Download a presentation with tips on how to photograph your furry friends and get better references for drawing more detailed and expressive pet portraits Before you start a pet portrait, you’ve already taken the first step long before you even pick up your colored pencils: observation. And when you’re working from a photograph, that observation depends largely on the quality of the reference image. If the photo is blurry, too dark, or doesn’t clearly show the animal’s details, it will be harder to interpret the direction of the fur, the color variations, or that expression that makes each fou