One thing I am learning is that I need to do lots of preparatory sketches before I take on a portrait in oils. My impatience gets the better of me and I love to get stuck in, but I've noticed that the final paintings need a lot of work on getting the values right. I am doing a mini-series on "Melancholy" and decided I needed to get to grips with the correct values and I was right. It took me two sessions to get this basic charcoal sketch as close as possible to the values of the original photograph. After I had finished the first phase I sprayed fixative on it and left it overnight. This is a wonderful part of charcoal drawing because pushing charcoal over the drawing the next day is wonderful - the darks turn to a very deep coal black.
The first one is the correct and final one. After I thought I was finshed, I felt there was something that was just not authentic about the face. I noticed that I had drawn a line around the side of the face closest to the light (second photograph below) and no such line exists in the photograph - the face almost merges with the background. The gouache doesn't look too good, but it helped me see my sketch align with the photograph which was the whole purpose of the exercise. I'm now always going to do value sketches. Always.
"FINAL Value Sketch for Melancholy Portrait Series"Charcoal & Gouache on Cartridge Paper - 12" x 9" (Approx.)
"Value Sketch for Melancholy Portrait Series"
Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 12"x 8" (Approx.)
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