Colored Pencil Pet Portait of Ziggy

 This is an 8x10 colored pencil commissioned pet portrait of a long haired Dachshund, Ziggy, I created for his parents for the holidays.

This first portrait is of Ziggy. I'm working on a paper called Ingres, I believe it's made by Canson. I really like the neutral tones and texture of the paper for the pet portraits. You can see the texture on these closeups. I always begin with the eyes, nose and the head. The features are the most important to be able to draw correctly and get the pet's personality.

I continue on with the fur, working small areas at a time almost to completion. I'm working downward and also putting a piece of clean paper under my hand so I don't smudge colors. Ziggy has a lot of color and texture to his strands of fur, I had to take breaks after drawing for a few hours, my eyes were crossing! 

Colored Pencil Dog Portrait Commission

This is a recent 8x8" dog portrait I created in colored pencil for a client to give as a gift. The dog's owner lost this attractive guy earlier in the year and misses him terribly. I worked on Canson Ingres gray paper that I would later to mount to an 8x8" DaVinci Medium Textured Canvas Panel from Jerry's Artarama. You can see the progress in the photos above. I used Prismacolor, Caran d'Ache Luminance and Derwent Drawing brands of colored pencils to create the portrait. I also burnish the colored pencil layers with a stiff brush to smooth out the pencil and alleviate the texture of the paper showing through.

I recently purchased a set of 24 Derwent Drawing colored pencils and have been liking their soft buttery feel as well as the range of colors, many are earthy natural colors perfect for creating pet portraits. These pencils also claim to be extremely lightfast.I try to choose the most lightfast pencils for my works so they won't fade through the years.

After mounting and trimming the edges of the paper to the canvas panel, I spray varnish the piece and edges with Krylon UV Resistant Clear to seal the colored pencil and then 3 coats of Krylon Kamar Varnish allowing each layer to dry in between.