Definitely not a dog

I am having fun with a great book I found called Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists. Last weeks exercise was drawing 20 quick sketches of a dog on index cards. I pulled out my kid's Winn-Dixie book to have some idea about what a dog might look like, grabbed my cards, marker and got to work.  When I was done, I spread out the cards and enjoyed a good belly laugh. I wasn't looking at a dog, maybe some other animal, but definitely not a dog!

I called the kids upstairs to get their opinions on the drawings. So here they are, some of the quick sketches and what my kids thought they looked like.

Ferret

Guy with a mustache

Pig

Just so you know, what I was shooting for was a dog that looked something like this picture of Winn-Dixie.  Ok, so I have a ways to go, but I had a great time drawing.

Last year I took a drawing course at the local college with my friend Allison and really loved it. I would love to find the time to take another course, but as we all know there are only so many hours in a day.

The Drawing Lab book is really a lot of fun to work through. The next lesson is on drawing Monkey Faces. How fun is that going to be!  So far all of the lessons have been about drawing animals and drawing quickly so you don't have too much time to think. 

I think the most important thing that I learned in my drawing course was, "draw what you see, not what you know". It's the best advice to hear when you draw because we can't help it, we start trying to draw what we think something should look like and miss a whole lot about what is actually right in front of you.

So you don't think I'm a completely hopeless drawing cause, I will close with two drawings from my class last year that I am pretty proud of.