Going round in circles...

First the picture...  this is the foal I started yesterday,  and were I left it last night.   Today it was time to do all the shading,  I used 3H, 2,3 and 5B pencils, plus an 8B.  

I also had to get in the muscle tone,  and add all the shading, plus the mane and tail.   Being a foal he would not have had his coat cut, so it was left long, and with wisps here and there.  The pencils had to be super sharp to get the detail,  so glad I spent the money on the sharpener,  it has been worth every penny. 

It took the whole afternoon to darken the coat, and add all the shading, shadows, and there is still some more darkening needed. 

This is him, almost at the finished stage, but not quite.  I need to add a tad more detail round his face,  and darken other areas.   I may need to employ my magnifier,   I've got one with a clamp,   it was very handy when I was doing cross stitch many moons ago.  

A new challenge has been set,  this week I have to draw a chair, with another object. 

I was up with the lark this morning.  I wanted to do a reccie on the route to the place were I'm having my medical on Wednesday.  So what better day to do it than a Sunday, and in the morning when the roads will be quiet...  WRONG!   I headed off around 9.30 a.m.,   I'd worked out the easiest route after much staring at the map.   Got annoyed when some plonker tried undertaking me at a set of traffic lights...   grrr,  I won,  just put my foot down and got ahead of him.   He was a total plonker, who assumed that because I was in a micra I must be a doddery old driver.  Well he found out that I wasn't.   So got into town and the road was closed,   did a u-turn thinking that maybe there were road works, went on down to another road, nope that was closed - what the hell was going on?   I turned round and hoped I could remember the other route,   got to the road I needed and.. that was closed!    It was the marathon,  yep,  it seemed almost the entire city centre was shut to traffic. Now had there been hordes of runners I would have been more understanding, as it was there were no runners in sight, so why couldn't they have kept the roads open a little longer?     There was no signage for the marathon at any of the road blocks, would it have killed them to put up some information for drivers?    This is one of my bugbears, lack of information, on roads, trains, airports etc,   just bloody well tell us what is happening and we will be able to exercise some patience! 

The other bee in my bonnet is the fuss being made of the silly young woman who was photo'd topless on that mountain.  Sky news saw fit to make it one of their lead stories, why?   On the press preview the two reviewers moaned about the massive amount of coverage. I wanted to email Sky and tell them what hypocrites they were,  plonking a reporter outside the young woman's home, plus trying to badger at the airport, on the plane, and then agreeing that the coverage was OTT.   She has said sorry,  paid her fine and I presume wants to put the whole thing behind her. But Sky news seems determined to hound her,  if I were the family I'd treat the reporter to a cold bucket of water.   Surely there is news of far more importance that needs reporting on other than a silly young woman, who is now clearly embarrassed by her own stupid behaviour.

The good news:  England won their match, even better news:  the tennis starts tomorrow.