More Graphite Practice

Here is another face study done in graphite and white colored pencil.  What's funny is that I started doing the shading with graphite dust as before, but due to how long it takes I was getting impatient.  So I decided to just go at it with a graphite stick and a blending stump (Please note that in the past I have never found great success with that method, but I was encouraged by my use of the blending stump on the toned paper in the previous pieces, so I gave it a shot).

Much to my surprise and delight I was not only pleased with the results, but I rather enjoyed the process.  I think I might just drop the whole graphite dust thing for now and do more of these studies with the stump.  I am betting that the dust method would really shine on larger pieces, but this is still at the 8.5 x 5.5 inch size, so the stump is more than sufficient.  

I feel like a broken record at this point, but I just really can't express how much using toned paper has breathed new life into a medium that I previously found flat and uninteresting to work in.    

I plan on doing more of these for the double fold reasons of better understanding facial anatomy and structure as well as gaining proficiency in graphite as a medium.