Ginili, Yah and Curl on

I had ZERO intention of following the Inktober prompts, and yet, here's another one. Yah (step out here) and Ginili (step-out here) were the tangles for days 2 and 3, and the shading took me so long that I only had time to finish it now. I also added Curl On, a very pretty ribbon tangle by Linda Rea (step out here).

Here are a couple of pictures of the line-art, before all that crazy shading took place:

The shading really did take a long time. And it was a good thing, because I had a bit of a convoluted week health-wise, so it was nice to have something that I could work on and off. Half-way through the shading, I started to try a technique new to me, holding the pencil a little differently, very side-ways as you can see here. It seemed to create smoother shading even before blending with the blending stump:

Here's a little sequence of the entire drawing. I'm really happy with how it turned out, very interesting.

Here's the final picture again, a little closer-up:

If you are wondering about those super darks, it was a mix of inking pen, LOTS of pencil — I use a mix of F pencil and 2B and a ton of patience. Worth the work, in my opinion, right!

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