Miya and Her Toys

One of my weak areas (or so I feel) are sketching animals.  Especially if they have the long curly fur.  I've tried several times trying to capture my "baby" on paper but never liked the results.

Wanting to try again, I decided to sketch some cats.  The reason for cats is because they can be so poised and offer greater poses than a dog might.

Here is my warming up with cat figures:

After this I attempted Miya in pencil.   

Then I took pen and ink to this using the dryer feed Pilot Prera and Lexington Gray ink..  I prefer the results of the graphite because it is soft and fresh looking.  The pen and ink is OK but to my eyes looks a bit stiff.  I'm still happy overall with the results.  All graphite was erased after the pen and ink and then went back over using the graphite for some shading in places rather than ink.

And here are a couple of her toys.  When I was done with this, my hand actually hurt.....all that stippling!!!!  I love the results with all the dots but on this paper, it was a challenge for my pen and my hand.  It took a long time to do this.