Started this the other night, and have about 4+ hours into it so far. This is on a peice or Arches Cover AF paper 250g. It really holds the medium and the black is BLACK, but once you use a stubb on it, it does not erase back to white. The texture and the fact it grabs the medium realy makes it hard to get subtle tones. I see I erased some of her right eye.. have to remember to fix that ...
Using willow/vine and 4b charcoal pencil

Reference
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Drawing
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Close up
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Wow! I love your work!

Brad

Excellent!!

Look forward to seeing it progress.

Wow! The hair looks perfect!

Yes.. that was the easy part! nose is killing me......

Very nice job.

Just a quick update, spent some time Friday night on this, area under eyes is to dark but going to wait to get more of the face done befor I lighten it up. I got scared as I started the nose, it was not looking to good and I was getting tired so put it down for the night. Hope to get a few hours to work on it today.

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Spent a lot of time today trying to get the nose to look right. Took a couple of pictures of it and pasted with original to figure out what was wrong. After my wife was happy with the nose I moved on with some of the face shading and ear. This paper take charcoal so fast it is almost impossible to get the delicate shading needed, so I am thinking things will need to be darker than original. Still have lots to do..

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Awesome!!! Fantastic start!!!!!

Tonights struggle was making the nose a bit smaller, still to big, and the mouth.. UG.. having a hard time but the wife says it is looking ok. Think I am suffering from the trees for the forest thing.. need to step back more often.

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I think this is done! I am a little disapointed in the outcome. The tooth of the paper was great for the hair but not the skin. I think it is all a bit dark but don't want to mess with it to try and lighten it up. Once I get it behind a black matt and no glare glass over it, I think it will look a bit better. The no glare glass kind of acts at a soft filter and really smooths out charcoal portraits. I guess if I don't find anything really messed up when I paste this photo next to the original, It will be done!
Thanks for looking and if you see anything you think I should change please feel free to say, I won't be offended!

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Very dramatic! Great job!

looks wonderful

Stunning! If I could draw portraits half as good I would be happy.

Thank you Paulett, Kaly and Brian! It still doesn't look right to me.. I have it sitting here and try not to look at it.. I think in a couple of days it will look different .. if you know what I mean??

It does look beautiful. We're our own worst critics.

J.D. Hillberry talks about burnishing down parts of a drawing surface to match the requirements of the drawing; so for example, the face area, which you would like to take less charcoal and be smoother, you could burnish that area to smoosh down the tooth of the paper before doing the drawing. That guy is really something -- his attention to detail is incredible -- and this might be worth a try.

i love audrey hepburn and this picture is amazing! there's like the slightest difference at the lip but it's so slight and everything is so wonderful, that it doesn't even matter. plus, you tend to look at her eyes more than you do anything else anyways so yea.

great job - as always !!!
what I found out for me: take the pic, step back, again step back - maybe one more time - and then look at it!
but audry is wonderful !! (just one mini-point maybe this is it: she is looking in slighly different directions ...)
she looks really original! (last week I bought "My fair lady" so I know *gg*

Ernest how does one go about burnishing paper.. Typicaly burnishing a wood scraper would be the process of bending the shap edges over in a manner that would allow them to scrap using a burishing tool. So the assumption I make is brunishing paper in this instance is to flatten it out? Using what, a roller or some bunlt instrument rubbing in a consistant fashion to flatten the fiber?

kari_zi I don't like the mouth either.. i plan on lightening the cracks in the lips a bit. darker in person than photo.. and I think the lower lip is big..

melthemi I know what you mean. The big problem with the eyes is her right eye iris should be lower then her left but mine is in line. This makes the areas between the iris and the lower lid to wide.. I think the hightlight on her right eye could be smaller as well according to the reference..

I have not tried this but apparently it's something Hillberry really does do. In his book he explains how to do it with the metal end of a Berol Turquoise pencil; a green General's pencil with the metal cap would be the same thing. He says "small, overlapping, circular strokes work best to flatten the tooth evenly."

Thanks! I will try this on my next charcoal project, I have lots of this paper to use up!

nobody is perfect - also Audry is not really symetric (is that an english word ???)
and I would say: making an iris smaller is easier than making it bigger

I think your being to hard on yourself. I think the outcome is pretty darn good!

Thanks Jim! I lowered the iris on her right eye and like it much better.. funny how such a tinny change can make a big differnce, if not in reality, at least mentaly

you are very skilled. I have had charcoal for a while but I think that I might be better off with my pencil set.

This is wonderful, don't worry about the very subtle. M

Thanks very much Halochief and Margaret.
Margaret, I am kind of a Obsessive perfectionist, not always perfrect but I have a hard time just letting things go. This is good and bad.. Bad in I can't normaly pay people to do things for me, like contractors, plumbers, electricians etc.. they never do the job correctly (in my perfectionist mind) THAT SWITCH PLATE IS NOT STRAIGHT!!!
So if I see a mistake I made (for some reason spelling is not something I obess over ) and I feel I can fix it without destruction, I try, sometimes I make it worse, sometimes I achive my goal!
I have a few more days work on the finish of the frame, paint has to cure 48 hours before the top coat, but will post a photo of this behind a mat and in a frame with glass. It realy does change the way a picture looks.