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Description
Long story short....maybe
I sketched this a couple months ago after I was inspired by looking at the illustrations from "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" by P.L Lynch. It has this Eros and Psyche like scene were the princess wants to see her lover, who she thinks is a monster/bear. She brings a candle and sees its a man.

I got a major E/C vibe so I wanted to draw them like this.
I sketched it out over a month ago, put it away and then didn't look back. (Possibly because it reminded me too much of Lover Never Dies/Beneath a moonless sky) Until early this week I sketched it again, with no reference. I started shading it in pencil, but then switched to black colored pencil to make it darker.
I was so consumed with making it look detailed and realistic(by adding a millions folds on the fabric, and drawing patterns on the dress that i forgot about the lighting. So it didn't look convincing.

So I looked back at the reference picture and started shading the dickens out of this. This piece took an entire black Prismacolor pencil to finish (as my sharpener splintered part of it in half) but I kept working to try something different.

over the past couple months, i've found myself leaning towards shading in black and grey colored pencil vs. graphite pencil. I want to improve my skills so any critique or technique advice would be most welcomed!

Description
Long story short....maybe
I sketched this a couple months ago after I was inspired by looking at the illustrations from "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" by P.L Lynch. It has this Eros and Psyche like scene were the princess wants to see her lover, who she thinks is a monster/bear. She brings a candle and sees its a man.

I got a major E/C vibe so I wanted to draw them like this.
I sketched it out over a month ago, put it away and then didn't look back. (Possibly because it reminded me too much of Lover Never Dies/Beneath a moonless sky) Until early this week I sketched it again, with no reference. I started shading it in pencil, but then switched to black colored pencil to make it darker.
I was so consumed with making it look detailed and realistic(by adding a millions folds on the fabric, and drawing patterns on the dress that i forgot about the lighting. So it didn't look convincing.

So I looked back at the reference picture and started shading the dickens out of this. This piece took an entire black Prismacolor pencil to finish (as my sharpener splintered part of it in half) but I kept working to try something different.

over the past couple months, i've found myself leaning towards shading in black and grey colored pencil vs. graphite pencil. I want to improve my skills so any critique or technique advice would be most welcomed!