Spaniel ears in progress

Well today my camera battery died so I am unable to show you an up to date photograph of the Spaniel's portrait, so I have some step by steps of the spaniel ears that I took earlier in the week. First of all I roughly draw out the shadow areas in a 2B mechanical Pencil:

I then go over this is a darker pencil, because this Springer is one of the black and white ones I used a 7B in this case:

And finally I fill in the gaps, creating highlight areas by blending the darker shadows at the top and bottom of the paler areas and leaving the middles the lightest. This then creates the shape of the waves:

I can't believe it's the 19th of April already! Where is the year going? The week just whizzes by and I get to Friday and think, well I haven't even done half of what I wanted to achieve this week! This week has been a fun one. I should have finished the Springer Pet Portrait by the end of it and i've had loads of fun with the new rats. The babies are now in the big cage with Treacle and Charlotte and they are all sleeping together, all snuggled in the igloo. Tinkerbell is becoming a little confident mischief maker, she is often charging around with Treacle. I think Treacle is pleased she has new friends to play with. Quite often if I let them out in the afternoon Charlotte will go back to bed, and Treacled had no-one to play with, but this afternoon she was happily pea-fishing with Tinkerbell and Doughnut while Charlotte went back to sleep. Having four is great - double the trouble, but double the fun too!