Within the Artist's loving Hand

Edit: Okay, I just found out why the drawing looks here too dark nad contrasty, although in Photoshop it looks well. The color settings in PS where wrong and now that I changed them right, I was able to edit the drawing to make it (hopefully) look like the original

Well, I was working on other drawings as I went through my favs and found that amazing photo again that itched my hands to do some pencilwork!

Things I used:

Bristolboard A3 (actual size is 20x20cm)
Faber Castell Pencils H, HB, 2B, 8B
Staedtler Mars Lumograph 8B
Kneadable eraser and BluTac
Tombow Mono Zero erasers
About 200 tissues
19 hours of babysitting time

The lovely Leanne allowed me to use her too-cute-to-believe photo!

Be sure to check out her outstanding traditional work as well!

If you wonder what’s about the title… I really lacked of one, so I went through my favourite songs and came around Vincent by Don McLean and there was that line

“… beneath the artist's loving hand”

and it sounded quite good enough ( I couldn't find a song with feet or toes )

I also learned some things about shading during this drawing
Normally I used to regulate the brightness of the shading just by pressure (using just one or two different pencils)… that’s stupid, you’ll always see lines and it won’t get really smooth at all! So I tried to work in many (manymanymany…) layers, beginning with a H then HB etc. as long as the proper darkness is achieved.
The most annoying part was the hand, especially the thumb

Thanks for looking!
Viki