Practice

Today's effort is a drawing based on Pierre-Auguste Cot's 'Portrait of a Young Woman' dated 1869. 

The face/body have been drawn with mechanical pencil (HB lead primarily with some 2B lead), white Posca pen for the pupil highlights, and the areas surrounding the image were filled in by activated Caran d'Ache Supracolor II watercolor pencils with the beige from Japanese watercolors. 

In drawing the face, I started with the ear first going down to the chin and then up to and around the head to complete the outline.  Next, was the hand that took a number of tries.  The first few resulted in fingers and a hand that were much too large for the face.  This version is much better and the hand's pose--believable.  

I also experimented with fringe, and with patterns in the various 'cloth' elements to suggest folds and the discrepancies in the connections of the pattern that result from one fold to another.  Doing shading and highlights of multiple folds is a practice I haven't yet done, but it is a to-do item.