Portrait of Cat Sheridan

I finished this portrait of my friend Cat Sheridan. 17" x 12" in graphite. These are just snapshots of the final drawing and I am going to shoot the photos properly later with better lighting. I did this drawing on Canson mixed media paper. The surface of the paper was softer than bristol board I had been using and once the fiber of the paper got crushed by the pressure of the pencils, it created a surface that was difficult to lay down another layer on. I had to be more careful about the order of the various leads I used as I worked my way through this piece. If I made a mistake of using a pencil that was too hard in the early stage of rendering, it was very difficult to cover up that mistake later on. When I took the source photo for this drawing in the studio 2 years ago, I was not happy with the shape of the lilies she was holding. Luckily I found a photo of another bunch of lilies I had photographed for a different project, so I switched them. When I see the finished drawing, I am glad that I changed the flowers, but I just wish I had made them slightly larger...