Drawing a Dogs Nose

Drawing a Dogs Nose:

A nose is a nose... is that what they say?

Well... whether you are drawing a persons nose to a dogs nose. I can tell you right away; its not going to be easy, in fact the nose

Sorry... but there is no other way, the nose, as with the mouth can be a challenge, and something we need to learn, as all our subjects are animals, so you cant ignore it. Am I scaring you now?

Don't worry, I still have my moments with drawing noses myself, so it is really part-and-parcel of art. You are going to have your challenges and also there is always going to be the harder parts of a subject compared to the easier ones to do. Its just the way it is, variety, and we need to capture it.

"I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen." ~Frederick Franck

Does it get any easier with the different types of noses to the different species of noses, a little. Though you need to practice and really study the nose for what it is, a work of art in itself.

So here we have a dogs nose. Notice on this fairly basic drawing I have done for you here, how the nose cavities seen to fold over itself to create the nose holes. You need to capture this when drawing a dogs nose, don't just make a couple of holes as the nose holes. Don't cheat....

Draw the outline firstly as I have done here, and blend in the hairs around the dogs nose to give you some guide line as to where the nose finishes and goes on to the fur.

The shape is all but done, now its time to start to get some shape to the nose. In drawing a dogs nose, you need to have a look at the different types of dogs noses out there, depending on the dogs breed. You have the sharp noses to the flat noses. And don't forget the noses texture of the dog. Different to the rest of the dogs skin, it looks like a surface, thick in texture and pitted, yet gives the impression of a smooth surface with its shiny more than not, black color.

That shiny nose that we can see, is caused by the dogs nose always being moist to the touch, so don't forget the highlights in color of the nose, that is mainly helped along by the reflection of the moist water that is always present on the nose itself.

Here we have a finished drawing of a dogs nose, when drawing a dogs nose, do you see how the highlights bring out the curves of the structure of the nose itself. I don't really think that we appreciate how complicated its feathers are. Whether on people or animals, until we try to reproduce it in art.

You may ask me as a sculpture too, whether it is any easier to reproduce the nose in three dimensional form, as it is trying to reproduce it in one dimension on paper.

I would honestly say that it is a bit easier, but by no means easy to reproduce in any medium.

Just keep you wits about you when tackling the nose, and the best advise I can give you on this, is to sit and really study different noses of the dog, to imprint more of an awareness in your mind when

Well let me tell you, it will be a whole lot harder if you don't study the dogs nose in pictures, and you are going to give your rubber a really big workout if you don't do some visual study.