The Antler Sketch

Awhile back, a friend lay sent this antler to the garbage pile heap but I decided to save it even though I wasn't sure what to do with it.  Maybe one day I will....(fill in the blank here).   Thus it remained in my keep for some time now.

Yesterday, as I was practicing long ballpoint pen strokes for my study of tree trunks, I stumbled on the similarity of the branch I was working on to the antler I know I have.  This happened after I darkened the branch and re-oriented the paper to a landscape position.  Well, I stopped what I was doodling, searched for the antler some where, set it on the kitchen table, flipped the paper on the other side and started a clean sketch.  Mostly used a medium tip ballpoint pen for the general shape and shading while a fine ballpoint pen helped with the fine lines and texture.