Rat sketch

[igenlode]

I drew a thing!

https://www.deviantart.com/igenlode/art/Rat-914810801

Comments

[sallymn]

Eee.... that's scarily realistic!

[betweensunandmoon]

Nice work!

[igenlode]

I hadn't meant it to be scary :-D

I love pet rats, and this was taken from a photo of a rat with its nose up, ears cocked and whiskers whiffling; the body language says "Hello, hello, hello, I'm very interested [in knowing what food you might have on your person :-p]"

[igenlode]

Thanks! I was sketching it from someone else's reference photo to try to demonstrate why his drawing didn't look quite rat-like -- one of the reasons is that this turns out to be an extremely tricky pose where you are basically looking *down* on an animal looking up at you, so every part of the rat gets foreshortened, including its face (and half the problem with rats is getting the muzzle long enough). But by luck or judgement I managed to get quite a good picture on the second attempt -- the first one went wrong at a very early stage, when it was basically just a pair of ears and eyes that started off too close to one another ;-p

It doesn't look like the specific rat in the picture, which was plumper and more sleek. And the feet are just arbitrary stars of toes, like those shoe-lumps I tend to do for human feet. But I did manage to get it to look like a rat sitting down and looking up at the viewer, which was very satisfying.

[sallymn]

Hey, I'm easily scared! :)

There was a mouse plague here last year (the 2020s have been all go, haven't they?) and I was scared of them too!

[igenlode]

Yes, I vaguely heard about the Great Australian Mouse Plague ;-)