Gothic Soul | Hyper-Realistic Charcoal Portrait 🖤

Use the uploaded reference photo as the ONLY identity reference. Create an ultra-detailed, hyper-realistic traditional charcoal and graphite pencil portrait of the exact person in the uploaded photograph, regardless of gender.

STRICT IDENTITY LOCK: Preserve the subject’s recognizable facial identity, natural facial structure, face shape, skin tone, eyes, eyebrows, nose, lips, jawline, hairstyle, hairline, and all distinctive features exactly as shown in the uploaded reference photo. Do not change the person's gender presentation, age, or recognizable appearance. Do not beautify, reshape, or idealize the face. The final portrait must clearly resemble the person in the reference image.

Pose and expression: Show the subject in a dramatic three-quarter close-up, with the head tilted slightly upward, chin subtly lifted, and eyes gazing thoughtfully into the distance. Maintain a calm, serene, emotionally expressive appearance with natural facial anatomy and realistic proportions.

Hair and facial details: Reproduce the subject’s original hairstyle and hair length from the reference image. Render individual hair strands using delicate graphite strokes, soft charcoal shadows, and subtle highlights. Preserve natural eyebrows, eyelashes, facial hair if present, and authentic skin texture. Do not add facial hair, makeup, or jewelry unless visible in the reference photo. If earrings are naturally appropriate to the reference, render them delicately.

Clothing: Preserve the original outfit where practical, translating its fabric into expressive charcoal shading, loose directional pencil strokes, soft folds, and realistic graphite textures. Let the shoulders and clothing gradually dissolve into unfinished sketch marks.

Background: Place faint Gothic cathedral spires on both sides of the subject, rendered with delicate architectural linework, light cross-hatching, and a subtle smoky, watercolor-like charcoal wash. Let the cathedral details fade naturally into bright white, unmarked paper, keeping the face as the central focal point.

Artistic technique: Traditional hand-drawn charcoal and graphite pencil illustration on premium textured white drawing paper. Use fine cross-hatching, carefully blended graphite, visible pencil strokes, subtle smudging, deep velvety blacks, luminous white highlights, and smooth tonal transitions. Emphasize realistic facial anatomy, expressive eyes, intricate hair details, and dimensional shading.

Composition and lighting: Vertical 3:4 portrait composition, head and shoulders visible, dramatic upward-facing pose, soft directional lighting, sculpted facial contours, elegant negative space, and unfinished vignette edges. Maintain a sophisticated, melancholic, timeless fine-art aesthetic.

Quality: Extremely detailed professional life-drawing quality, realistic hand-rendered textures, monochrome black and white, visible paper grain, high tonal range, 8K-quality detail.

Negative prompt: Different identity, altered face, face swapping errors, gender transformation, changed age, exaggerated features, artificial beauty filters, plastic skin, excessive smoothing, incorrect anatomy, distorted eyes, asymmetrical facial structure, extra facial features, unrealistic hair, unwanted facial hair, unwanted jewelry, color, cartoon, anime, digital painting, 3D render, CGI, blurry details, low resolution, text, watermark, signature, frame, border.