...on to another King... {and his son}

and for my next trick,...

I had thought this would be a good project to show some detailed techniques and minor secrets,.. so I took a picture in mid-stage,..  a nice closeup to share how I accomplish the final look, (it is multi-staged).






















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Then disaster struck,...

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So I read a lot about techniques and often try different tools, pencils, erasers and what-nots.  Well here is what happens when you use an eraser that is too hard on a medium that is too thick, which I was fully aware of but had never experienced.  

Unless you use a very gentle, soft and controlling pressure with the eraser, you will be crushing the fibers of the paper,.. what is the big deal you may ask,... 

No big deal if you never, brush or blend your work (which I do quite a bit),... the result is sadly shown below,..

 



where I pressed with the 
eraser is where the graphite 
is darker,...











.... I think the piece was going well but this is unrepairable. The only thing to do is either over draw the areas where I did not run the eraser (incredibly difficult to match shading,.. I tried) -or- run the eraser in those lite areas to evenly crush the fibers (essentially erasing 3/4 of my work in the process). Either way it would be more beneficial to simply chalk this up as a lesson learned and move on or start over.

For the record,.. I think I am going to do the later,....

sB