Chocky

In loving memory of Chocky.

For those that don't care too much about the TL;DR that will follow, I'll start with my materials.

- Hahnemühle Nostalgie A4
- Mechanical pencils 0.3mm H and B
- Derwent pencils B and HB for the border and shadow
- White gel pen for picking out highlights lost in the shadows
- Kneaded eraser, Tombow Mono Eraser

Onward with the TL;DR!!!


<sub>About the dog
This ball of fur is our dog Chocky who, at the time, was in dire need of a haircut.
My mom used to do this herself with plain scissors and mechanical clippers in many, many sittings. She'd work on him until her back or hand hurt, or until the dog got fidgety.
This resulted in him walking around in the most weird hairdo's you can imagine. He didn't seem to mind. I could have given him a clean-shaven look for the drawing, but being halfway between being a fat looking ball of wool and being a rather skinny and athletic looking dog is só essential to him, that I kept the look.

He came to us when I was 7. I was in charge of naming him and had just read the book 'Chocky' by John Wyndham which I thought would make a cool name.
He was supposed to be a poodle. Yeah right. His hair was wavy at best in some places and straight in most places. (Only his tail was very curly. That must have been the poodle part of him ) Also the color pattern on his fur is one I've never seen on any poodle. Also, his (rather large) ears had a tendency to stand up straight. We suspect he was a Yorkie-Poo 'avant la lettre'.
He was a great, great pet and a very healthy dog. It was a very sad time when we had to decide we would have to let him go at age 19...
That was some 8 years ago, but I still see him darting through the room from the corner of my eye sometimes.

About the drawing
I made this drawing as a gift for my mother's upcoming 66th birthday this month. When I searched for good photo's in our albums, I discovered we were both obviously terrible photographers, since there are NO pictures suitable to draw from of the little guy!
So I took a few blurry pictures, chose one to be the main reference and tried my best.
In the end I used the 'pose' from the 'best' image and made him a little younger looking by accentuating the tri-colored fur he had as a youngster, while he was pretty much completely gray in the main reference. (See thumb below.)
Had to dig around in my memories for precise details about eyes, nose, etc...
Note that his left front paw looks crooked. It looks like that because it was. Something he was born with (but never bothered him) and made him even more unique.

The scan did not pick up all the details. This certainly is one that's better in reality.

In the end I'm really proud of this drawing (and that's not something you'll hear me say often). Seeing how this is my first drawing ever of a furry animal, but mostly since I managed to piece together something from difficult images and created something I'm very satisfied with! Weaker parts and mistakes aside, I don't think I could have captured him, his essence so to speak, any better than I did with this!

Thanks to !SJLennox, *gregchapin, =trixxx, =pbird12, ~Shazhutch, *lightrainbow, *Rockinfroggi, ~mmuch and ~Xanathe for their advice and suggestions!</sub>


WIPS:

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