Newsprint - plus Fixing Fafhrd

I randomly found an old newsprint pad from 1991 the other day and decided to try drawing in it with a charcoal pencil - and I discovered it works beautifully. Most of my charcoal drawing has been on totthy  paper, so I'm used to a lot of dust and meass, but as I recalled from school days, the newsprint is slick enough to allow smooth beautiful charcoal work with almost no dust or mess. Results follow:

Oh oops - this on's not on newsprint. But the next 2 are:

The last one was a sketch that I did as reference to try to fix Fafhrd's torso in this digi-painting:

There's no flow through the torso - it looks like the abdominals and ribcage and pelvis are sort of Frankenstein-ed together from mismatched parts. The study above it was to figure out how they're supposed to blend smoothly into each other and just where the dark middle and light values need to be to make it look real and solid. Progress so far:

I hate this stage - I've fixed some things but screwed some things up - the flow does look better, but now it looks weak and pale and shapeless. Needs more work to bring back some oomph. It's really frustrating to work on a piece like this, where I started off with a bad drawing - it takes so much work to go in and fix each little part that needs fixing, and even when I do, the pose is still crap. But it is a great learning experience. Heck, the only reason I want to keep working on it rather than just start something new is because I really like the face - and that went through several stages where it looked terrible.