I took drawing class with a teacher that used mostly charcoal. I really liked it, the feeling of it was more like painting than drawing in that with charcoal you could create heavy expressive strokes and fill in big spaces of light and dark. It felt like I had more freedom to have creative expression than with pencil or ink.
Here it is at an earlier stage with less definition, especially in the chest and also less defined shadows. Defining the shadow of the face on the shoulder with sharper lines I think really improved the drawing. It almost becomes a focal point.
Overall, I was really happy with how this turned out. The teacher is this class is supportive and encourages expression and out of the box creativity when it comes to figure drawing.
While working on this drawing, I was feeling really disheartened and frustrated. It's hard not to compare yourself with the talented artists working beside you and also meet your own expectation of yourself. She came over while I was working on this and told me how much she liked it and stopped the class to show the other students and talked about creating a more expressive figure drawing. It helped me to feel more confident in my own drawing style.