Chinchilla

Here is a chinchilla commission I did for a friend of mine. I forget if I have discussed it before here, but drawing fur is hard. And when you have to draw a lot of fur-like a chinchilla- then it is even more difficult.

Fortunately, I think I cracked how to draw appropriate fur. It should be short even if in real life, the animal's fur is longer than that. It is easier to manage without it looking too mangy and wild. The other tip to drawing fur is that it must always be going in the same direction. Animal fur tends to bend in only one certain way. If you don't believe me, then pet a dog going against its fur. It would look weird and probably is not too comfortable for the dog too. Animal fur is always goes in the same direction 97% of the time, so you should draw it consistently in one direction to reflect that. One way to remember to make that fur looking neat and unidirectional is by drawing it in rows. Draw it in rows of each other and then compound it with another row of fur and then another. Pretty soon, you will have a neat-looking fur bunch that makes the figure of the animal easier to look at.

The exception to this rule is if you are drawing fur that curves with the body. You can see that with the body rolls or the left hind-leg here. I curve my fur pattern based on where the body curves. It really goes a long way to do that because it gives them more of a figure volume, if that makes any sense.  Finally, in place of deep blacks of shadows, draw a lot of fur. Like how I said to draw fur rows, for the shadows of the animal, you draw a lot of rows of fur clumped together. If done correctly, it gives that shadowed, textured look. Drawing fur is hard, but it is a thing that I am getting more used to.