FINALLY I finished my entry to 's contest! [link]
(but I wish more people had entered; it's over now... but it was such a creative idea, it made me sad that there weren't more entries)

Basically, the idea was to come up with an earth elemental version of the species she made up, with unique coat patterns based kinda upon the non-elemental breed of the species. ALSO, we had to come up with a name.

I'm terrible at names, but I came up with Chyattaka, or Chyattara, I haven't been able to choose...

About the drawing... I'm really mad at it. And myself. Cuz like, I was all happy with the lineart, and then I colored the colorful parts (XD) and was happy with that too, but when I got to the main body, I wanted a dark-ish but not too dark grey (cuz the main body's supposed to be grey), and I only have three grey shades of colored pencil: white, light grey, and black; so I borrowed my roomate's art pencils (which happened to be graphite and pastels, not a good mix with colored pencils, as I soon discovered much to my dismay)... and where'd I have to start? THE FACE. *convulses* I pretty much ruined it right then and there, and I had to work my butt off to make it look purposeful, and make the rest of the body look the same *convulses again* So it's not as good as I was hoping it would be, but I'm growing to like it despite my stupidity

But other than that, more about the drawing:
I used a reference: [link]
At first I was going off the reference pretty heavily but as it morphed the pose ended up changing significantly.

Another note: the nose kinda looks like the way I draw dog's noses... and so do a lot of the other features- oops XD
I'm way not used to drawing cats. My hand was fighting with me every step of the way, "draw a longer noooose, no, that's wrong, it's not doglike! draw a dooooog!"

-----

ANYWAY, now about the chyattaka (the point of the contest)! The earth chyattakas are similar to the non-elemental chyattakas except mainly the fact that their stripes are green instead of plain black. That much was stated in the description for the contest.

Now here's my twist: the dark dark green-brown back skunk-stripe is kinda wavy-ish, but not ridiculously wavy, and it comes up to the top of the head instead of going all the way down to the nose. The muzzle is instead the lighter shade of green that is exhibited by the underbelly and the paws. Lighter green of the belly is closer to grass green, whereas the top stripe (and ears) vary between shades of lighter and darker brown-green. The dark green-brown also covers each leg in a sleeve, except for the toes which are the lighter grass-green color. Paw pads are a very light green even though the animal is nocturnal, but it's okay because they're hidden most of the time. Also, the dark top stripe travels all the way down (all skunk-like ) to the tip of the tail, and somewhere along the way the tail becomes all that color. The grass-green underbelly starts at the muzzle, goes down the neck, under the chest, under the underbelly, and underneath the tail for a ways until it's eventually enveloped by the dark green-brown. Also, like a lot of cat/dog breeds the grass-green underbelly part (okay, not colorwise) is also shown on the inside of the backlegs. You can kinda see what I'm talking about in the picture.

Most of that up there *points up* you can see in the picture pretty clearly (I hope...). Now for the differences... type... things...

Shades of grey of the regular body can vary between individuals. Shades of dark brown-green stripe can vary between individuals, as well as how far the stripe travels on the head (on some it goes all the way to the nose), and obviously the wavy pattern varies, too, and the height of the "sleeves". Shades of grass-green vary between individuals, as well as placement of the color on the muzzle (ex, all the muzzle, including the top, or just the cheek parts/chin, and all in between). Eyes are green, but should maybe be darker green than is depicted in the picture... I dunno. It's up to *fireflyskys ultimately, I guess

Another thing: I actually prefer this individual to have lighter grey body fur than is depicted... that was part of the oops on my part... but here's how it would have looked: [link]

If you're at all interested,

[link] shows Version 1 lineart, before I went through DRASTIC changes to fix it D:
and [link] shows the final lineart, before any colors were added.

Also, sorry for the fact that it's a photo of a drawing... I'll fix it when I get access to a scanner again.

-----

*fireflyskys has the full right to use this image or any of the concepts I put forth in any way she sees fit... if she sees fit... or change anything if she doesn't like it. She also owns the concept of the original species, not me... and... um... yeah. It is her contest, after all