Christmas Commissions - Here's #3!

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Okay, here's the one that came down to the wire (I delivered it two days before Christmas)! This is the other house portrait for the client who ordered Commission #2. As you can see, it is a very different kind of house, made of brick, with fancy design elements, like the quoins running down each side. This one took the most time - easily 10-12 hours. I think it came out very well To be honest, I think maybe it came out *too* well. When I finished it, I compared it to the other house, and the difference was so extreme that it didn't even look like the same person drew both pictures. As I said in the last post, that picture looked like a nice illustration of a house, very straightforward, showing all the details. But THIS drawing was like fine art. It was in a completely different league. What the heck was the difference?!? I did my best with both pictures, I assure you. There is a possible technical reason, I guess: I used mechanical pens for both pictures, but for the first picture, I did all of the linework with a size .01 pen, and with this one, I only did the main lines with a size .01 and all the shading and textures with a size .005. I guess that made a lot of difference. There's a non-technical reason, too: sometimes I just do better work, for no particular reason. It's not for trying harder - honestly, sometimes it's easier. I felt like both of these drawings got a serious amount of effort from me, but this one took longer because the subject was simply harder to draw. You'd think that would have made it come out worse, but that's clearly not the case. Now you know you should always try to draw things that are hard to draw, because that is the only way to improve. Even though I didn't do it on purpose, I may have "coasted" to an extent on the other house and simply could NOT do that on this one.