Making of 'God Bless America'

Fifteen drawings are arranged into three columns and five rows. Each of them depicts the same anthropomorphic mouse wearing early 20th century clothes, standing in front of an early 20th century microphone.

The first column shows the mouse just talking into it. The second coulmn shows him looking to the side to make a remark. The third column shows him collapsing in laughter grabbing onto the microphone for support.

• The first row shows what is obviously a hand drawing that has been scanned directly into the computer.
  The second row shows the background erased and the outlines cleaned up.


• The third row shows the drawing colorized with solid colors.


• The fourth row shows the mouse with some basic shading.


• The fifth row adds a level of detail to this shading: the shadows on the fur appear interrupted by hairs, the wrinkles on the clothes cast shadows, as do his whiskers and the fur on his face.
  

Notes

If you've seen me comment online, you probably know by now that I change my avatar(s) for certain dates. These three were the avatars I used for July 4, 2011, on account of commemorating the day with [this blog post].

I didn't have the time to shade them on the day, of course, but went ahead and did it, mainly because =Foldo suggested I should try more cell shading, and see if it's faster than shading individual hairs (like I did in [Taming Twitter] for instance)

At two hours per character pose, I must say I'm inclined to disagree.