Making Friends

Over the past couple of days I've been putting the effort in to 'make friends' with charcoal.  We began our self portrait on Tuesday in class and I was VERY nervous.  I reminded myself to remember what I've already achieved and to trust the course that I'm doing but still had a major case of butterflies.   During the initial stage of prepping the portrait I kept holding my breath.  Anyway...... here is what I had achieved after the first day - which was about 6 hours of work including developing the underlying sketch which you then work over.

Yes I know my hair is not this dark naturally but after fiddling with the contrast to make it easier to see the tonal variations in my face, my hair ended up really dark.  I am pretty happy with the hair as I've been able to represent my waves and curls quite accurately. I really struggled with the curly hair we did in class so this is a huge relief.  Today I put in another few hours on this project and I'm still not finished.  I am more comfortable with using the charcoal though - although I have dragged my hand through it a few times and do damage control..... Doh!!

Hope you like it.  Will get the final pics up as soon as possible for you then it's back to finishing the shoe for me!