed away and they just want something to remember him by. I do a lot of portrait work of animals that have passed away and and living animals because they're just such great parts of our lives and this one is going to be a sketch instead of a painting or a drawing and So I'm going to show you what I'm going to be using here. Basically. I've just got some different pencils that are of different hardness and darkness here and I am probably going to be using white as well and perhaps maybe some some grays or other shades, but mostly just black and white and I've got Also, I wanted to show you how I sharpen these. I take this pencil here and I sharpen it basically with an Exacto blade so that I get this long part of the lead showing the reason for that is that you can shade wider areas instead of shading the whole thing with just the tip it's a nice way to get broader Shading areas and I also and there's an exacto blade. I just sharpen it with that and I also use this Sandpaper pad. It is basically a sandpaper pad with 12 removable sheets What do you do with this is it's great for sharpening your pencils when you have made the lead long like this so you can get a Wide way to sharpen it like that instead of you couldn't put this on a pencil sharpener in other words That would not work. So you can sharpen it on these and like I said, it's got the 12 removable pads. So when one of them is Doesn't have any sanded surface anymore. You just tear it off and use the next one. It's kind of a neat thing I'm also going to be using a kneaded eraser and just a regular sharpener for my white pencil And I'm also again going to be using this toned gray paper that I really like working on because you're already starting in this gray Value instead of my work is upside down in here because I'm left-handed and I don't like working with the ring here So that's why everything's upside down, but I love working on the gray paper because it's already a value that is kind of Lighter to medium instead of working on white paper. So anyway, this is how we're gonna get going here I'm glad you're with me and good drawing skills is the core and the foundation of any great artwork So even if you're interested in painting and color, I hope you'll stick around for this one Just to see if you can learn anything from this about drawing skills. So I'm glad you're here with me Oh, and I did an initial sketch. I always like to do a quick initial sketch. I'm not done with this one yet Just to work out my composition. I'm not quite sure if I'm gonna include his foot or not or just his head So it's always a good idea to do a quick composition sketch and here we go We're gonna get started here and I hope you enjoy this lesson and I hope I do camo justice you