Pine cone drawing

This was another assignment for school. It's a pine cone! :) It was a little monotonous to draw, because of all of the spines that I drew on it. But once it was finished, it looked great. I drew the outline first and shaded the whole thing with the hatching technique(drawing little lines close together). Then I took out some scales from the side of the outline using a kneaded eraser, and tapped at the shape lightly with the kneaded eraser. Starting at the bottom, I started drawing the spines smaller, and gradually getting bigger as I went up. All I did was make it look like the bottom spines were overlapping the top spines. I shaded as I drew them, and I made the tips blend into the bottom of the next spine. After that, I darkened the spines and then pulled the kneaded eraser lightly through the tips of each spine to give it the appearance that it was popping out. I shaded the closer left half of it and gave it a soft shadow underneath. (The camera quality is bad, so you might not be able to see it very well.)  If you want to read the tutorial for this, go to http://www.toadhollowstudio.com/wp_blog/sketch-a-pine-cone/. The end drawing for the tutorial looks better than mine, but I was still happy how mine came out. Have fun!