Drawing portrait in charcoal + STEPS

Hi Steemians!

Today I'd like to show you my normal routine of doing portraits in charcoal. It was a small quick commission and as usual in case of commissioned portraits the main goal for me was to establish strong likeness.

I was using various sticks of vine charcoal, piece of compressed charcoal for darkest darks, charcoal pencil for small details and piece of white chalk to put final highlights. The paper is HAHNEMÜHLE Ingres.

Here is progress photos:

start with a quick block-in to nail down main landmarks and proportions

Finding the shadow and light areas, filling both areas with apropriate value. Here I try to do hatches folowing the general form movement - it helps to create illusion of 3-dimentionality and creates variety in texture.

Closer attention to the features (except the nearest eye :)) still very crude but going the way I want.

Almost finished version - I keep the highlights - forehead, tip of the nose and eye for the very last moment and add them with white chalk. You can see the final photo in the beginning of the post.

hope you dig it!! Cheers!