Sketches: Shrews

Still working my way through episodes of Coast, I came across a section that had a tiny bit of footage of a field mouse and a water shrew. Usually I only get to see fish and other beachy creatures on Coast, and I'm a sucker for anything small and rodenty, so sketching was obviously required. 

I took a couple of grainy screenshots (these not being discs that are the same region as my computer, this involves photographing the tv, which never results in the best of quality =P) and since I was slacking off in the heat today, sketching is exactly what I did:

We have here three water shrews (the two on the left are from random pictures I found on google), a field mouse and a mole. 

I'd had such fun doing these, and talking them over with a friend tonight, I pulled out one of my old Farthing Wood Friends magazines to look at some more photos, and came across an illustration by Graham Allen (unfortunately I can't find this particular Graham Allen on Google) of a bunch of common shrews out for a walk. Apparently they sometimes all hold onto the back of the shrew in front with their teeth.

So I sketched a family of shrews 'exhibiting caravanning behaviour'. The one at the back had better not be distracted by that skipper butterfly for too long! 

I'd really like to take this further... maybe watercolour would be a good option, what do you think? 

Mechanical Pencil in A5 Moleskine sketchbook. Not sure how long the top sketches took, but the line of shrews took about 45-50 minutes.