Afghan

There are some things that leave a profound impression on you for ever and you always remember it even if you have seen it only once. The  photograph of an Afghan lady with light green eyes which was on the cover page of NatGeo magazine, taken by Steve McCurry, is one of those images. And when I got myself my charcoals to try my hand at charcoal paintings, the first thing that struck me was this image. I did not refer the image then and attempted it and here it is. 

In the whole box of charcoal sticks, there were hard ones and soft ones but I being myself, hurried and saw only the soft ones and used them to make this sketch. I was not sure if I could get the lightness of the eyes in a bichrome painting more importantly the emotions from the original,mix of scared, shy, angry feelings of the girl.  Since I could not get all those emotions , I wanted to deviate the attention a bit from the portrait and hence drew a heart with a dagger. I do not have the kneaded eraser to work on charcoal as with that I intended to show a pigeon flying away. Well, let's see.. With the travel plans starting now I don't want to concentrate more on charcoal. :)   
This is more like a two dimensional portrait without much depth. need more practice.:(