Sketching Muriel
by tannim
March 24, 2010

	Muriel scooted the big parchment canvas onto the thingy, she forgot what it was called, and held the edge with in place by pressing against it with her tail.  Her left foot rose high to operate the clamp to hold it in place.  She repeated the process with the other 3 clamps and repeated toe tugs to get the canvas in place.  Satisfied she scooted her small box of felt pens closer and selected one with a soft point with her left foot.

	The squirrel wore a new dress her mother had bought her.  She wasn't supposed to wear it for drawing, as it was a fine dress, but she did anyway.  Her father would approve though, he thought it looked pretty on her and encouraged her to wear it.  She liked being pretty.  Art was pretty, so she wanted to wear it while drawing.  She posed in front of the canvas, then glanced at the mirror nearby.

	After a second of studying herself she tried to picture herself as older, more mature.  She wasn't a bad artist, really, she just couldn't draw things she couldn't see yet.  Muriel started with her cheek fur, the long pretty fur on her face swished as she turned her face back and forth.  The girl gave them a bit more swirl at the tips than she really had, figuring they'd curl as she got older to look prettier.

	Her face went in pretty easily, she never had too much trouble on her face, but her hips gave her a bit of trouble.  Again and again she tried her hips, but they always looked wrong.  She twisted and looked at herself repeatedly in the mirror and struggled for nearly fifteen minutes just to her her torso and hips to work.  The lack of arms wasn't a problem.  It was natural and easy enough, drawing arms was actually harder, but she couldn't make herself look feminine.  The dress she drew was the only hint that the shape was female.

	It wasn't until she tried a flabbier "pudgy"look for her hips that she was happy.  The little bit of womanly fat there added a cute touch to her otherwise plain boyish young body.  Muriel tried to draw in a pair of breasts, but they weren't something she had any real experience with.  Scribble after scribble around her chest area didn't seem to work right.  She tried round. She tried pears.  She even tried just a flat chest like she had at her current age.  Nothing the squirrel did looked right.

	Frustrated she scribbled them out and doodled in a tail.  The tail was a lot easier, as she could just swish her tail around to the front next to the canvas.  She could only manage a quicky doodle before her legs grew tired.  Lifting a leg up and moving it about with fine control was a lot of work.

	Her parents encouraged her to draw just because of that strain and fine control it took.  Muriel set the pen down and flexed her toes while resting her left leg.  She could use either leg.  Unlike the other furs with arms she had no real Footedness.  Left foot or Right foot, both felt about the same to draw with and while she was really little her mother would make her use one foot one day and the other the next while learning to write.

	Muriel sat back, then glanced at the clock, it'd taken nearly seventy minutes to do just her face and torso... and really bad breasts.  She flexed her legs, then got up for a snack and some tea.  A slice of walnut pie was a quite welcome treat to the relaxing squirrel, but the picture kept nagging at the back of her mind.  She'd never managed to draw herself before.

	Every time she'd tried she'd given up after failing to get the hips and legs decent.  Her head was always relatively easy to outline, but she still had trouble with the details of her muzzle and eyes.  Detail in general was a problem for the girl.  She was getting better, bit by bit, but most things didn't look too great even the ones her parents had praised her for as her best.

	"Maybe if I don't put clothes on it, the fabric is too hard to draw right." She mused to herself while finishing off the last bit of pie and crust.

	Muriel went back to the canvas, picked the pen with her right toes, and tried again.  She stood on the other side of the canvas, to accommodate the change in drawing feet, and went back to work.  Clothing made the hips a lot easier to work with as she didn't have to bother with any fabric in the way, but it made the chest more difficult.

	Breasts took a while but with the help of one of her father's special "Daddy Magazines" she managed to get something that looked more or less like breasts.  Feeling happier, Muriel moved on to the next hard part. Her legs.

	She looked in the mirror and swished her right leg this way and that, setting the foot down to spread her legs and try to figure out how to draw them.  They LOOKED easy, until she tried to add the subtle curves and bulges of the strong muscles under her pelt.  Her feet too were hard, a hard heel type area, a long slope to her pads, her long agile toes.

	She picked the pen back up and went back to work.  Spread legged didn't turn out so well.  Closed legs didn't either.  Excessively furry lines hid the bad detail a little, but still looked bad.  After a few minutes the squirrel huffed in frustration.  She still had a hard time with long lines.  Her feet just wouldn't hold the pen steady for the length of the line.  The poor grasp of anatomy didn't help either of course.

	Muriel switched feet again, stepped to the other side of the canvas, and tried again.  She came up with something good enough, after enough tries, and scribbled in crude feet with stick like toes.  Chittering in frustration the girl redrew the feet, trying to tamp down the frustration and add a bit more detail.  A few attempts later and she swished her cheek ruffs around while looking at it.

	It was as good as she was going to get it, she decided.  That area of the picture was pretty messy though from overdrawing, but as she looked at it Muriel saw the the breasts and legs were as well.  Even the hips and waist were too overdrawn and covered with dozens of scribbly lines.  Only the head was actually clean enough to look at she realized.

	Sighing, the young squirrel kicked the pen back into the box and sat down. "I have got to get better art supplies, or at least more lead for my pencil."  She looked at the picture again, then shrugged and signed her name on it.  "Good enough for now"