Milly's owner Kevin has asked me to produce a pencil portrait drawing for his wife as a gift. Milly was none to keen to pose for me and had to be physically held still as she had more important terrier issues to sort out!! Milly is a very active Parsons Terrier and she is lucky enough to go to work with Kevin every day, but this does not seem to wear her out at all
Milly's is to be a graphite pencil portrait drawing as she is black and white anyway. Here you can see I have fully sketched in the outline and given small hints of fur direction to demonstrate Milly's shape and features. This took about three hours to complete ensuring everything is in proportion. Milly's portrait is to be a head and shoulders portrait only. Once I have the outline sketched in and was happy I began as usual with the eyes. Milly's eyes are very reflective and shiny so they look quite deep already. Any animal portrait artist will tell you the eyes are the most important part of any portrait to get right, as a slight mistake can result in the portrait not looking like it's original photo reference.
This is where the real work begins, this is what I consider 'filling in' on graphite pencil portraits. I have my sketched fur direction hints to follow and I begin to work outwards from Milly's eyes. I work on Milly's left eye (the right side of the page first) and then her other eye to make sure her portrait looks like her photo. Once I am happy with both eyes, I return to the right ear as you look at the portrait and work my way back across the page. As I work I tweak areas I feel need a little more work, as I work across I felt Milly's eyes were not quite dark enough and did a little more work on them. At this stage I need to do more work across the top of Milly's nose as my portrait shows her nose as being far shinier than it is in her photo so I will need to 'dull' it down a little. All the pencil strokes I make are in the direction of the dog's coat, this is so important for a pencil portrait drawing as it gives the very real impression of fur. Sometimes I actually turn the page around to ensure the correct direction of pencil strokes is achieved.
Milly's right ear is completed now as is much of her chest, I have briefly sketched in her shoulders but due to the reference image I am not entirely sure they are correct so I need to investigate this before beginning to fill them in. I will no doubt go back and add more depth to the portrait but I am quite pleased with progress at this stage. So far I reckon to have spent about 10 hours on this portrait so it has been quite time consuming and it's not even finished yet!!! This image seems to be slightly grey whereas the update above is darker, the portrait does actually look more like the image above, I will do my best to ensure this is remedied before Milly's final shot is taken
Milly is now completed and will be off to her owner in the very near future. See her in her mount and frame on the techniques page
Pencil Portraits from Photos Graphite Pencil Portraits by Animal Portrait Artist 
