Realistic Charcoal Portrait final project

Realistic Charcoal Portrait per Xavier Denia course.

I used what I had at home: Strathmore Toned Tan paper, Conte and HIlferny charcoal pencils, compressed and willow charcoal, brush, toilet paper, erasers. I did not have Nitram charcoal.

Started with willow charcoal sketch, red charcoal to catch proportions, refine with soft charcoal pencil, then shadow mapping and finetuning. Compressing the shadows helped, I was fighting the urge to show more of the reflected light but I understand that keeping the shadow family helps to unify the overall look. I chose to focus more on the face rather than drawing the whole shirt and I chose rather to keep the half tones on a lighter side to avoid them competing with the shadows.