Emmett

I am pretty pleased with how well this one turned out, considering how much time I put into it, lol. This was my friend's dog Emmett standing in the Truckee river. I thought Emmett would be pretty routine, but I did have a few difficulties. Since Emmett is a black dog, he's (obviously) supposed to be drawn dark. But since he's wet, his fur has a shine to it, and I had a hard time trying to make it seem like shiny but dark fur. Not to mention his fur was in clumps, which I don't think I showed very well. It turned out alright, I guess. BUT! In drawing this picture, I learned the importance of drawing dark things in layers with patience instead of taking your softest pencil and drawing hard. Because that's exactly what I did and almost ruined the picture because you could see every stroke I made. It took some time trying to cover that up and you can still see it pretty well. But the perk of drawing hard in graphite is he's definitely dark and still shiny! I can just attribute the shine to him being wet, lol.

But the reason I'm so proud of this picture is because despite how hard Emmett was, the water in the background was the really hard part! I spent a lot of time and sketch paper trying to get it right before I attempted it behind Emmett and risked having to draw him over again in cased I messed up. I'm still not completely happy with it, but it's very obviously water, which is what matters I guess. At least I got the fading away part instead of looking like he's standing in a wall of water :P
I did Emmett in graphite and the background in charcoal in an attempt to make Emmett more noticeable and the background more, well, backgroundy. But that backfired on me, because then the water turned out darker than Emmett and stood out more, so I had to go back and darken Emmett. I also did the closer water darker and the farther water lighter in an attempt to bring the focus on Emmett's darker head in the middle of a lighter background. But that backfired on me too because Emmett's body was darker than his head, so now the bottom of the picture is too dark and the top is too light and the whole thing looks uneven. But it turned out decently and my friend likes it, and I certainly learned a lot from every screwup on this picture! Every mistake is an opportunity to grow :)

Emmett the black lab standing in water. Emmett was done in graphite and the background in charcoal.