My brother Mark - Rest in Peace

I drew this for my dad's birthday recently. He was in his 20's in this photo, hence the hair style We lost my little brother Mark to Melanoma skin cancer on 6/18/2005. He was in remission for 8 years, but it had gotten into his lymph nodes. Then in January 2007 I myself had a mole removed from my lower back that was also Malignant Melanoma, but they got it all, and it did not get into my nodes. (Thanks Lord!) It's been 5+ years for me now, and I go for check ups every 6-months

(Actual Drawing size is between un-zoomed and zoomed views)

I did some hair tip tutorials on this, and will type more below on that later. This was tough, for many reasons, aside from staring at his photo for 10 hours. My reference photo was a print of a scan of a 20 year year old photo, which was blurry and out of focus in many key areas. I would normally NOT draw using a poor reference photo like this, but considering the subject, and I knew the details without having to see them, that's what I did.

SIZE: 7 x 9 inches
PAPER: Bristol Smooth 300 series (like always)
TIME: about 10 hours
PENCILS: Staedtler Mars Lumograph H, HB, F, B, 2B
TOOLS: Blending stumps, sponge tipped sticks, color shaper with chisel edge

PS- here is a side-by-side comparison with the same drawing I drew exactly 3 years before