This is how sharp my pencils are, after another 40 minutes or so of cleanup and fine-tuning, this is my idea of what a pencil-only con sketch would look like from me. You could practically shave with pencils like this--I imagine most inkers don't need them this sharp. I'm also thinking this one might be a candidate for non-inked digital color job, since I haven't done one of those yet.

I came pretty close to hitting the 1 hour mark in total with this one, and much of the extra minutes came from futzing with details of Cynthia's outfit (described below) and fixing the backdrop, which most likely wouldn't be included in a typical artist-alley grade con sketch.

For this pic, I've done up Cynthia in some common clothing items that I've been meaning to draw on some of my characters just to keep their outfits current. Such as the 1/8 sleeve t-shirt, skinny-leg jeans (with a stud-and-stripe decoration I spotted someone wearing on the subway years ago), and the ballerina flats, which took several retries to get them looking "right" since I didn't have my photo refs handy at the time.

Backdrop is a NY City R-142 subway car, looking toward the conductor's/train operator's cab end. And as before, this one will be inked and colored (assuming I don't attempt an "inkless" color job first)

Heh, maybe I should mention I was listening to Victoria Beckham's "Let Your Head Go" while jazzing this one up. Finally caught it on XM the other day (thanks Pioneer for the Inno's retro-record feature, as the song was half-over before I recognized it)