City Squared

Another quick sketch for The Drawing Vault - this time a cityscape - St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. The reason I took this on was to see how small I could work with charcoal. It appears that I can only do so with a very expensive brand which is not what I'm using here. I want to paint some cityscapes but only after I've completed a lot of sketches of favourite vistas. I need to re-familiarise myself with this genre. My objective was just to capture the details, the broad value strokes and a 'suggestion' of the cathedral as landmark. I'm going to tackle this scene again when I buy some professional charcoal in the next few weeks. I was really surprised that I could pull off a recognisable cityscape in such a short time span. I guess when I attempt to render the cathedral's architecture in finer detail, it will take a lot longer.

"St Paul's Cathedral"

 8" x 8.5" (Approx) Charcoal on Cartridge Paper

Back to the drawing board

I found this drawing half done in a folder tonight and decided to 'finish' it. It's based on a photograph which really isn't the best source material from which to create a portrait, but it was all I had and I just felt like letting rip for a while. I now know how much work needs to be done to get back to where I was some years ago before I started The Drawing Vault blog. It does look better in real life, I promise. I find photographing pencil and even the more matte charcoal very difficult. There's a trick somewhere to this genre of photography.

"Quick Portrait" 10" x 8" Pencil/Graphite on Cartridge paper