A Week of Learning and Development
Trying to learn how to draw a dog in a week.
Learning a skill takes much time and effort. I have spent years getting better at drawing but I still have holes in my skill. I have a very hard time drawing people, dogs, etc. even with reference. I have challenged myself to learn to draw a dog from imagination. I challenge others to try this with a hobby or passion. Of course if drawing is not your passion then you may have to modify the steps you take.
This was my first attempt, it looks like a dog but it is too geometric looking and unnatural. I want to be able to do better quality without a reference image.
**None of the videos paid me to use them in this article. I just used them to get better so I recommend them to you**
DAY 1:
Here I went online to look for pictures of the skull and anatomy of a dog. I drew both because drawing bones were not something I would need guidance with. Doing this will help you get a feel for the size and proportions of the dog. This a warm up for the coming days.
Day 2:
I went looking for tutorials on part of the dog I have particular struggles with. This included the nose and the hair. So that I could focus, I did 1 on per day. I watched this tutorial for hair. It is not perfect by any means but it is better then what I did before. Don’t expect yours to be perfect, if it is perfect the first time then maybe it wasn’t something that you really struggled with.
The hair looks quite bad but it is miles from where I was before. When I do my final drawing I will be doing my own style, so not complete realism. I am fine with the result but I can do better. If it wasn’t a time based challenge then I would have gotten more practice in, but it is what it is.
DAY 3:
I followed this tutorial for the nose of the dog. As you can see in the images above I redid it since I believe I over committed on size. I was trying to focus more on detail not size so I scaled down. I did better than I thought I would on this portion. Honestly the video really helped me improve and had good tips.
DAY 4:
I followed this tutorial for the face of the dog. I did this because it had the bulk of my insecurities. It had the hair, the nose, the face proportions, and the ears. This proved to be a challenge but I pulled it off. I am quite proud of my result even if it looks “meh”. I rarely draw any sort of canine because I was insecure about the end result. I was worried that my lack of experience when drawing dogs may make the draw look worse. Doing this exercise will allow me to be more confident and maybe include canines more often. Though the canines I add won’t look good I will feel okay with that and allow myself to practice naturally
DAY 5:
We are nearing the final stretch of the journey. I wanted to practice to draw a full dog body because that is what I will draw on the final day. I used this tutorial to help me. I didn’t do well on the face, I over shaded and it looks messy. I made the back legs too long and the front legs look a little off. I feel that the body and the tail are well done, they have the same amount of hair detail as I would put in my final drawing.
DAY 6:
For this drawing I found an image online of a black wolf and then drew it. When drawing from the reference I focused on detail because in my final drawing I will not have a reference to go off of. I am very proud of how this turned out I have made some serious progress. Again I encourage you to try this yourself and try to improve. I wished I had smoothed the texture a little better but otherwise I have no major critiques of myself.
DAY 7:
It is the final day and I will say that I am really happy with the result. It could maybe use more hair detail in the future but I think for one week it is good enough. I wouldn’t have been able to get this result just a week ago. My artwork for the next few weeks will mostly be canine themed. With these new found skills I hope to increase the amount I can achieve.
