Drawing a Black Dog with Shiny Fur

Maria sent in her picture of a black dog that she is doing and requested some advice on where she might be going wrong. Here's Maria picture and the reference photo:The first thing I noticed on Maria's picture is that she's used 230 (light grey), too heavily.Note: The colour numbers that I reference are from the Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencil range which is what I use and recommend. With this picture I would use the light grey 230 only in the lighter areas of the picture. I wouldn't even put white on that area.The colour numbers that I reference are from the Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencil range which is what I use and recommend. For all the darker areas I would use 233 which is a mid grey as the base colour. The whole dog could be done using 230 and 233 as the base colour. On top of the 233 I would put in 181 which is a Payne's grey.Underneath the eye on left hand side of the picture (the dark side) I noticed there is a slight brown hue. For this area I would add in 169 which is caput mortuum.To help with darkening the fur, I would use 199 black combined with the 181. But before you add the black you could also add 169 too because there is brown in the fur.You can still use white in this picture, but it would be added to the lighter tones as an after thought but not as a base colour. You could also add to the darker tones but you wouldn't get white, you'd get grey.

Summary

So the light areas I would go 230 > 233 and 181. Plus use 169 where necessary. It's adding a faint influence of colour so I would only use a little bit.These are basic colours, there would be more (maybe another half dozen) but I simply can't give them because I would only realise when doing the picture.Another point is if Maria chooses to do this picture again with the colours that I have suggested above then it may also be worth using a square drawing grid to double check the proportions of the outline drawing too.Advice such as the above is a bonus service to members of our website. If you would like help with your pictures and access all of our tutorials, check out our membership here.