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ANIMAL PORTRAITURE – Phoebe Hicks
An animal-lover, Portrait Artist of The Year series 3 semi-finalist, Phoebe Hicks is no stranger to capturing our furry friends. Draw along with her purrrrrr-fect your pet portraits.
Reference Image
Materials
Soft Pastel Card
Charcoal – Variety of weights
White chalk pencil
Putty Rubber
Find these items at cassart.co.uk
Starting your portrait
Attach soft pastel card onto a board or other hard surface.
Consider your proportions before you begin drawing.
Using soft charcoal, make a few marks that are anchor points in the dog’s face (ears, eyes, nose etc.).
Sketch the outline of the dog’s head around these anchor points.
Look back at your anchor points, are they still correct now you have added any outline? Feel your way through this sketch. It does not have to be perfect; you are simply mapping out the proportions and key features.
When you are happy with the structure, look for the tones in the dog’s face. Consider large areas of tone as a key feature and mark them down in your sketch. The larger areas of tone in the reference image are on the bottom of the dog’s ear, just below his ear and in his beard.
By the end of this stage, you should have a drawing with large abstract block shapes. It should not be detailed.
Top Tip – Soft Pastel card holds charcoal well and you can make very dark marks on it which allows your work to have contrasts.
The Messy stage
With the initial structure drawn, start sketching in the shapes and tones you can see in the dog’s face. Don’t be too detailed at this point.
Your marks should be intentional but you are still at the fact-finding stage of your drawing. If you make a mistake, it is ok, rub it out and make a new mark.
Keep doing this across the face as a whole.
Brushing the charcoal into the paper
With your structural drawing complete, take a clean paintbrush and blend/brush the charcoal into the paper. We recommend a small hog bristle brush when blending.
Doing this will take away the visible lines you made in charcoal when sketching.
Work across the face as a whole.
Brushing will remove a lot of charcoal. Be mindful of the tones in the dog’s face. Don’t over-blend/brush areas that should have a darker tone.
Working with a rubber
Look at your reference image. Identify shapes in the dog’s face that you have not drawn in detail with charcoal.
Use a putty rubber to take away the charcoal to create the shapes you have not drawn in detail with charcoal.
You are using the rubber to draw, not erase.
Use the rubber to highlight the light on the end of the dog’s nose and between the eyebrows.
Use a chalk pencil
Take a chalk pencil and colour in the highlight you have just made on the end of the dog’s nose.
Look for other distinguishing markings in the dog’s face and sketch them onto the portrait with a chalk pencil.
Top Tip- If you cannot find the distinguishing marks in the dog’s face use the chalk pencil to sketch where the light is hitting the dog’s face. This will give you a similar effect.
Contextualising the dog
At this point, your dog’s head will look like it is floating. Add some lines to allude to his body.
The reference image shows the dog lying down. You do not need to draw the dog’s body. You simply need to make a few marks to show his shoulders.
Be confident when making these lines, you do not want to make them more than once. Using a chisel-shaped charcoal will help you be bold and confident with your mark-making.
Highlighting the dog’s eye
Mould your putty rubber into a point. Identify where you want the highlight to be in the dog’s eye and use your rubber to remove the charcoal in this spot.
Capturing character
Move around the drawing and add the finer details with charcoal, chalk pencil and rubber. These small details will help capture the character of the animal.
Look again at the contrasts. Can you add any to help with the character?
You are looking for little touches. Don’t overcomplicate the portrait in the final stage.
Top tip – Fur is key to a dog’s character.