Not For Wimps

First and foremost my thanks goes out to *kevinroberts, (and his model) who kindly permitted (and even encouraged me) to draw this gorgeous photograph of his:


In case anyone wonders why I did not include the lovely, soft and gradient-like background of the photo in my drawing, that's just a little artistic liberty. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that, after putting the third layer of graphite down, I noticed I had big ol' fingerprints on there. Nothing. So. There's that.

About the drawing:
Growing up in a small town where anything that wasn't soccer or hockey wasn't considered a sport at all, I got a lot of grief about dancing. People could be down right insulting about it, actually. (So very different to my time spent in NYC, where no-one questioned the actual effort and dedication involved, since most people there were artists in one way or another themselves.)
Oh how I wished I could force those people to take just one class. They'd véry quickly become aware that dance and ballet is absolutely NOT for wimps!

It's what drew me to this picture: It shows stunningly well how much athleticism is involved and how strong dancers actually are (have you séén those muscles???).

Materials:
* Reference
* A3 Winsor and Newton Bristol Board
* Staedler Mars Lumograph pencils HB through 6B
* Mechanical pencils 0.3mm in H and B
* Dutch equivalent of Blu-Tack, Tombow Mono Zero Eraser, Staedler eraser, rubber colour shaper
* Tortillions
* Best guess: About 50 hours spent??

WIPs:


Will most likely replace with a better scan if I can manage to get one. Quite proud of this, now just to get a capture that shows you guys why exactly

_{Also thanks to our resident Frog, who steered me in the right direction with scanning this A3 piece. The Dutch-ess of dA owes you.
Still not completely satisfied with the scan, since I can't quite get the whites and darks quite just the way they are and my shading looks a lót more rough than the real thing, but I really wanted to post! At least now I tinker a bit more since I know where to look.}