Pencil portrait of Zhang Ziyi as Moon

Graphite pencil drawing, A4 size on smooth surface heavyweight cartridge paper, of Zhang Ziyi as Moon from the film Hero.

When I saw the original phtograph on the Internet in mid 2012, I immediatly wanted to draw it.

I drew it in July 2012, predating any other drawing that I have put on DevianART by one month, but I have resisted uploading it until now, much as I wanted to (it was the spark that led me to join DA in the first place) as, unlike all my other posted works, I do not have express permission from the copyright holder to upload it. I am relying on its being Fan Art - it is my homage both to the very beautiful Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi, and to the visually stunning film 'Hero' directed by Zhang Yimou.

The photograph that I used as reference for this drawing is widely distributed on the Internet. Here is a link to one of them in reasonably high resolution [link].

I was at a fairly advanced stage of drawing this picture when I realised that her left eye was incorrectly positioned! I was able to erase and correct this, hiding the faint shadow of the original position with the shading around her eye. I was still using my finger on a pencil to judge positions and distances in this drawing, but decided to make more precise checks in future using the edge of a piece of scrap paper to mark key positions such as corner of eyes, tip of nose, end of chin, etc. to avoid such problems in future.

After drawing this picture I had some difficulty in taking up my pencil again as this portrait was by far the best that I had drawn up to that date and at that time I feared that I would not be able to find another picture of such beauty to draw and also that I had reached the pinnacle of my drawing abilities so that any future drawing would be a disappointment.

Edit 14 12 2013:  I have adjusted the black and the white levels of the original photo using Zoner Photo Studio (not available to me at the time of original uploading) to more accurately approximate to the contrast of my drawing.

I did continue to draw and some of my more recent portraits are