Little sad girl ...

A couple of weeks back I was hunting for some pictures to put in a slide deck at office, and I came across a picture of a sad little girl. The photo was in black and white, and I was quite caught up with the effect ...and the expression on the girl's face.

I set about trying to capture this using charcoal and graphite pencils.
First cut I used an A4 sized drawing paper and started to sketch the outline ...somehow that did not come out alright, and the paper size seemed a little cramped ....so I trashed that and started out with a slightly larger size. This is a quarter of the regular 'chart paper'.
I drew the outline first with a 'H' pencil and checked if the proportions were right. (I usually verify my outline by asking someone else to have a look at it - this time it was my mom. Having another person look at it , gives a different perspective and helps you catch some minor missing details - my mom pointed out that I had drawn the hands leaner ..and they needed to be a little plumpy !)

I did the second round of checking - looking at the reflection of the sketch in the mirror. This is useful technique to catch some very obvious flaws ! This helped me correct the size and tilt of the head. (children's head to body proportions are different from adults...)

Then I tried the third trick ..which is to leave the sketch as it was, and returned to check it after 4-5 hours. It looked satisfactory, and now I proceeded to fill in the details.

I identified the brightest areas in the photo and shaded those with a 'H' and blended in with a paper. Now I started to shade the slightly darker areas with a charcoal pencil ...but using rough lines and then blending in. Once the entire figure was shaded, I started to darken the shadow areas. and the frills on the dress.
At every stage I checked with the mirror !

I had done with the neck and body, and the head was yet to be complete...
I drew an outline of the eyes , nose and mouth. The mouth took quite a few attempts to get it right...the chubbiness of the cheeks had to show !!
Once done, I did the hair with charcoal and completed the face.
Satisfied with what I saw , I checked again with my mom, the mirror and took a digital photo of this. The photo made another few minor missing details obvious, such as a shade missing here or a frill having no shadow...After the finishing touches, here is how the sad little girl turned out to be !

I did this in 3 hours, across 2 days.