4/30 Days of Illustration- Draw what you really see – Shiba Inu colour pencil drawing

For day 4 of my 30 Days of Illustration challenge, I’ve been working on a colour pencil sketch for my friend’s mum’s friend. It’s her dog, a friendly looking Shiba. I’m drawing it from a registration card for a dog run. The photo is about the size of a postage stamp, so enlarging the image faithfully has been a bit of a challenge.

I actually started the drawing twice. I eventually stopped the fist drawing because I realised that, although I thought I was looking at the image, I wasn’t actually seeing it. I was trying to draw the dog in my head, not the collection of colours and shapes that the photo actually depicted. Here’s the fist abortive attempt.

Once I realised this and made sure to remind myself to really look, the drawing started going a lot better. Here’s the final version.

I’m happy with today’s illustration. I hope my friend’s mum’s friend is too, when I give it to her. Wondering what to draw for Day 5…