Drawing dogs in Holland Park, all shapes and sizes

On the 26th of August last summer it was national dog day, so I what better time to practice drawing them in the wild. My local Holland Park (Kensington) in west London is a super popular place for dogs and its also a great park to visit if you only have 2 legs with a café, woods and gardens to relax in. I plan to paint parts of it at some point (the Japanese garden is 👌) but that’s for another time.

Sketching the dogs

The challenge of drawing dogs in the park, they have the habit of moving very quickly, changing direction, and its hard to work out what’s going on with their legs 😄 This is a great way to improve your drawing skills though, forcing yourself to get an impression of the subject down on paper (or iPad) asap helps you quicky learn and then move on to the next challenge without getting stuck on the details. I picked up some useful knowledge on how dogs move and behave in the short time I spent drawing them, a very useful exercise!

Here are two of my favourite sketches from the session (a pug and one that yaps a lot 😄). I managed 28 in total and now wondering how I can use them. I'm tempted to draw another 72 to get to a nice round 100!

More information about Holland Park can be found here, on the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Holland Park page.