This drawing was the last Christmas commission this year. It was commissioned by a return client whom I completed a pet painting in the past.
He asked me to draw a portrait of his girlfriend holding her gorgeous godson, a very special moment in time. I had one photograph to work from and the client and I decided to remove any objects from the background. The focus is on the main subjects, especially the baby boy. He has a lovely expression and I wanted to capture this in the sketch.
Reference photo for the sketch 
Detailed view of the drawing in a mount
The client was very happy with the result:
Beautiful Ivana! So lovely, thank you so much
Jonathan, Dublin
The portrait is 25 x 20 cm in size. A always I used my trusted Mars Lumograph Black pencils with the addition of some new pencils I discovered only recently: the pitt matt black pencils by Faber-Castell. I am still warming to these, the numbering is very different to those of the Staedtler pencils. I suppose they do not contain any charcoal and the darkness achieved is not as black as the lumographs. There is a wider range of shades though.
The finished drawing on the shelf in my studio 
The finished mounted drawing on the shelf in my studio
Back to the drawing, I took some photographs of the finished drawing in a mount. It worked quite well. The darkness of the girl’s hair offsets quite well with the softness and gentleness I wanted to achieve with the rest of the picture.