This image started as a quick sketch of a porcupine I did after seeing one in a zoo. As I was drawing, I started thinking about what a porcupine would look like with bedhead, and then I drew the hairbrush stuffed full of big quills, the way that many hairbrushes tend to gather and hold hair:
I took this sketch and did a refined sketch where I tried to give our porcupine friend a little bit of environmental context. I initially pictured him in a bathroom, and tried to indicate that with a sink and vanity mirror stand (because I didn’t want to draw a whole bathroom). Here’s that sketch:
I wasn’t satisfied with the look of the bathroom background though, and though I kept trying to change it, I couldn’t get it where it looked right to me. Eventually, I decided to change the background to a bedroom, to emphasize the bedhead nature of the porcupines wild quills. This felt better to me; more visually self-contained:
The inks and colors went pretty smoothly once I had finalized my pencil sketch. I think we’ve all had the experience of being up earlier than we want to be, and realizing that our normal morning preparation instruments need maintenance before we can use them. I really enjoyed creating this image and I think it turned out pretty well.