Hey Ronald I saw all your drawings in the last months and I see you're putting a lot of effort in this drawing endeavour. So I would like to give you more advice on how to proceed so your energy won't be wasted. Maybe you won't like what you'll hear but I think it's necessary, so stay with me. Right now I think you should concentrate on the drawing fundamentals course. You should repeat the exercises until you get sick of them and then do some more. It's not enough to do it a few times, you have to repeat them for months to really get a result. Watch the lessons until you know them front to back, back to front. Watch the critique videos and the comments and see if people are making the same mistakes you're doing and look what they've done to correct. Try to self-critique with compassion, and correct one thing at a time. It won't be fun at some times but it will be worth it Why I'm saying that? I think you're trying to with several fights at the same time and unfortunately you don't have the tools to win all of them YET. Focus on win one fight and the other ones will become easier. What you lack right now are mastery of fundamentals and lack of control of your tools. And the main problem is that your eyes are not trained to see what's important in a drawing. You need to learn how to crawl before you walk, and walk before you run. Does that mean you need to stop with portrait, figure...? Not necessarily. You can still do any course you're interested and draw what you want, it will keep you motivated, but the main focus should be fundamentals. I can't stress this enough, keep drawing. The people that get really good at drawing are the ones that keep doing it regardless of the circumstances. It's more a matter of patience and persistence than talent. Keep going and best regards

Good effort. I don't think you have bad supplies. From here I can see you're getting a lot of tonal variation. It's just that the learning curve of this is kinda slow and frustrating. Try to internalize the process as best as you can start with the lay-in, then two value, then full value and finally texture. Focus on the lay-ins and two value phase for now. These two are the main responsible for conveying reality in your drawing. Then go full value. Texture just add to the realism but if you do the other steps successfully texture is almost optional. A word of advice that's maybe hard to hear. If you honestly think that the supplies are the problem, then buy new ones ASAP. But don't blame your materials for the results you're not proud. It creates a bad habit of creating excuses every time you fall short. Suddenly you'll find yourself not putting the effort because "it's ok I don't have the materials anyway". Take it from someone who fell to this trap a lot of times. Alternatively, You can do this exercise in graphite (use one hard (Hs) for the halftones in the light and one soft (Bs) for the shadows)if you don't like charcoal. The materials are not mandatory. As long as you get the concepts what you use don't matter. Keep drawing you're in the right way

Hey Nicole, good attempt! If you are going to use charcoal (imho) the only choice is smooth (it is important it is smooth, textured will make it much harder to get smooth tone) newsprint. For Charcoal pencils... it used to be Conte a Paris but they have changed their manufacturing recently and I see a lot of broken charcoal... alternatives I like are Marie's soft and General's 4b. For graphite if you want a dark pencil Blackwing Matte's or 602's are what I like... 602's are harder (so not as dark) but are a nice "do it all" whereas the Matte's get some nice darks but wear pretty fast on a lot of paper. Also it can help to use a paper stump or chamois (and of course practice laying down flat, even tone regularly)

I believe it's stock free YouTube audio library music.