"Beauty and Burden"-Realistic Pencil drawing

Hi great people.

I share with us a pencil piece I made recently. I call this piece "beauty and burden". A lot was on my mind when I made this drawing and I am very sure this piece will resonate with a lot of women.

Being a female child comes with responsibilities and expectations. The system has been designed to make you feel less of yourself if you aren't keeping up to the trend. Some of our women have lost their lives because they want to stay fly and beautiful at all cost. Some have been damaged, some have done terrible things to keep up to the life.

And while some are affected by the system operations, some are dying slowly because the system only sees what is physical. Most women are beautiful on the outside but deep down, they are facing serious afflictions.

Let me share a story with us.

Before I made this piece, I made advances to a very beautiful lady and we became friends. She is a very happy soul. I mean, No dull moment at all with her. A day came and we were having a chat and I asked her about her challenges in life. Brethren, her story shocked me and is still shocking me till now. Her story actually inspired this piece.

She is a strong woman who has refused to let the system expose her pain and suffering and I know a lot of our women have this same story to tell.

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On close range, the skin texture on her chest has some cracks and on the top of her hair are impression of trees also her pendant is two nails, crossed together.

These features signifies her burden and hence the title of the art piece.

This piece was made with pelican paper and drawn with charcoal and graphite pencils.

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This piece is 36inches by 48inches which can also be written as 36"×48" and it was done with

• generals charcoal pencils
• soft graphite pencils
• tortillons or blending stump
• tombow mono zero Elastomer eraser
• kneaded eraser
• flat brushes, makeup brushes
• tissue paper
• Drawing board
• A clean sheet of small paper

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The function of these materials are:

• General's charcoal pencil: A chalky medium, used in drawing/shading dark tones and also to add dark details in drawing

• Soft Graphite pencils: Used to draw outlines and also add shades in drawing

• Tortillon/blending stump: a soft paper-like material used mainly for blending and to add details in drawing

• Tissue paper: Used for blending

• Soft flat brushes/makeup brushes: Used also for blending. The different textures of the brush gives different textures in the drawing

• Tombow mono zero Elastomer eraser: used to clean unwanted part and also add highlights in drawing

• Kneaded eraer: An eraser that can be folded to any shape, used also to add soft highlights and also clean unwanted parts in drawing

• Paper: A base where we draw on. And about papers, the quality of paper matters, there are some that can hold our chalky medium more than others. But I most of the time make use of the pelican papers and bristol(strathmore) paper

• A clean sheet of paper: This can be a very small sheet of paper that can be used to place our hands when drawing to avoid smudging our drawing.

Smudging is basically messing up our drawing with dirt's on our fingers. It can be dirt's from the oils on our hands or charcoal residue. Sometimes It is difficult to clean the dirt's off our drawings so it is best we avoid smudging our drawings.

Thank you for reading through. Much love