How to Draw a Dog Face

This tutorial will show and tell you how to draw a dog face. This is a detailed dog face drawing tutorial that will be helpful when drawing a whole dog.

This lesson will be built on a classic scheme in which you will need to move from simple shapes to more complex ones.

Dogs come in many different kinds and can have very different facial features. In this guide we will show all the most important points, using which you can depict a dog of any kind.

So let’s get down to the guide on how to draw a dog face.

 

Step 1

Start drawing the face of our cute animal with a simple ball. This simple geometric shape will serve as a good guide on which all the details will be drawn later. Next, sketch out a couple of intersecting lines that will help you not get confused in proportions.

Step 2

It’s time to start drawing details on the face. Start with the ears, and draw them with long, flowing lines. Note that other dogs may have different ears. Therefore, if you want to portray a German shepherd, then you should give the ears a slightly different shape.

Step 3

Using the guidelines sketched in the first step, draw the eyes. Don’t forget to create the thickness of the eyelids and the creases above and below the eyes. This will give the face drawing a more natural and lively look. Dogs have very large pupils. Because of this, we practically do not see the whites of the eyes.

Step 4

Draw the nose just below the eyes. Recall that in one of the previous instructions we showed you how to draw a dog nose. To check the proportionality of your dog face drawing, you can look at it in the mirror, or move slightly away from it.

Step 5

Now it’s time to draw the mouth. Start by creating the upper jaw. Then, just below, sketch out the outlines of the tongue and two lower canines. To make your sketch more voluminous, try to make the closer parts more contrasting than the distant ones. We talked about it in our article on aerial perspective.

Step 6

Use smooth lines to create the lower lip and the edges of the lower jaw. Draw the neck with long hatches. Using long hatches like this instead of simple lines will give the neck a fluffy look and make it look more realistic. Do not forget that the closer details should be more contrasting than the distant ones, which means that the lower jaw should be drawn with darker lines than the neck.

Step 7

Now it’s time to give the dog face drawing a more finished and clean look. To do this, carefully erase all the auxiliary guidelines drawn at the beginning of the guide. Compare your artwork of the dog’s face with ours. Add the necessary details and correct any mistakes if any.

Step 9

To make the drawing of the face more convincing and similar to the face of a real dog, add shadows. Using hatching, carefully add shadows, starting from the darkest areas and gradually working towards the lighter ones. To make the gaze more expressive, leave small highlights in them.

It was a dog face drawing tutorial. To improve your skills, try a few additional sketching exercises.

First, try to draw a head of a different breed of a dog using this instruction. Add more shadows, try to create a texture of the fur. This will help you train your skill in drawing a dog’s head and teach you how to create details that are not similar to those presented in this guide.

Next, try to draw a whole dog, portraying the face in detail, as well as other parts of the body. This will help you understand the drawing process more holistically, and teach you how to apply the knowledge of drawing body parts when you are depicting a full figure portrait of a creature.

If you liked our dog face tutorial, then be sure to visit our category called Animals, where you will find a huge number of other animal drawing tutorials