I forgot to take a picture of my setup after finishing the drawing, so I had to settle for a picture of the subject and setup that was different from the conditions in which I drew it.
There were lots of subtle transition in this leaf so I was trying to be very careful with my values. I also did something very different than what I normally do, I mixed charcoal and graphite. I used the charcoal to quickly cover the cast shadow of the leaf but I needed to use a stump to blend it evenly. I learned a while back that graphite and charcoal doesn’t mix well, you wouldn’t think it, but there are two very different colors. So to get around this I made sure that I kept the charcoal in the shadow only, separating the medium so the difference looked natural.
The Setup
The Subject
Small but WOW you nailed it!! Awesome!!