In The Studio

Hello and Happy Friday!! Boy do I have a doozy for you today!!

I wanted to do a special piece for Seeing Eye Guide Dog Anniversary Day (January 29) and picked out a super amazing reference from Shutterstock. For some reason though, instead of grabbing out my illustration board like normal, I reached instead for a 16×20 inch Arches Hot Press Watercolor paper sheet. This would make this artwork the LARGEST I’ve made in a very long time. In fact, I’ve only ever drawn one other piece this size before.

I taped the paper directly onto my desk and got to work. I actually used a projector for this project (another first for me!) and it worked great. The only thing that didn’t work so great was the fact that I had only scheduled one week for this project, not realizing that A) I was going to draw this so HUGE and B) I would have family visiting which would suck up a lot of my time.

Spoiler Alert: Everything turned out fine and I DID finish it, even though I passed my deadline by a week. Oh well.

I used graphite on the background and harness, and Faber Castell Polychromos black colored pencil on the fur. I can’t wait for y’all to see the final piece, I am VERY PROUD of this one.

Come back next Friday for the finished piece! Can’t wait? Head on over to Instagram, then.