Penelope in Progress 2023

It's great to see the process of drawing her head.
Do you use it as just a direct reference (so you do all the lines and the cut picture is just near it to see how come the lines and curves that you do), or the picture is used as a mask, and its outline can be copied to fill the rest?

I used it as a direct reference - first I redrew the overall basic features (nose, eyes, ears cheek hair, forelock, and lips), then I added improvements on the design. After adding colors and eyes, the head has been resized slightly.

Ah, I see, yours is indeed a bit bigger.
The details on yours look somewhat better than on the original one :)

The main problem with original Penelope's design is that it's often inconsistent - Uncle Jim's animators from California, South Korea, and Japan apparently couldn't decide about her facial details and fur color, thus you see changes between episodes. This also applies to Mona, Miss Kitty, Lola, Gwendolyn, and other characters from GAF (Garfield and Friends) or TGS (The Garfield Show).
My pen friend from Kentucky compared the aforesaid characters' heads to Moai sculptures due to flat faces (making sense for Lola and Gwen, and maybe Kitty, as they're Persian cats, but not for Penelope and Mona), while I find their original round ears not much cat-like.

 Therefore, I gradially developed their head designs, including nose details I added last year.

Maybe they didn't pay too much attention on the details of supporting characters unlike the main ones (Garfield's stripes on his face and body interestingly have always the same number for example).

I think it was more caused by splitting episode production between three centers (California, Japan, and South Korea) back in 1990s, when online communication wasn't developed. Lack of contact and supervision must had lead to inconsistencies.

On brighter note, it's also an area for fans to show, how can character designs be developed.