This was made using two different types of charcoal and starting with a mid tone base and adding darks and taking away highlights. I wasn't to big of a fan of this technique only because it was a bit harder to take away a lot of the mid tone to get really bright highlights.
This was made using white charcoal and instead of working from light to dark, I worked from dark to light. Basically I used a black sheet of paper and applied the highlights and blended out to create the shadows. I really liked this method because normally I tend to get a little to dark with my darks and it makes it harder for me to create bright highlights, so this way its impossible for me to make this mistake.