When I was about 12 or so I was taking an art class that focused on charcoal. This is one of my favorite products of that class.

Nobody probably gives a crap, but the method that we used to do these is actually pretty neat, and always results in cool artsy BS that looks like it took more effort than it really did.

For anyone that still hasn't given up on this textbomb, this was done by taking a photo of myself, taking that photo over to a crappy old black and white laser printer, cranking up the gain to crazyblast so as to get some crazy contrast and shadows going, and blowing it up as big as it would go. I then smothered the back of the modified photo with crazy dark charcoal. Then finally I lightly traced the contours of the different levels of blackness by placing the charcoaled photo over the actual art paper and, using a ballpoint pen, applied the charcoal from the back of the photo to the art paper. Then I charcoaled, finger rubbed, and erased the result until it looked like this.

I dunno, this might be a common trick and I'm being a nut, but I thought it was pretty awesome.