A sunflower in 6 stages

I'm posting today a sketch that I spent a little more time on than the others I've worked on so far.  From the first pencil stroke to the final blending pass, it was probably a 3 hour project over the course of the last 4 days, and as a result I have a nice collection of photos cataloging it's progression at every step.  First is the original loose sketch:

 That's the part I'm honestly not that good at.  My freehand is poor, and I have to spend a lot of time refining from the first sketch to a decent line drawing, which is what the next photo is of:

The leaves I wasn't happy with, but overall the shape looked decent, if a bit cartoon-ish. Here it is with the first layer of shading done.

That was mostly shading around the outline, which took some time given all the nooks and crannies around an organic shape like this.  Then I applied the first shading layer to the flower itself:

Now some more detail lines were added to give the leaves and the face of the flower texture (along with a more detailed pass at the shading):

And finally some blending to reduce the obvious lines throughout the drawing:

Overall, I'm calling this one my most successful work yet (not saying much, but I feel better about it than anything else that's up on this blog so far).  I guess it's true that the more work you put into it, the more pleased you'll be with the result.