"Immersed" and Step by step drawing progression

Here's a step by step progression of this drawing, I thought it would be interesting to take snapshots during the creation of this piece, I'm sometimes surprised myself how this sketches come together

 

approx. 6 x 8 inches charcoal on Strathmore Artist paper

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Mostly vine charcoal here, the large masses are established with the broad side of it, at the start up I like to get a feel of the general proportions and then develop it further, the darker values are done with a charcoal pencils, they go from hard to soft, I tend to use 2b or 6b a lot, also some papers are better then others for charcoals like this as I'm actually finding out right now.