A Poodle, a Newfoundland, and a Shih Tzu

I have a coworker who also grooms dogs on the side and hopes one day to have her own grooming business.  I decided that for her birthday, I was going to draw her favorite breed of dog.  Except, she has three favorite breeds of dog, so it became a drawing of three breeds of dogs.  None of which, incidentally, I had ever drawn before (the previous post notwithstanding- I couldn't ruin the surprise, now could I?).  I found some reference photos and went to work on a graphite sketch.

Three Dogs- sketch
graphite
small leather sketchbook

Newfoundland dogs are very furry and take a long time.  Because they have so much fur, it's easy to lose sight of the underlying body structure.  I spent a while squinting at my reference photo trying to ascertain where neck met body and shoulders deviated from the body.  Poodles, needless to say, have wild haircuts, which again can make the artist lose sight of the animal's anatomy.  While drawing the the Shih Tzu, I found it was easy to distinguish the four main parts of the body (head, shoulders, body, hindquarters) despite its fluffiness  I ended up going with a slightly different composition from different photographs for the final version.  Using a gel pen resulted in a very appealing drawing with a crisp, illustrative look.

Three Dogs
pen
5.5x8.5