Hello,

This is my land lady's dog which I am attempting to draw for her. Its my first time to try to do a dog with longer hair. But I was considering to just starting over because I made the mistake of not starting off the dark parts using a soft enough lead to go as dark as I wanted and so now I can't get them as dark as I would like them to be. . . but then I thought maybe I should finish this version as a sort of 'draft' for practice in case I run into any other mistakes that I can correct in a final. So please I would like to have critiques. Thank you.

PS. sorry the photo is a bit dark as my camera is not so good.

From what I can see, you're off to a great start with this animal.

Are you adding detail to the fur or just doing global shading for it? I'm not sure what you mean by not using a soft enough pencil to get the darks. Darks are built up with layers of graphite usually, not only the softness of the pencil lead.

I can reach all the values in a portrait using just an hb and a 2b pencil, simply building layers and pressure to reach the darker value.

What kind of paper are you using for this? What size?

Thanks Jeanette. . . Its bristol vellum paper and size is 9 x 12.

I am a novice really, started a few years ago and really got into drawing daily until about a year back in Feb. I got sidetracked and am just starting back. . .

So anyway, my understanding (maybe wrong!) was that to make darks you use a darker/softer pencil and then a harder pencil over and not vice versa? I started using HB and then tried to use a 6B as it was not looking as dark as I wanted in places but that was not doing well. So you are saying that if I just continue more with the HB that it will darken better. I am speaking of the nose/eyes and also some of the hair area as well as I need to build up some parts to be darker and have already used the HB on it.

There are as many techniques as there are people usually.

And yes, generally a harder pencil can be used to 'glaze' over a softer one to even out the value. I use mechanical pencils usually hb and 2b with a touch of 4b for very dark areas. Its just how I draw.

You can build your layers slowly and gently. Its only when you use a lot of pressure and fill the tooth of the paper that you get into trouble and the graphite gets slick and shiny and won't let you add more. With light layers you should be able to work from hard to soft without problems.

That's really beautiful, I'd love to see a high res version