Thank you, Sharon.
To be honest, I have enough on my plate right now trying to learn the basics. There isn't room in my head for meaning or anything else, so I think I got that one by default rather than by design
The paper is just ordinary pastel paper. I've just checked, it's from a Daler-Rowney pad of 160 gsm acid free paper with a grain. Actually, that's pretty funny, normally I avoid Daler-Rowney stuff like the plague, this one slipped through, apparently. I used Coates willow charcoal sticks for that one, but I've just got some W&N charcoal and it seems a lot better, softer and it doesn't have that annoying habit of skipping across the paper without making a mark like Coates does. I don't know if you get the Coates stuff over there, but it's sort of bog standard, found in every high street art shop over here. I've tried charcoal pencils, but I don't get on with them. I find them very unforgiving and too definite, not easy to lift the marks with a rubber when they're wrong, and I can't push it about on the paper so much.
It might be worth mentioning that I stomp a lot, and that I've taken to using a mahl stick pretty much all the time for charcoal drawings.
The small facility I have with charcoal now I owe entirely to copying Bargue plates, I'm pretty sure, I didn't even think of sharpening the sticks before I started those. I used to be of the belief that charcoal was a "big, expressive" medium. Then I saw some cast drawings...
I do believe you're right about the shadow side. I've just been sitting here blocking out a bit of the left side with my hand after reading your post, and the likeness is considerably improved. Bingo. I like the idea of the clear ruler, I'll give it a go. Beats a wonky stick of charcoal, I'm sure.
Thanks for the feedback.