Portrait of Berthe Morisot

I finally finished the Berthe Morisot portrait that I wrote about a few posts back. It's somewhat large (about a meter tall). I'm happy with it. However I was slightly disappointed with the texture of the paper for charcoal (it's meant for etchings, I think) because it didn't allow me to manipulate the charcoal as much as I'd like once I laid down the original lines. Next time I'm going with something smoother. Suggestions are welcome (not that toothy Ingres texture though please. The physical sensation of drawing on that gives me the heebie-jeebies).

The finished portrait of painter Berthe Morisot, by Ciana Pullen.

The original photo of Morisot that I worked from. I also looked at other photos of her over her life to get a better idea of what she looked like, since I had to fill in and make sense of a low resolution image.

A detail of the shoulder. I like the texture of the erased lines.

Detail of the face and hand.

Detail of the fringed blanket. The blanket didn't exist in the original photo but the composition needed something black in that shape. I suppose I could have made it anything; a backpack, a roofing shingle, a large sheet of nori. But I went for the obvious. The fringe was fun, especially the white spaces between the threads which took on an unexpected stained glass effect.