I recently got commissioned to help give this wonderful man a beautiful parting gift from his government office. Judging by what I heard about him, this portrait is well deserved. Doing this piece got me thinking about the kind of legacy I'm leaving behind, and how well I will be celebrated at that stage. As I have said here many times before, it's always the best feeling for me to be part of people's celebration.

Now to the art proper. Generally I used more of graphite for the face, hands and feet tie, and charcoal exclusively for the coat.

Progress shots

I did most of the face with graphite pencils, spare the eyes. This time I tried Kimberly and Derwent pencils with my ususal Steadtler pencils to see which ones I preferred using. It's a tough one but I think I still like my Steadtlers more for now.

I used a lot of charcoal on the coat, I firstly layed white charcoal for smoothness, covered it with dark charcoals and blended, then brought out highlights again with white charcoal.

Hands, ring and wristwatch details. This was a very challenging part, trying my best not to smudge while spending hours and hours doing the texture on the hands. Hands are freakishly tasking to draw!

(Sorry for the poor quality) I used graphite pencils for most of the tie, except the lower parts where there's a dark shadow, charcoal did the honors there.

Just some more charcoaling...

Bam! Done! But was it? 😁

To make the figure itself stand out, I added a light bokeh-ish backround just randomly.

After spraying on fixatives, as I did here, I cut out an add an outline with a thicker paper to make the work stand out when framed

There we were, ready for delivery like...Let's go make someone blush!

Summary

Status: commissioned
Size: 35x25 inches
Medium: graphite and charcoal
Duration: 80 hours

Thanks for sharing this moment with me, kindly upvote, comment or resteem! Follow me on Instagram to see more of my works.

PEACE