Tayla charcoal pencil portrait

Here she is, my lovely Tayla. This is A4 Arches Smooth with charcoal pencil. I found it difficult getting the gradations of smooth tone with the charcoal pencil and found that if I drew a line then it kind of stained the paper and even my trusty battery-operated eraser couldn't get rid of that line. I did try using compressed charcoal which I drew on another piece of paper and then firstly used a paper stump to blend it but that wasn't too smooth so then I used my trusty finger and I think that worked best.

So this isn't the best outcome that I wanted and I left the clothes and neck pretty undeveloped as by that stage I figured this was a learning piece and not one that I will give away or hang up myself. I do really love the photo that this is based on though so I would like to attempt this one again, perhaps with a mixture of graphite and charcoal? I do really love the intense black you get with charcoal pencils and I am pretty happy with the eyes and hair, it's really the lack of smoothness with the change in tone on the face and because my baby girl has such beautiful smooth clear skin I really wanted to capture that and I don't think I did.