Charcoal Drawing of a Woman

Today in my charcoal drawing class, I drew a young black woman with natural hair. This drawing was more difficult for me because my teacher did not give me a lot of help. I guess she figured that I was supposed to apply what I learned from the other class.

I started off sketching with a regular number 2 pencil. I tried to remember how to draw a head from a YouTube video that I watched. I drew guide lines to help me determine where the eyes, nose and lips should be on the oval shaped head.

When my teacher saw this sketch, she told me to draw my guideline so that more of the right side of the face was shown.

It was hard for me to get the eyes in the right position relative to the size of the pupils.

She told me to erase my sketch lines and outline the picture with a hard charcoal pencil. I learned a couple of things about the graphite pencil marks on the charcoal paper. The charcoal will not cover the graphite pencil marks. The graphite lines were still visible if I didn't erase them well enough.

I decided that this picture would be a quick sketch and that I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time correcting my errors. I'll do better next time. I've got to practice at home so that I can improve. I can't just wait until I go to class to draw if I expect to get better.

Have a great day.