Afghan Hound Pastel Pencil Tips

Gabriele has sent me this lovely picture of her Afghan hound Evie and has asked for any tips I can give to improve the painting, however before I do that this is the story so far. A couple of months ago Gabriele joined our members site having not used the pastel pencils before. She completed quite a number of the projects on the site and each one got better and better. A few days ago Gabriele emailed me with her latest painting, the Siamese kitten, and said she would like to paint a picture of her own but was worried that she would not be able to master the Square Drawing system we use. I assured her that it will work and to give it a try.Gabriele sent me the above picture and wrote - "I managed to do the line drawing and am surprised at how great the Square Drawing system works."The main problem on the painting is the nose area and I would gently erase the top half of the nose above the red line on the inset picture, using a soft eraser of the soft end of the double ended pencil eraser, then rework the nose following the reference picture. The nose has to extend to cover roughly the area circled so as not to have the separation as appears on the painting.I would also soften the line indicated with the blue arrows to avoid the impression that the neck is separated here. I would also suggest that some of this picture is cut to make a better picture, as indicated by the black frame.On the whole this is a very good effort considering this is Gabriele’s first picture drawn and painted from scratch.Have you tried our Square Drawing System? Let us know in the comments below.