Figure drawing and portraiture are areas that I need to spend more time focusing on. Luckily, I love drawing people, so as challenging as it may be, the outcome is always quite rewarding. Although I have a number of drawings in my sketchbook, I wanted to have a few drawings created on high quality paper that would look polished and well crafted for my portfolio. With that in mind, I decided to focus this week on images of people with animals.

I referenced pictures in some magazines I had laying around the studio and a few images I printed out of myself and some of my friends. I tried to choose images of  people in interesting positions that were large enough to include detail, in order to practice different angles and perspectives. After I had the model down on paper, I incorporated some of the animal images that have been showing up in my other work recently. I am pleased with the end product, which is a series of four pen drawings on toned paper that I colored with washes of acrylic paint.

I am beginning to really enjoy the illustrative qualities that go along with drawing people. I think that often they are more intriguing than some of my straight animal drawings. The qualities of the animal that I pair with each model seems to add to the character of the person. What do you think?