Drawing A Girl Leaning On Her Hand in Graphite

I drew her face using techniques I discussed in this video. I’m looking at the first picture in the gallery and at this stage of the drawing, here eyes look like those on demon children in movies, because they’re surrounded by darkness, but inside, they’re totally white. Her lids are heavy, so I made sure to draw the shadows they were casting. 

I left part of her bottom lip unshaded and drew the lines in her lips, with the side of my pencil, not the tip. After I finished drawing those lines, dimension in the lips appeared before my eyes. Adding the shadows under the bottom lip helped to further push them out from her face.

When it came to her hair, I started with the highlights. Although her hair looks black in the photo at first place, I didn’t want to jump in with the black right away as I thought this would look too harsh, so I started with my 9b pencil and added the black in later in the form of small streaks, using my one of my carbon pencils. I started off with my 2b carbon pencil, but I switched to my 4b when the 2b didn't show up well enough.