Sasha Ira Critical study FMP

This artist does art mainly in graphite and I thought why not try reproducing her work since my work is better in this media. I looked through her work and saw that her shading was brilliant and the way she uses the pencil for shadowing and highlighting is very neat and realistic. I love how its greyscale and sometimes she adds in colour making it all the more interesting. Age looks not only at the face but at the body and her proportions are outstanding.
I chose to do this one due to how well she has drawn the facial features of this woman. She has taken time to use the white/yellow of the paper to create a skin tone and hair colour too. I believe her detail with using different graphite thicknesses really worked out for this piece. Using the ends of the hair to show separation and a realistic look rather than a block.
My version isn't as good, but there’s room for improvement as I first used a HB pencil on its own and I knew this wasn't enough to show the details which the artist had. I got advice of my tutor what I should do and she advised to use different graphite pencils to add definition and detail. I then went over it with a 2B 6B and 8B just to add extra depth into my piece and it worked out to be better than I originally created. I believe pencil is my main strength and I would like to use it but at the moment I am quite set on using a canvas and to produce pencil on canvas wouldn’t be very neat or give the desired effect that I want. I don’t think I will use this style as though at the minute I’m not looking for that bold, intense colour, I do want some subtle tones of colour whereas this has none but only in black and grey tones.