Charcoal Drawing - "Catrina´s ashes"

Hello Folks!

I want to share with you a new illustration that I made only using charcoal.

There is nothing special that I have chosen a Catrina to draw, it is because I really like this type of portraits because, they have details and as you can see in the photo, I wanted to experiment with charcoal to generate effects in the illustration, in this case many light effects.

I really like working with these types of effects where I focus a lot on the dark, charcoal is very good for this. I also like to play with light and in this case I use my materials to create many light effects.

Let's now see the creation process.

I made an improvised sketch that I changed as I illustrated La Catrina. I used different references to choose the position and makeup.
I like to start painting for the eyes, making them very dark, pronouncing the eyelashes and makeup a lot.

I feel that one eye was larger, in fact very poorly proportioned for the size of the face but the makeup of La Catrina helps a lot to adjust that.
When I made the second eye I was able to adjust it a bit making both look similar, the shadows and the strength of the charcoal help a lot to improve this.

I only used charcoal pencil for this work and I tried not to soften so much so that it looks with a much more rustic texture.
I had to use the brush to paint the light parts of the face, using charcoal residues and creating slightly light tones since it is very difficult to create gray tones with charcoal.

I enjoyed this part of the illustration very much, it was time to experiment, I wanted to merge the darkness with the Catrina and create flames of light simulating that the girl is surrounded by fire and deep in the background it is dark.
I used the moldable eraser to create flames (very poorly made flames, this is very difficult to draw), and with a white gel pen I made points of light to highlight the flames much more.

In the first image, when I made the points of light I felt that the illustration was going to be wonderful if I did many more, it was beginning to take the way I had imagined. It also adds a few more details to the face that I hadn't done in the main sketch.
Can you imagine the girl´s hair? What I wanted to do was to merge the darkness of the background with the outline of the Catrina, disappearing many elements such as hair, this makes us play with our imagination and think about many possibilities, what will her hair be like?

I painted with lots of random charcoal spots and then with the moldable eraser I created the flames or at least tried to make them look like flames.

The illustration has many ways to be interpreted, I chose to call it Catrina's ashes, you can think that she is burning, or that she is part of the fire.

I really enjoyed making this illustration, it seems to me something different from what I usually draw and it was quite nice to experiment and see that I can do new things.

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