Child Portrait, step-by step, in charcoal #2

I'm sorry this is not a good quality image, it was still on the easel. You can see I've refined and softened the skin. Still working with vine charcoal here. By the way, the finger cots are not used now because once you get a lot of charcoal on the page, they tend to pick it up, so I have switched to a maul stick.

Ordinarily, I don't like portraits of small children with open mouth smiles, because young children have gaps between their teeth that create a snaggle-toothed look. But this little boy has nice close teeth. This is not really a finished portrait, but a study for a larger oil I will be doing next.