Charcoal Portrait, The Rough Style

This is a rough sketch I did while my wife and I were watching TV. She insisted on the lights being down low so I had a difficult time with everything like seeing the source material and seeing which pencil I was using and I couldn't see the progress on my work. So you might say I was experimenting. The old masters panted by candle light so maybe there is something to learn.

Charcoal Portrait of a Woman's Face, Drawn in a Rough Style. 

Normally I would use a lot of blending stubs and make my work smooth. The only place I used a blender was the background which I toned down with a hb pencil and then rubbed it to stain the paper. The under-drawing was done with a hb and 2b, then the charcoal was applied. I used medium and soft charcoal pencils.
I went over things a bit with the graphite pencil .

I really wanted to do something in the rough style with out blending and using readable strokes where you can see what I was doing with the pencil. I know it is not a great picture but I think it was a good practice of getting the effect I wanted. I had to call it quits after about thirty minutes.

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