Serval portrait

This is the start of my latest drawing a Serval portrait.They are such elegant cats,slim and long limbed with large ears,perfectly designed for hunting small mammals within the tall grasses of the african plains.
With this piece,as in my last tiger drawing,ive started by laying down some background toning,not too dark at this stage so that i can fiddle later.As with all my cat pictures i shall be starting by drawing the ears,simply because i find them the most difficult part of the drawing to get right and will be spending hours trying to get a good detailed representation.In the case of the serval ,with it's very large ears it will take me even longer than normal i fear till i'm happy with them.