Commissioned by "Sam" (forgot to ask--if you have a FA account, let me know so I can link you)

Second commission of AC2017, the commissioner offered a choice of two of his OC's one being a jackelope, the other a house cat. 'Course I had to take the easier one :D. So, being this was a single character more-or-less-bust-shot in a half-size sketchbook, I opted to try two things:

First, the art style. It sure doesn't look like "my" style does it? I claim the influence of the excellent reference sheet I was linked to. While I've always had a limited ability to mimic certain other artist's styles, it never hurts to expand that repetoire.

The second thing I did was, when I got the idea to have Sam here posed against a railing, this rapidly expanded to having him actually on the observation deck at the David Lawrence Convention Center where Anthrocon was held. A few minutes of trying to sketch Pittsburgh's signature chain-link suspension bridges and baseball stadium led to an inspiration--in other words "You have a camera, dummy". So I quickly hung a "BRB in 5 min" sign on my artist alley table and hurried out to take a photo from the deck. While I didn't have room to shoehorn in the two other bridges actually visible from this point, I did correct the light towers overlooking PNC Park. Maybe next time :D

Pencil in sketchbook, scan cleaned and processed in Micrografx Picture Publisher 10. Single-layer image, 8MB scan.