Pencil portrait of a little boy in Hoi An

Graphite pencil portrait of a young boy in Hoi An, Vietnam, on A4 Daler Rowney airbrush Bristol board.

Pencils: Mars Lumograph (8B, HB, 3H), Faber Castell 9000 (6B and 8B) , mechanical pencils 0.2mm/2B, 0.3mm/2B, 0.5mm/4B with Ain Stein leads.
Blending: Blending stump by Boldmere and paper tissues.
Erasing: W H Smith kneadable eraser, Tombow Mono Zero Ultra-fine eraser, Jakar battery eraser. 

Graphite and eraser dust removal:  UN Lens Blower Brush.

Photography of drawing: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS10 compact camera, tripod and easel.  A dark cloth was used behind the camera to eliminate reflection from the graphite shine.

Photo adjustment of the photo of the drawing so that it closely resembles the drawing itself using GIMP: Removal of barrel distortion; Cropping to A4 ratio and removal of perspective distortion; Cropping unfinished edges of drawing; Adjustment of histogram.

My sincere thanks go to  Réhahn Photography for permission to use his photo of this boy,  www.facebook.com/Rehahn.Photog… as my reference for this drawing.  His photo is Copyright Réhahn Photography.

I usually have a girl as a subject, but the reference of this boy appealed to me, especially due to the unusual lighting and the significant challenge posed by the high proportion of very dark tones.  The shine from the dark graphite could have posed a problem from reflection during photography.  Here is a photograph of the finished drawing taken at an angle against the light from a window.

                                                                                                                            

The darkest parts of this drawing are very shiny indeed and the background shows a sort of 'milled metal' finish from the circular shading in rows that I used.  The dark cloth technique that I use during photography ensures that I can take a photograph of the drawing without any reflection.

During the drawing process I took photographs after each session and have made an animation of them to show the drawing process:

                                                                                                                              

Here are some of the drawings of Vietnamese girls that I have made from photographs taken by Rehahn: