Sketching Animal Portraits: Breaking Down References & Proportions

1. Cat intro sketch: Sketching is often a vital part of the process when creating. It's the foundation and underlying structure of a piece, whether you sketch using pencil, ink or paint, and the ability to sketch accurately can also be a great help for improving your painting skills, especially when working with a medium like watercolor, where any stroke you put down will remain visible. Hey there, I'm Tanya Amata is based in Denmark. In this class, we're going to practice sketching animal portraits, focusing on cats as our references. Not going to create fully rendered portraits, but rather practice capturing the proportions and likeness and build that underlying structure which can then be used for something like a watercolor portrait, which we'll be working on in my next class. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, let's get started. 2. Cat materials: For this class, you're going to need some paper to sketch on. I'm going to be using sketchbooks. The main one I'm going to be using is this one, which is one I got off Amazon. And then I'm also going to be using a Canson graduate mixed media sketchbook for the final sketch because I'm going to be adding some watercolor. But whatever paper you have is going to be perfectly fine. You're going to need something to sketch with depending on your personal preferences. I'm going to be using mechanical pencil in 0.2. I'll be using a six B pencil in order to achieve Daka values. And with these, you may also want to include an eraser. I'm going to be using a normal eraser as well as a needed eraser. Finally, and this is optional, I'm going to be adding water color to one of the sketches. You only really need one color. I'm going to be using Pains gray, and with this, I'm going to be using a brush, which is just a cheap brush I got off Timo. Let's get right into it. 3. Warm-up Exercise: When sketching a portrait, what we want to do is find likeness, and we do this by breaking down and recreating our subject in a way that's recognizable for those who know that person or animal. And although there are many ways of getting that initial outline onto your paper, I personally think it's so worth it to practice freehand sketching because this is not just going to help you with the outline, but also help you understand the form of the entire portrait a lot better. If I gave you this picture of a cat and I ask you to draw it, there's a chance, especially if you're a beginner that you're going to feel intimidated by it because where do you start? It has so much detail. If I give you this picture of a rubber duck, you'd likely have a much easier time turning this into a recognizable figure on the page because unlike with the cat, here, it's much easier to see that the duck consists of two pots, a head, which is somewhat of a circle shape, and a body, which is either an oval or a rectangle. And just by eyeballing it, we can fairly easily plot in some features and details as well. And even if this duck is not a perfect replica of that photo or a perfect representation, it is at least recognizable as being a rubber duck, we are halfway there. Let's go back to the cat. So instead of looking at it like a cat or a face, we want to try and figure out what we really see. So instead of a nose, as an example, we see a triangle, it has a line down the center. And then it has a curve or a half circle coming in from each side, something like that, leaving a flat foot on either side of both of these. And although this may still need some adjustments in order to look accurate, that's a pretty decent representation. So let's move on and try and do a couple of warm up sketches where we try and sketch what we see without worrying too much about accuracy. Let's try and sketch this cat. We're not going to worry about all the teeny tiny details, so don't be intimidated by the fact that it's a full body picture. There are barely any markings. We've got no stripes, no spots, but we do have some pretty clear and defined shapes that are fairly easy to see. We're going to sketch it twice with two different approaches. The first one being loose and more intuitive sketching. This, the goal is to just loosen up. I want you to try and capture what you see, but don't worry and don't stress about the details. Try to follow the different lines and curves and let the pencil feel its way through the form of the cat. Don't worry about going over the same area two, three, five, eight times. It doesn't matter. Keep the lines light, and as you begin to see the right shape, you can go a bit heavier with the lines. Going to see if I can add in some facial features. And for this, I'm looking for the approximate placement that I see, but I'm not worried about the accuracy. As long as I end up with something that represents a cat, that's good enough. We are not looking for pretty. We just want to loosen up. I'm not worrying about the proportions of the head in relation to the body, and I'm not concerned with whether or not the neck is a bit too long, it does not matter. Instead, we just want to get a feel for the shapes. There is also nothing wrong with using this method for creating a sketch that you're going to be turning into an actual portrait because we may all have slightly different preferences when it comes to which methods we prefer for breaking down a subject. So if you prefer this method of starting hub or loose and gradually building it up, please feel free to do so. You can always combine this technique with some measuring to find more accurate proportions, but this is a perfectly good method for starting portrait. If it starts to get a bit too messy or difficult to see, we can just go ahead and erase some of the lines or at least lighten them up a bit. Exercises like this are great if you're a perfectionist and you need to loosen up or if you're someone who's nervous when it comes to putting down those first initial lines on your paper, but it's also just great as a simple warm up to loosening up the muscles and getting ready to actually start drawing or painting. And even if the result is not great or even particularly good, it still helps to exercise muscle memory and eye hand coordination. So even simple sketches like this can help you improve in the long run. Once you're happy with it or feel okay with it, let's move on and approach the same picture with a different method. For this one, we're still not going to worry about the teen time details, and we're not going to be doing any measuring as per se. What we want to do is really try and forget about the fact that it's a cat and just focus on the basic shapes. Really look for those geometrical shapes within the figure. I'm going to start with a rectangle to represent the front portion of the body. And a lump type shape just to represent the back or hind portion. This is mostly in order to have an idea of the placement on the page, but it will also already give us an idea of the size comparison between the front and hind portion. As I mentioned before, the head almost fits into a box shape, so I'm going to do exactly that and just draw a square. I'm going to build onto that with the fur for the neck. Then below that, we've got kind of like a triangle shape before we get down to the leg itself. And then the leg kind of sticks out like this. Gonna add a small paw, as well. For the hind portion, I'm going to go back and define the shape. It starts right below where the head is on the line for the head, so they are not quite level, and then it comes down like this. Back and up, something like that. If looking at the face, there's a pretty distinct diamond shape. So I'm going to roughly sketch that in. Now on the reference, it doesn't go all the way to the top of the head. But as long as we are aware of this, we can add it in however we want. Then there's a space between the diamond shape and the ears, and the ears themselves are two triangles as well. This is already a pretty decent starting point if we wanted to draw this cat properly. Going to add a line down the center of the face and a horizontal line as well. This one is going to sit above the center point. From here, we can try and play some of the facial features. Maybe add in a few more of these sections of fur. And the second leg and paw. Now, this is far from perfect at this stage, but I'm going to stop here, but you can keep going for as long as you want. If you want to try and break it down even further and get more and more details in place, definitely go ahead and do that. These two methods are so quick but also so good for practicing. And we can also combine them by, let's say, starting with a geometrical skeleton, so to speak, and then building onto that with those more loose lines or start super loose and then add in the structure. It all depends on personal preference. And with that being said, let's move on and do a few sketches where we're going to focus more on actually measuring proportions and angles. 4. Measuring Angles & Proportions: I already have a couple of sketching classes which include not only a few slightly more simple examples, but also a few different exercises that can help you improve your sketching and drawing techniques. So definitely feel free to check those out, but I do still want to go over the very basics, which is how to measure angles and proportions. If we were to draw a portrait of this cat, one way we could approach it is by drawing using the grid method, basically putting a grid over your reference and then having a matching grid on your paper or painting surface. And you can actually get different apps for your phone that will allow you to place different types of grids over your photos. Will help us more easily get the right proportions, since we can see that as an example, the head of the cat takes up about one third of this grid or one third of the height, and we can also focus on just one of these rectangles at a time, right from the get go. You can use a smaller or larger grid depending on how much help you need getting those right proportions, and it's generally speaking, one of the fastest and probably easiest ways apart from tracing to get accuracy in your drawings. But in this class, we're going to be focusing on freehand sketching. We'll go a few different references with varying degrees of difficulty starting with this one, which is a fairly straightforward portrait with very clear and defined shapes, angles, and lines. We also only have one eye to worry about to slightly less detail in general. Let's get started. Let's say we wanted to sketch this cat in order to make sure that the lines we put down on our paper have the right angles. What we can do is take our pencil and hold it up to our reference and then use this as a tool to help transfer that exact angle onto our sketch or paper. This can be super helpful not only when putting down the initial lines, but also after completing your sketch and you might be looking at it and comparing it to the reference and something is slightly off. This is a great way to try and search for what that may be. We can also use a pencil to help find proportions. So in this case, if we measure the size of the head, the head actually happens to be the same height as the space above the head and the remaining portion of the body. And so we can use this to help find those basic measurements, as well as help break larger shapes into smaller and smaller, more manageable sections. And breaking your subject down into those smaller and smaller portions is really all portrait sketching is about. So let's try and sketch this cap. 5. Example 1; Cat Basic Sketch: If using a grid, obviously it's completely up to you how you want to use them, but if you want to use them to help practice your drawing skills, what I would recommend is to maybe start with a grid that doesn't have too much detail, just enough for you to capture the right shapes, the right proportions, et cetera. And then as you move forward in your journey, you can use grids with less and less detail or larger and larger rectangles or squares. That way, you're training your eye, your muscle memory, and your use of these techniques to capture more and more detail yourself without the help of these tools. Let's try and look for some of the more obvious shapes. Now, the way we look at something and perceive something may vary from person to person. So the shapes that I see show you here on the screen may not be the same shapes that you see. There's never just one right answer, so feel free to go for completely different shapes than the ones that I'm using for this demonstration. Okay, so I've not been brushing up on my vocabulary when it comes to geometrical shapes in English, but I think the first shape here is going to be a trapezoid. Maybe. Either way, the base for the head is going to be something like this. Just get an approximate shape onto the paper. Maybe slightly longer here and less landed at the bottom. Feel free to measure the angles of your reference to check and make sure that the angles that you've sketched out are somewhat correct. It's better to make these fundamental adjustments fairly early in the process rather than waiting till you're almost done and can see that something is off, but you have to change a whole lot more. You can then add on another shape which is going to be the remaining portion of the face. And for this one, I'm really trying to look at that angle following the bridge of the nose and also following the upward angle of the chin and then connecting those like this. Already, if we wanted to check to see if we're on the right track, we could take this distance, and on our reference, this distance should fit just over two times in that first shape if we go in a straight line from this angle. We can then add the ears, something like this and start to build the shape of the body, and we already know that the head is one third of the whole picture, which means that the body is going to be about the same height as the head. Again, if we want to check the proportions for the ears, we could see if the height matches up with how many times it should be able to fit into the main portion of the head according to our reference. We can also measure the angle between the two ears or the angle between any other point on our sketch. Even if I'm not measuring the proportions or angles in this class at any point throughout the process, if you're ever unsure if you have the right angle, shape, et cetera, feel free to measure on your sketch. Then we can begin placing the features, starting with the I, I'm going to use this point on our sketch as a guide. Go in a straight line and see where that hits on the e and then place that approximately right here. And then going again in a line, I can see where the eye and the nose lines up and places that somewhere around here. We're still going to be doing a lot of refining so it doesn't have to be accurate. And then down here, we have the mouth. So at this point, even though we may not be able to recognize this as a portrait of that specific cat at this stage, at least we know we have fairly accurate proportions. I'm going to lightly lift these lines a bit and then we can begin rendering some of the details. Hopefully you can still see them. I'm going to start here with the bridge of the nose, following the ankle down and with a small bump on the second half piece of the nose. And if you want, you can check to see if the proportions match up. So this divot right here is going to be just under halfway from the point on our sketch to this point. Go to follow the shape of the nose itself and then down closer to the mouth. And the im. Getting a bit more detail on the ear. Again, right here, where the ear ends or at least a portion of the ear is going to line up with the corner of the eye. No matter what you're drawing and what your reference looks like, there's always going to be shapes, lines, angles, and angle points that you can use to help judge the accuracy of your drawing or sketch. I think one of the keys is to start simple. Learn to break a subject down into these smaller and more manageable portions and build that confidence. You don't even have to necessarily just sketch portraits in order to improve on your portrait sketching. You can sketch anything that you see in front of you and it's going to help train your eye. The more you do this and the more you draw, the easier it'll get. 6. Example 1; Cat Render: Once we feel confident with the proportions of our sketch and we check to see if things line up. So as an example, we can check to see by going in a straight line if the corner of the mouth lines up with the eye the same way it does on the reference. We can slowly begin rendering more detail. I like to start with the eye, but you can start anywhere you want. Because a lot of this cat is in shadow, it can be difficult to see the details in form of lines. So for certain areas like right here near the inner corner, where we have a lot of dark values, it may be easier to go in with solid shading and look for shadow shapes instead. Before moving on to rendering the details we may want to fill in this area, just follow the shape of the head and then clean up the lines a bit. No matter where you start, you just want to zoom in on that area on your reference and really just focus on any shapes, lines, and angles you see. I'm going to fill in this shadow shape, making sure that we have the right angle at the bottom. There is a lot of shadow in this area, so seeing the exact shape of the iris or eyeball may be a bit difficult, but just try your best. It does not have to be accurate. This is just a sketch and we're just practicing. If we were to use this reference for an actual painting and we want to finish it, we obviously want that shape to be more accurate. And so what we could do is just use Photoshop or something similar, or if you have the reference on your phone, use the build in editor and turn up the exposure to better see these shapes that are otherwise quite difficult to see properly. I'm also going to go up here and fill in some of the shadow shape above the eyeball itself. We've also got shadow within the eyeball or iris. And even though the eye is not necessarily the larger shape, adding this shadow is still going to help divide this into smaller more manageable portions, which may make it easier when placing the pupil. We've got the shadow right here near the outer corner, which doesn't go quite down to the corner at the eye, so slightly above, and it's going to sit right here. There's another very clear shadow shape on the nose. So let's go over here. Again, really try and look to see if we have the right angles. G to go up here and then fill this in like that. Going to add some shading to the side of the nose. We can see another shadow shape right here along the wider portion of the bridge of the nose or the start of the forehead, starting at the corner of the eye and going up. And we've also got a very clear triangle shape from the light hitting the cat, so we want to avoid this, although you can go in with an eraser and correct it if needed. If we follow the line from the eye right here and go down, we actually have another clear light and shadow division. So let's fill this in. Avoid that spot from light, and then fill in some of the shading right here near the mouth or muscle and going onto the cheek. I'm going to roughly fill that in, but already we can see that the cat is starting to take shape, and it's starting to look more and more like the cat in our reference. Moving down to the mouth and chin, I can see that I definitely don't have the right angle or shape right here below the chin, so I'm going to give this more of a curve. I'm going to round off the chin a bit more like that. I'm pretty happy with the mouth. I just want to maybe round it off slightly right here and then we can fill in some of the shadow as well. We can also continue U onto the cheek where we have another shape from the light hitting the cap. You can also quickly fill in a bit more of the shading here near the chin or, I guess, start of the neck. If we were to use this sketch for Watercolor portrait as an example, we may not want this much graphite or shading on the sketch, but we can use the shadow shapes to help find the details and the guidelines that we typically include in a sketch for a watercolor portrait. So like here, we have the shape of the cheek already mapped out. So we can use what we have on our paper at this stage to help find the angle points we would typically include on a sketch for Watercolor portrait or from whatever medium we wanted to use. Don't worry too much about the values. This sketch is quite rough, and that's okay. We're just using it to practice proportions, angles, et cetera. The great thing is that we don't have to render something to completion in order to practice or strengthen our skill set. Sometimes setting aside just a few minutes to practice the basics is enough. And then other times we can bring a sketch all the way to a finished painting. And I think that's one of the things I love about sketchbooks, even though this isn't a finished piece, it's still a finished page in the sketchbook. And so I still feel some sense of completion and also feel like I've somehow kind of treated myself if I take a few minutes and spend some time filling out one of these pages. And while on the topic, if we were to use a sketch for a finished portrait and we wanted to do this in Waterclo or any other medium, depending on us as individuals and how we like to work, some of us may want more of these lines to help guide us and some of us may not want any lines at all, but doing sketches or studies like this where we practice seeing these shapes and practicing these lines is still going to help us better see and render those portraits. I know that doing these sketches may not feel as exciting as having a finished painting or drawing in your hands. But it's important to not overlook the powers of doing these exercises. It's like going to the gym. It may not be the most fun part of your day, but it can be a necessity, and it's usually always a good idea. Before we move on to the next lesson, we can fill in the shadow shapes near the ear as well. We don't want to leave that out as the only unfinished pot, and I'm going to fill in some of the shading on the body as well. We are going to get back to the sketch later in the class, but now we're going to leave it like this and move on to the next lesson. Having blocks of light and shadow is just another way of seeing shapes a lot of people prefer using this method of finding light and shadow rather than going in with lines, especially in the beginning stages, although not quite the same, it's similar to the exercise in my other video about sketching animals where we use squash to sketch or render a mouse using shapes more so than lines. So definitely check that out if you're interested because there's never just one right way of doing something. It's always worth trying out different techniques and different methods and finding what works for you. 7. Example 2; Dog Basic Sketch: Let's try sketching from a slightly more challenging reference. Here we see the head from kind of like a quarter angle, slightly tilted, and we've got a second eye showing, so we need those to line up as well. As I mentioned in the previous lesson, there's not just one right way of doing something, so we could approach this using many different types of shapes. The first thing that jumps out to me is that his or her head kind of looks like a bicycle seat. But I don't think we should go with that route, although you could if you wanted to. We could also follow the angles and lines we clearly see, so go about it this way and then build it up from here. I'm going to take a slightly different approach and start by sketching out the line for the eyes, which also coincidentally follows the line we see in the fur on the side of his head. We want to really try and make sure that these angles are correct. We can then draw a line for the side of his head and if you want, you can follow the side of the ear if you feel like that's easier. Next, we can roughly box in the top of the head. So I'm going to go across up here and then roughly sketch in the other side. I'm not going to worry too much at this stage if the shape itself is too wide or anything like that. Looking for some of those proportions on our reference that are going to help us if we take a look at the top half of his head, this portion, it's got to be about the same height as the portion of his head below it, which means that the jaw line is going to be right around here. If looking for something that can help tell us how white that head is going to be on the top section, one thing I'm noticing is that if we go from corner to corner right here, We need the width of his head down here to be about the same distance. So I'm going to move this line just a bit on my sketch to make the head a bit more narrow. Then we can close up the bottom half adding two lines here and here. To help place the ear, if we go in a horizontal line from this eye, it's not too far off. The ear is going to sit just below that line. Don't worry if it's not 100%, we can always make adjustments. Finally, we can add in the eyes and the nose. If you're not quite sure where to place the I, again, look for things that could help you. If you go from corner to corner here and Cora to corner here, you can estimate where the I is going to intersect with those lines. You can also take the width of the eye and match that up with this line to see where approximately it's going to be. Or you can measure an individual angle. So if we look at the tip of the nose or the point of the nose furthest to the right, which is going to be around here, we can measure the angle in order to reach the top of the eyelid, as well as starting with the same point to the outer corner of the eye. This can also really help place the eye in the right place. Though, you may need to allow for some wiggle room since we don't have a lot of details on our sketch just yet. So let's try and refine our sketch a bit and add in a few more details. Gonna round of the head up here and try and give it a bit more shape around the sides as well. At the muscle and mouth. Maybe something like this. And a bit more shape to the ear as well. The corner of the mouth can also help us when placing that high. If we go in a straight line up, we can try and judge how close to this line the eye sits, and we've also divided that big shape of the head into smaller sections. That's really all partridge sketching is about starting big and getting those initial lines and proportions, breaking that down into small and more manageable portions and rendering more and more detail. In order to add in even more detail, we can start looking for some of the markings or shapes within the fur. As an example, there's a shape that's darker here on the side of the nose or the muscle, which goes right here on that line between the corner of the eye and the corner of the nose. We've got almost like an M shape on the forehead, and the center of that is going to go somewhere between those two eyes. There's a rounded shape here and another one closer to the eyelid, and this one goes under the eye as well. There are some slight shadow shapes further up on the head here. And another shape here. The more of these shapes that you start to add in, the more the portrait will hopefully start to emerge on the paper. Once you feel like you've mapped out the features and different shapes, let's clean up the lines a bit and get started on rendering this in a bit more detail. 8. Example 2; Dog Render: Let's try and render a bit more detail on this one. And I'm going to start with the eyes. What we want to do is slowly add in more and more detail. I'm going to start with the approximate shape of the eye. For this one, since there is a lot of going back and forth and a lot of repetition, I will be speeding up more of the footage. But I also don't want to speed it up too much. So at some point, I may just stop yapping and we can listen to some music trying to look for where that bottom waterline is, as well as the shape of the eyeball or iris. You can take your time and spend as long as you want on it, rendering as much of the fine detail as you want, and you can focus on copying either the lines you see or the shapes. It does not have to be super neat. Our goal is not to create the best finished portrait here. It's just a sketch, and our goal should be to practice getting those right proportions and shapes so that if we sketch from multiple references at a time and really practice this, it'll help us really build and strengthen our skill set. I'm going to switch to my other pencil for some of these dg of values. So I'm going to go in, correct and define some of the shapes if needed, and then add in some of those tag of values. If you only want to practice getting the correct proportions, lines and shapes to create an outline that you can then use as a base for a Water call portrait or something like that, that's completely fine as well. But if we only have the outline, we may not end up with as much of a likeness. So I'm going to work on some of these other shapes that we saw in the fur. I'm going to add just really basic shading. Not worrying about any of the texture of the fur. Let's do the other eye. One thing to note is that the size of your sketch may determine how much detail you want to add. The smaller your sketches, the less detail I probably worry about. Our brains are actually cool because as long as we have those larger shapes and values in the right places, we can fill in a lot of the information when looking at something even if the information isn't even there. And within portraits, this applies whether it's a human or an animal. Try and picture a specific person, someone you know really well. Picture them in your mind. I'm taking a wild guess here, but I'm assuming that what you have pictured in your mind is not the exact shape of their waterline or the exact shape and size of their nostrils, unless that's very prominent, I guess. It's not to say that those things aren't important, but what we focus on first is probably going to be something like the shape of their face. Maybe we can start seeing their forehead and the size of their cheeks and we'll start to put in a nose. So basically, starting with those larger shapes, and then sprinkling in some of the more important information, like, do they wear glasses? What color are their eyes? Do they have a mustache? All these different things that are going to help us recognize them. But very rarely is that going to be the most minuscule details? Once again, that's not to say that the details are not important. The more accurate those are, the more the portrait is going to look like whoever or whatever you're going to draw. And repeatedly practicing the fundamentals will inevitably help you improve. I know a lot of you will probably agree when I say that adding layers of paint, the colors, the blush to the cheek, the eye color, the eyelashes, and all those little details, oftentimes a lot more fun and feel more rewarding than doing the sketch. Often just kind of want to skip that sketching process and get right to the fun part. But if we view creating a portrait or any other type of piece of art, almost like constructing a building. We need the foundation to be strong and we need that to be in place before we can move on. We don't start decorating the living room before we've built the walls. So when you want to create a portrait, the first step is to create the construction, build the walls. So those larger shapes and proportions, we need those in place before we can continue. And then we can build onto that with shading or color and from there, we can decide how much detail we want to add. Obviously, the more detail we add, the more important it is for us to be able to recreate the smaller shape, so all the correct details around the eyes, finssing the smile, the nose, et cetera. It is also worth mentioning that you don't necessarily have to be able to recreate those tiny details. If you think of a lot of the old masters, you know, oil paintings and whatnot. Lot of those, even the portraits are not painted in minuscule or very fine detail. They still have a very painterly look to them. But if you take one of those portraits, you're still able to recognize who it is in that painting because the greater proportions or the larger proportions and shapes are still correct. If you really want to improve on your sketching skills or freehand sketching skills, I highly recommend having a sketchbook. Set aside a few minutes or however long you want to spend on it, either each day, a couple of times a week or however often it fits into your day to day life and allow yourself to practice. Realistically, though, I also know that not everyone has the time or desire to do this. So if you for whatever reason, want a faster solution or a faster method, you can always use a grid. If that's what's going to help you get on the right track and get those initial lines in place, nothing wrong with that. In the next lesson, I'm also go to show you a different tool that can be of help when practicing freehand sketching. I'm constantly looking at my reference to see the exact shape, so seeing where I need a line to curve, if I have the right angle, and if I need to make some of the lines a bit longer, so lining up the different features with each other, like we did with the conner of the mouth and the conner of the eye, going in a straight or vertical line up. It's up to you how much shading or detail you want to add. The most important portion of this class is really just focusing on the construction of the portrait. And even though rendering something to completion is still important and can be super helpful, quantity or quality will often help you much further, especially if you're new to portraits. Spending five, ten or 20 minutes per sketch and then doing three, five or even more sketches will, in most cases help you improve a lot faster than if you were to spend an hour or 2 hours doing just one sketch. But again, that's not to say that it's not important or not a good idea to spend an hour or 2 hours on one sketch. Both methods are great, and each method is going to teach you something different. Do whatever fits with your schedule, do whatever you feel like in that moment. Don't force yourself to do something that you really don't want to do because art is supposed to be fun. I hope at least some of what I said makes sense, and whatever you decide, I support you. At this point, we really have all the important features in place. So I'm going to finish off with some shading to the rest of the face, giving it some more detail and form. It's not really going to help with the construction, but it's really fun to compare when we look at the initial sketch and how even though we have the construction lines in place and the correct shapes and proportions, it doesn't necessarily really look like this specific puppy, but the more shading we then start to add, the more it transforms into a more specific portrait. Outline by itself is not necessarily enough to make it look like a specific person or a specific animal or pet. So if we're ever unsure if our construction lines are correct, we can always add shading to help better see or find the likeness. Now, as mentioned, I want to show you a tool that can help show you if your sketches are correct or if you need to make adjustments. So let's move on to the next lesson. 9. Helpful Tool: So you know when you've created a sketcher drawing or painting, and you've been staring at it for a while, so it may be difficult to see if everything looks about right, or maybe you can tell that something is off, but you can't tell what it is. So you can't quite figure out how to fix it. I want to show you an app that you can use to help when practicing. I'm sure there are multiple different versions of similar apps, but this one is called photo layers, and there are different ways you can use it. But the way you can use it to help practice is that if we open the app, and we select our reference. So in this case, we're going to do the golden retriever puppy. Then you want to take a picture of your sketch and open this in a new layer up here. I'm not really interested in the background, so I'm just going to crop it. And then if your picture came out a bit dark, what I would do is just first sharpen it, make everything a bit easier to see, then brighten it and add some more contrast. May need to spend some time resizing it to make it fit properly, but you can change the opacity and basically switch between seeing the sketch and the reference. So after you've matched up the size and the features the best you can, you'll be able to tell how far off you are from the original reference and use it to help tell you where you may need to make some adjustments. And though I would still recommend training your eye to better see these problem areas, we can call them on your own, the app can be a super helpful tool, especially when practicing. 10. Cat Sketch; Measuring Proportions: For this one, I'm going to be using watercolor to help fill in some of the shading, so I'll be switching to my mixed media sketchbook. You don't have to use what I call it though. Feel free to stick with just using pencil. Or if you want to bring in a different medium like chacal, pastel or magars, you can do that as well. It's not a necessity. It's just going to speed up the process and help us render in more detail in less time. Let's have a look at our reference. Once again, there are multiple ways we could go about it. And if you want to break it down differently, definitely do that. We could start with a square by following some of those straight angles, even in the fur itself. But I want to start with a shape that more closely resembles the shape of the head. Not quite a diamond shape, but similar. Let's try, starting with the top of the head, we want to get that angle in just to have a starting point. If you've been creating smaller size sketches like I have in the previous lessons, I'd recommend going slightly larger for this one. Once we have that angle in place, we can draw the outs again, we just want to follow the angles. Here comes the first potential problem. If the length of those lines does not match up proportionally with the reference, it's going to be out of shape. So we're going to try our best to get the same distance. Okay, if we take the top line, the line on the left is going to be just a tad longer. And please don't take my word for it. Practice checking on your own reference. It's gonna help you a lot more if you practice measuring these things yourself as well. I'm going to create a matching line, same length on the other side. Next two lines are going to be shorter than the first line, maybe about two thirds of that one. I'm going to eyeball mine, but feel free to check if you're unsure. The one on the right is going to be slightly shorter than the one on the left. Even though the chin is slightly off center, I'm still going to put the point of my shape at the center of the bottom, which means if we take the center point of the first line and go down, we know the point will come in somewhere around here. And then if for these two last lines, we have the right angles, the shape should match up at least somewhat. We don't have to measure everything in minuscule detail and with time and practice, you'll become better at judging this without measuring or with limited measuring. Next, we can add in the center line for the face, which is going to be slightly off center and curved. And we can also add in the eyeline. I'm going to create an eyeline for both the top and bottom. The bottom is going to go close to where the two corners are on that main shape, not 100%, but close enough. And for that top line, I'm looking at the space right above it. So how much room do we have in that section? And I want this to be able to fit in one or the height of one eye plus a bit more. Gonna add in the nose and mouth as well as the ears. The height of the ears is going to be close to the same height as the top half of the face. We can then start placing the eyes and draw in the neck as well. Already, when looking at it, I feel like my mouth is maybe sitting a bit too high up, at least on the right side, I'm going to try and pull that down a bit and then finish off the shape. The eyes are also a bit too close on mine, so I'm going to move this eye further to the side because this eye is sitting more in the center of that section. I think that's a bit better. Going to clean up the lines. So if you find the lines to be helpful still at this stage, feel free to keep them. If you don't think they're in the way, you don't have to get rid of them. From here, we want to look for more shapes that can help us divide the face into small and more manageable sections. So above the nose, if we follow the shape of the bridge of the nose, we have this squared out shape here, and we can see how that kind of connects to the eyes. Then around the eyes near the inaconas, we have some white fur so we can follow that shape. We've got the muscle or where the whiskers are attached, which go kind of like this. You can follow both the shape of the muscle itself, but also the shapes around it. This triangular area right here near the left eye. It also looks like the cat is smiling. We have these lines going right here and I'm looking at the space surrounding these lines to judge where they are in that space, but also whether they're sitting near the top, bottom, or center of that space. G to add in the chin approximately right here. We've got some markings in the fur, so we can try and follow those. The one on the left is more of partial shadow shape. We only got some of the marking showing at the top, but I'm still going to try and follow this shape. Then on the right side, it's a bit more prominent. The more of this information we can successfully transfer onto our sketch, the more it's going to look like this specific cat. Once you're happy with the different proportions, guidelines, and the shapes you've added, let's see if we can polish it up and render the details. 11. Refining Sketch: Now that we have the right proportions and a bunch of guidelines, let's see if we can render the details. I'm going to begin by lightening the lines a bit to make them less distracting. I'm going to start with the eyes, but if you want to start in a different area, definitely do that. It's all about personal preference, but since the eyes are usually the first thing we connect with when looking at someone, I want to try and get these in place before working on any other area of the face. I'm starting with the larger shapes, so the shape of the eyeball and then working around that, looking at the shapes surrounding it, the waterline, the markings of the fur, and the tear duct. Not everyone enjoys doing it this way. Maybe you prefer chipping away on different areas of the face all at once going back and forth between the different features. And if you find that easier, that's completely fine. Whichever technique you prefer is the technique you should be using. Take your time, don't rush it. It doesn't matter if you spend more or less time than I do, as long as you're working in a pace that you're comfortable with. If you find it difficult to place the pupils, you can always add more guidelines within the eyeball or iris, breaking it into small sections and making it easier. It's not a big deal, though. If we're not happy with them, we can always erase them and move them further to one side. Gonna go with more of those markings of the fur, lightly sketching those in then moving down to the nose, I'm going to begin with the basic shape, try and get the right angle. Drawing the nostrils. Something like this. We can always make adjustments if needed. I'm going to go over the shape of the mouth and muscle one more time, making sure I have a shape that I'm happy with. And while doing this, although I am looking at the outline of each shape, I'm also focusing on the shapes within the shapes, if that makes sense. I'm both focusing on the edges, but also on the surface area, trying to judge if the shapes that I'm currently working on match up with the shapes next to them. The chin is super fluffy, so rather than going in a straight line to form the shape, I'm going to add in some texture. It doesn't have to be exact, but it makes it appear more accurate than having a line going straight across. Once I have the main features in place and I'm fairly happy with the way they look, I'm going to move on to the ears. Just go over the shape one more time, and add in a few more details on what I had on my initial sketch, starting with the outer shape. And then for the bottom line or baseline, just like with the chin, instead of having a straight line going across, I'm going to add in some fluffy texture and then see if we can break down the inside of the ear, trying to capture some of the details we see. Same with the other ear, go to start with the outer shape. Something like this. It's definitely starting to come together. Once we have that, we can go around the outer perimeter of the face and add some texture as well, following approximately what I see in the reference. We don't need to get the exact texture for it to look like this cat as long as we get the overall shape and the proportions, so as long as we don't make the face a lot whider with the fluff or make the forehead appear too tall, by adding the texture, it's all good. Going down onto the neck, again, I'm trying to follow what I see in the reference with the neck and the shapes that appear within this area, we don't have to be as accurate as with the facial features. There may be things that are typical for that specific animal, so the way the fur falls may be very specific. In that case, we may want to try and really capture those specific shapes or details. But if one of these tufts of fur on the neck ends up being a bit larger or smaller than on the reference, it's nothing to worry about. With that being said, when breaking down the neck into these smaller tufts of fur, I'm using the facial features and ankles to help place them. Even if it's not 100% accurate, we still have a pretty good idea of where they're going to go. Before moving on, we can take a look at what we have so far, see if there are any adjustments we need to make. I'm pretty happy with my sketch overall, but I do feel like the nose isn't quite right. The nostrils are not lining up, and that's kind of bothering me. So I'm going to erase some of this and see if I can improve on the shape. That looks a lot better to me. May not be 100%, but good enough with just practicing. If you wanted to leave it like this, you could and just maybe play around with the details a bit more, make sure you are happy with the result. We are just focusing on the sketching portion in this class, and at this point, it is ready to be used for a portrait. You may want to erase some of the guidelines, but I want to take it a bit further and add some shading. 12. Shading & Class Project: The thing with portraits is that sometimes when we have our sketch, even though all the proportions may be correct, it still doesn't always look like our reference because likeness is so much more than an outline. So let's try and add some shading to hopefully make this sketch look even more like our reference picture. Not going to worry about technique or textures or getting in those super fine details. We're just going to add some foam to this otherwise very flat sketch. This is not watercol paper, so it's not going to hold the water for as long as watercol paper would, but I'm still going to try and wet the paper before going in with any pigment. I'm going to start down here near the mouth and chin area and just go straight in with some shadows. I'm not going to make it as dark as it should be. You can always dug it, but you can tell how quickly this helps to add some foam to the face. Going to go up into those really dark values in the eyes, and the paper is already starting to dry out in some places, but that's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. So what we want to look for are value changes. It's up to you if you want to start light and then go darker. That's probably the better way. I'm going to start dark and then move my way to the lighter shades, which means I'm first going to focus on the more dramatic shadows. This is not about perfection. We just want to try and see if we can improve on the ness. O. Et's get some shading onto the side of the face right here. Definitely need to gotten that and a touch over here as well. I'm going to wit the remaining portion of the paper where the ears are. And then we can add some shading to the inside of the ear, some light shading. And if you want, you can use your brush just to wipe it off and use it to lift pigment if you want to enhance that texture of fur within the ear. Using a clean brush to help control some of the pigment that went outside of the lines, even though really we don't have to. I kind of like when it has a flow watercolor look, but I'm still going to push that back into place. I'm going to go back to the lower portion of the face and neck wetting the paper again. Rewetting the paper while the paper is still wet will definitely affect the paper if we do this too much. So it may be a good idea to let it dry in between, but I'm not seeing any paper fibers coming loose, so I'm going to go in with one more layer. A bit of detail near the whiskers or muscle. I'm not really paying attention to the consistency of my paint. The main goal here is just to get some pigment onto the page. And a lot of the time when practicing in a sketchbook, I think one of the best things to do is just completely let go of all the rules or expectations and just play. Letting go of worrying and just playing can lead to so many more happy accidents. And sometimes happy accidents is exactly what we need in order to move forward with our painting practice. I'm going to go back over those same shadow areas, and then I'm also going to try and catch some of the texture of the fur near the chin. It's not a necessity, but because the texture from the fur makes this shadow shape look more choppy as in chopped up, not heavy set, it really can help with the likeness to have that same or similar texture compared to the chin looking like a smooth ball shape. Once we've got that, we can go with the sides of the face and the neck a bit more, catch a few more of the shadow shapes that are really going to help add form and structure to the face before moving on to adding some of the finer details within the eyes and the nails. I'm going to speed up some of the footage in this lesson because it is really just about playing around and going back and forth, making small adjustments. Et's talk about the class project. So for the project in this class, I would love for you to sketch this cat. Whether or not you're going to be adding any of the shading is completely up to you. I will also say that if you are more of a dog person or maybe just have your own cat or own pet that you'd prefer to sketch instead, I accept that as well. There's no need to be strict with this. And since I already included a dog in one of these lessons, I feel like I've opened up the possibility for dog portraits. I. Aside from maybe the nose area, we've got most of the basic shadows in place. So now we can start focusing on some of the mid tones. We want the muscle but especially that line of fur under the eyes to appear lighter than the main portion of the cat. And we can also start looking at some of the markings of the fur so that slight stripy pattern we see. I'm gonna go back in into the Rs with a bit more detail and texture. Not a lot, deepening some of the values a bit. And there's definitely not quite enough contrast between the main portion and those really deep areas within the eyes and the mouth. So I'm going to go back in with some thicker, darker paint. And This is not going to be a perfect looking portrait, but at this point in the process, one of the things that we can see that takes away from the likeness is the shading on the chin. It's not dark enough compared to in our reference picture. Having more shadow or deeper values in this area is going to help bring it back or make it recess. Whereas if there is too much light in this area, it's going to make it look more protruding, which it doesn't in the reference. Even if you have the correct shape and you have technically the correct shadow shapes as well. In portraiture and painting in general, it's so important to notice these value changes. The realism or likeness doesn't always come from having the most accurate outline. Of course, that does help, but the values really help bring out the structure and correct form or shape, which sometimes is just as important. It's also going to bring in a ton of depth, which will help draw the viewer into the painting. You can play around with it for as long as you want. This really is mostly about the sketching portion, but just like sketching and improving on your drawing skills can help with your painting techniques. It's kind of a vice versa situation. So painting can also help you see more accurately when sketching. And so practicing both is super beneficial. Also, even though we're currently adding shading to a cat, I still encourage you to not necessarily see it as a cat, but still try to look for the shapes. Of course, our goal is to make it all come together, and hopefully by the end, we'll have something that looks similar to the reference. But in order to get to that point, it's important to notice all the little shapes. So practice looking for the shapes and angles that make up this cat face. For the background, I'm going to go a bit lighter than in the reference photo, so I'm going to keep it lighter at the top and then daga towards the bottom. Now, having the top be lighter does mean that we don't have as much of a contrast between the fur of the cat on that top portion of the head and the background. And there's actually a tip we can discuss here because I did get a question about how to make an animal with very light fur stand out. And one way is the background coll you choose. So not necessarily the call itself, whether it's blue, green, red, whatever, but the value of the background. You don't have to pair a white or very light colored animal. With a dark background, but having that contrast really helps it pop and stand out. Another way, of course, is to work on the values within that animal itself. So even if you have an animal, which in this case, is cream colored, make sure to really look for the shadows. And if those shadows appear very light, try to emphasize the values of those, increase the value a bit and make those dogs even darker. Not by exaggerating it, we don't want the cat to appear a whole different color. So we don't want it to go from beige or cream to being a mid tone to dark brown. But using a wider array of values can help. So that also means that when picking your reference picture, try to avoid pictures of photos that are overexposed. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but as much as possible, it's better to work from something that has less exposure and maybe more in the mid tone range than something that's way too bright. And then even better is if you can get a reference that has all the values. So a photo that includes some interesting shadows as well, because including the entire value range from the lightest lights to the darkest docks can help add so much depth. I am getting close to a point where I'm going to call this one done. I'm just going to go back in and add a few more strokes for a bit more detail, not too much, and then I'm also going to go back with the final adjustments, deepening the value on that chin area to really help push that chin back. You don't have to be precious with the details. A few random brush strokes or quick swipes with the brush can help add the impression of fur. You can also play around with a dry brushing effect, get rid of most of the water from your brush and use dryer paint. That can also help add some really interesting texture to animal fur. If you're painting from a color reference, sometimes it's more difficult to see the value. So one thing you can do if you have your reference on your phone or computer is to go into the editing mode and just switch the colors from RGB to black and white or decrease the saturation until it reaches the gray scale level. I'm sure that what you've made so far looks great, but just in case, if you're sitting and you feel like you've overdone it, overworked it, or it's just not looking right, I do encourage you to continue. Sometimes we just need to push through that well known, ugly stage, and sometimes it may just not end up being the result we wanted. But there is usually always something we can take away from those experiences and those results, as well. We don't have to always create a masterpiece in order to improve. When you see me going in with my finger and using that on the sketch or the painting itself, it's just something I do to help smudge the paint and softening the edges without adding any additional water. You could definitely use a brush for this, but sometimes it's just faster to access those ten digits. I also should be sensible and say that I don't necessarily condone this, though, because you're not technically supposed to touch any colors that may have toxic pigments. So, you know, stay safe. I am about ready to call this one done. I really hope you enjoyed this class. Can't wait to see what you create, and that goes for any sketches you create from this class, whether it's going to be this one, which is a class project, or if it's from one of the other lessons or even from your own reference.