About the drawing: This is my first portrait drawing with ink and the first portrait drawing in which I did crosshatching. The drawing comes from a picture of a homeless woman that I found online. As I usually do, I first draw a raster on both my drawing paper and the printed out photograph in order to get the outline right. After that I first drew the first layers very lightly with graphite. Of this I made a copy on regular A4 printing paper (not the best quality for preserving the drawing) and next I drew on the printed paper with ink. Since the print was very light you won't really see it anymore through the ink lines.

I enjoyed creating depth in the face using the crosshatching technique as this was entirely new for me. The lines are going in all directions so that the skin looks rough and wrinkled, rather than smooth. I like the way the hair and the hat are not crosshatched. The hair lines are all going down. This way it is easier to distinguish the hair from the face. The hat in contrast is dotted. 

Materials: I used graphite pencils for the first drawing and pigma microns / fine-liners in different sizes for this drawing (0.2mm-0.5mm) to draw over the copy of the first drawing that I did with graphite. The pen drawing was made on regular printing paper, probably only 20 lbs in weight.