I haven't been drawing or sketching successfully for quite a few weeks now. Most of my works have been thrown away and only last night I decided to take on a drawing of a Rembrandt self portrait from 1659. The reference itself was a head only shot of the original work, and I aimed at representing it as accurately as I could, with all the nuances created by those magnificent brushtrokes. I nearly pulled it off, but got some of the proportions wrong. This wouldn't have happened had I traced it and it was a much larger scale than the original photograph I was working from, so the up-scaling of the work took its toll. However, I adored working with charcoal on such a large format again, and I intend to get to grips with this medium more and more in the future. The original drawing is much darker than the photograph and shows the vast range of tonal ranges - I found it almost impossible to capture the almost black charcoal. More lessons.
"Rembrandt Portrait - Variation I"Charcoal and White Pencil on Cartridge Paper - 16.5" x 23.5"
