Charcoal Work-in-Progress

I love seeing works-in-progress, even my own, so I'm posting one here. I want to try my hand at photorealism in charcoal, neither of which I have attempted before (I shouldn't say that, I've doodled with charcoal). The image I am basing this on is a photograph I took at the Albuquerque Zoo a few months ago. It is no good as a photo because the snow leopards were behind a wire fence that got in the image, but it is still great as a reference photo.

At this point, I am about two hours into the drawing. The initial sketch took me about 45 minutes, and a lot of the rest of the time was my experimenting with different pencils and different smudgers on scrap paper. Of what I have done so far, the darkest parts are 6B charcoal pencils and the medium areas are 2B. I blended the 6B with a tortillion first and then a blending stump, and I blended the 2B with only the stump. The irises were done with 4H graphite.

On the bridge of the nose, I used the 2B charcoal with round strokes, elsewhere I followed the pattern of the fur. I also indented the paper where the white whiskers will go.

I am really excited about this piece. I know it will take a very long time, but will totally be worth it. Stay tuned to see my progress over the next few weeks.