Drawing Class: "Microscopic" drawing

The assignment here was to draw something tiny and capture the detail. I chose a gourd with a hole in it--you can (I hope) see the fibrous texture inside the hole. The cropped area I used as a source was about 1 inch wide: the paper is 24 inches wide, and there's a 3-inch border... so I was drawing at 18x life-size. It's charcoal, of course.


I'm actually somewhat pleased at the result... it was sucking hardcore before I was done, so I feel like I salvaged it. In fact, I might actually hang this one. This is a style I really like: realistic, but abstract.