Drawing a sycamore ball - 3

Today I spent time working with the lights and darks of the sycamore ball.  In reality, the whole seed pod is basically the same shade of medium brown.  But if I drew it all over with the same intensity of pencil, it would end up looking like a flat blob.  How do you make it look round and sitting firmly on the table?  The answer to this dilemma is to draw the gradations of high light areas and low light areas; the highlights are lighter and the shadows darker.  This is pretty straightforward, right?  As I draw, I'm constantly thinking of the light source, how it hits the seed pod.  Fortunately for me, the pod has texture to it, not at all smooth, and so there is very little reflected light to worry about.  So here's how it looks, nearly finished:

I will leave it like this and move on to the other parts of the composition.  When everything is done, I'll look at the whole thing and make sure the balance is right.  So next up: another sycamore ball tucked behind a leaf... Stay tuned!