 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Come on in the studio with me today as I give you a lesson on drawing dogs. While this video lesson here in Monet Café will have lots of information and instruction, the extended content is on my Patreon page. So if you'd like to support this channel and become a patron for only $5 a month, that's the link where you can do that. There's also a clickable link at the end of this video. Okay, let's get started. Sketching dogs. There are multiple reasons why doing portraits, whether it's animals or people, will benefit you as an artist. One, it improves your drawing skills, which is a strong foundation for any painting. Two, you get to look at these cute little faces as you draw. And three, it's a great way to earn some money. If you get good at dog sketches and paintings, that is a very popular item that people purchase from artists. This is actually a dog portrait that I did for someone in our group and I just thoroughly enjoyed painting Sweet Molly. What a face. She is the most adorable little pug. All right, let's get started with this lesson where I will share with you tips and techniques for drawing more successful dog sketches. My recent week of multiple dog sketches all started with this little guy, Norman. A friend of mine on Facebook shared her little rescue dog, Norman, and his face was just so darn cute. I literally sketched him while watching TV one evening. Well, of course, I shared it with her. She had to have it. And then all the comments came from that of other people wanting me to sketch their dogs. So it's a great way to get some business if you can improve your sketching skills with dogs, cats, animals, people, whatever. I want to go over my supplies here and I have a lot of people ask me about this little holder that I keep my sketchbook on. I also keep my iPad on it. It's from Ikea. It's made out of bamboo. So if you just go on Ikea site and type in bamboo holder, it should pop up. I think it's about $15. When I sketch, I really like working on a toned paper. I like this toned gray paper from Strathmore. And it's a great middle value, so you actually can add white to it. The charcoal pencils I'll be using, I like using charcoal mostly rather than pencil, because it behaves kind of like pastel. I'm using these Derwent charcoal pencils in three different darknesses, light, medium, and dark, three different values. And I'm also using a little stick of white pastel. This might be a new pastel, but again, it's really neat to be able to use white. I'm using a kneaded eraser. This one's pretty dirty, but these are great because they don't tear up your paper or leave residue on your paper if you need to erase. Another product I'd like to share is something that was recently shared in our Facebook group. This is the AFMAT art pencil sharpener. I got mine on Amazon. I think it was around $25. We have such a hard time as pastel artists finding anything that sharpens pastel pencils and, as you can see, charcoal pencils with a good point. This thing works great. As you can see here, it's actually $27. Okay, let's get started. The client actually wanted a 5x7 sketch, in this case two of them, and I give rates according to sizes. So she chose 5x7, so I went ahead and cropped the reference photo that she gave me to 5x7, and I created these little 5x7 areas on my sketchbook to be able to work from. I had accidentally started with a regular pencil and I quickly switched to my charcoal pencil, but I wanted to show you this reference photo that I popped up on the side here. This is the photo that she gave me. It was not in a 5x7 format. I have a little app on my phone. I think it's just called Photo Editor. It's a free app that will allow you to take a photo and crop it to a standard size, in this case a 5x7, and it doesn't automatically put these crop lines on it, but it will as you're trying to crop or move the little holders on the edges there. So what I do is I just do a screenshot of that because I like these little divider marks. When doing a dog portrait, you want to get it right, especially if it's for someone. You want to get it accurate because dogs have expression. They have individuality and you want to make sure you capture that. So while the first sketch I did you saw of Norman, I literally just sat down and sketched without any really making any grids or any seriousness like that. If you're doing something as a commission, you definitely want to get this right. So these little grid marks, while I don't transfer them to my drawing surface, I sometimes, and I think in this case, make little marks. This is divided into thirds, as you can see, in thirds vertically and thirds horizontally, and I'll make little marks. There's one right there. I had it a little bit too high, I think. So I make those little third marks and I reference that visually just as I'm looking back at my reference photo. Now I had my reference photo on my iPad. I was just looking at it and you can kind of focus on those little boxes. Now I don't like to draw the grids for another reason, is I think when you get too much grid work going on, you lose the spontaneity or the painterly feel or the energy of the painting. So I just use them for general guide marks and it really works well for me. And my glasses, I was going to apologize for the reflection of my glasses on my sketchbook there, but I actually realized this is a great way for you to see. I'm going to speed this up in a minute. When I speed it up, you'll really be able to see how much I'm looking at my reference image. And now, of course, you can't see it. Oh, there you go. But I'm looking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So a great tip is to draw what you see, not what you think you see. In other words, you should be constantly looking at your reference image and almost zoning out and forgetting what it is you're drawing. At this point, you are drawing shapes and concentrating on spatial relationships. And I'm often looking at the negative space as much as the positive space. For example, that little area right up there is the negative area. Like if you look at the reference image of the dog's right ear, right to us anyway, and you see the dark area above his head, that has a shape. And you can train yourself. All these things are learnable, but it takes practice and doing it over and over and over again. You can train yourself to where you kind of more naturally see the negative and the positive shapes, and you're kind of working them both at the same time. Now getting eyes positioned correctly and sized correctly is crucial. What is the expression? The eyes or the windows to the soul? Well they are with dogs too. Dogs have their little expressions in their eyes that show their emotions and and their individuality and their personality. So getting the eyes great is awesome. Another neat thing about working with charcoal is it erases very easily. I'm not pressing really hard at this point with any of this. I'm just lightly getting things in. I will end up kind of erasing and moving and adjusting things as I work. But when you don't fully commit to something, when you get started, you have a lot more flexibility to change things as you work. So don't be afraid to be constantly changing. See I'm actually measuring where some things are in relation to other things. I just call this spatial relationship seat that I realized I have these eyes too high. So go ahead and move it. Make the adjustment before you get too serious into it. Have you ever gotten into a drawing and you're going along and you think it's just going great and then you get I don't know 60% done and you step back and you go oh my gosh that eye is too far to the left or too high or too low and then it's like when you change that thing you realize something else is off and so these beginning stages are crucial. Take the time. I find that when I start a sketch like this the most tedious part is this part is the beginning it's just getting everything in accurately. You'll notice now well I am going to speed this up a little bit but if I had the whole video in real time by the time I get to the end of the strong I'd say the last 25 maybe 30% of it. I'm flying. I'm just zipping right along because I've got all of the foundation in there correctly and so that really is the most crucial crucial phase of your pet portrait or animal I mean any animal portrait or human portrait is to do this measuring and this strategic placement of things in your drawing or in your sketch. All right this is where the instructional content ends for this particular Monet cafe YouTube video but I actually do have some more content when I start the second dog portrait so stay tuned. I do have a little bit more when I get to the next sketch and if you would like the extended content you can consider becoming a patron of mine on my patreon page for only five dollars a month but you can still learn a whole lot by watching the rest of this video. I have learned most of what I I know now as an artist just from observations so hopefully you got a lot of great tips already and feel free to use my reference image if you would like to create this yourself recreate this yourself or sketch your own dog or friend's dog and if you do please share it in our Facebook group Monet cafe art group on Facebook. All right guys happy drawing! All right so here is sweet Aussie and I forgot to mention the other little puppy on the right side his name was Max. Okay it's time to get started on Goku. Goku is a I don't know he looks like a feisty little fella and this was an odd kind of composition I again put it in my little photo app converted it to a five by seven took a snap like a snapshot of the grids so I could see it once again I'm working with the three values of Derwent charcoal pencils the light the medium and the dark I've got my gray toned paper my kneaded eraser I've marked out my five by seven area and I've got my white pastel so this was basically going to be more of the same I'll keep this at regular speed I'm starting with the light one right now I'll keep this at regular speed to begin with and then I will speed it up a bit more here you can see where I am making a general idea of the the grid that is in the reference photo the thirds three sections on the tops and the sides and again I do this in general sometimes I feel like oh my my measurements aren't right I usually don't break out a ruler but I kind of eye it and this does get better the more you do it but you can for a quick tip you can basically just use your pencil or whatever to kind of get an idea if your thirds are right if you don't feel like getting them getting your ruler but again if you want to be super precise get a ruler go ahead and make your little marks like that for this sketch it will be more of the same all of the same things apply from the previous dog sketch so I am going to speed this one up to music but just enjoy pay attention again notice my glasses the reflection of my glasses back forth back forth back forth back forth constantly looking at my reference image I found this composition was actually harder you know to get the gesture of the dog with the vantage point or the viewpoint of being above like that it was kind of a little bit awkward so I had to make sure I really got the positioning of the feet and the body correct and the face was a lot smaller I had to zoom in a lot to see him like I said he looked kind of like a feisty little fella and I wanted to capture his personality and that little kind of sneaky grand he's got on his face dogs are so awesome okay so enjoy this while I speed it up play some music and stay tuned I'll be back at the end don't go away all right I noticed that there was a bit of a shadow I could see kind of where the light was coming from underneath his feet and when you add a shadow like this it really grounds the item or the dog or whatever you're drawing to the surface otherwise it kind of looks like they're floating but this really helps you get that three-dimensional effect is when you add a shadow um underneath your object or critter so here's the final of Goku and I've got to get busy because I've got about three more dog sketches to do from people who saw these online so it is really a great way to earn some extra money if you can get good at sketching people's critters I'm actually doing a lot before people ask and then they want to buy it so that works well too all right guys so happy painting get out there and draw some animals and have a great time