Something I have done for ages is to take pictures of my work. Now, I need to do this so I can share it on my site but I also do this to see if there are things that need to be improved. I am not sure why, but seeing my work on my phone or computer allows me to see it differently. On the messy left you can see my easel has my reference photo on the very left and my drawing-in-progress on the right with the sides all taped up. I didn’t notice until I saw it here that there were dark patterns in the fur that I was missing and that the shading needed to be darker on the left side of its head. I bought out my gray-scale-value-finder which made me see that my background needed to be much darker for better contrast. This was done in charcoal but I added a little conté pastel pencils to the eyes.
My reference photo came from unsplash.com, which has loads of free reference photos to choose from. I brought the image into Photoshop and made it black and white except for the eyes, they are the windows to the soul after all.
The final (so far) is on the right before I sprayed fixative to the surface. It needs more contrast but I am working with a lame rotator cuff and well, it hurts to be at the easel for very long. I might still go back and work on this so more. I am pretty sure I can draw over fixative, it might even help. The forehead is not looking as full and fluffy as it needs to be and the snout should be darker too. I am never satisfied LOL. But I did darken the hair pattern on the right side of the neck and forehead.
