A Sketch and a Drawing

I felt like putting up some drawings on the blog today, and found these two. I haven't shown the complete work in either case.  The first is a section of a full life drawing and the other, a close-up of a charcoal portrait of no particular distinction.  In the latter, I rather liked the transformation of the original drawing by getting up close and personal and in the end, the close up can almost not be recognised as fragment of the original. That's photography for you. More drawings to come in the next few days I hope.

Close-Up - Life Drawing - Pencil on Cartridge Paper

Close-Up - Portrait - Charcoal on Cartridge Paper

Life Drawing Class...It's Been Ages

It's been years since my last life drawing class and it shows!  However, it was great to get the charcoal scratching along the paper and to let go.  This was a 15 minute pose and I didn't have much time to correct anything but the model thought it good enough to photograph for her portfolio.  More next week, I hope.

Life Drawing Class 1.

Charcoal on A2 Cartridge Paper

Charcoal Portrait - Melancholy Series

I haven't posted any work for ages and the reasons are too boring to write about but I have been mulling over and experimenting with the seductive medium of charcoal recently. Unfortunately the paper I am using is not fine enough to hold the fine cross-hatching but I am not running out to the art materials store like I usually do when something isn't quite right. The photography seems to have picked up some blotchy bits which are not apparent in the original even though I didn't use any flash photography.

"Portait - Melancholy Series"

Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 16.5" x 13" (Approx.)

The photograph below shows how I ended my day. I still feel creaky after not having drawn for nearly a year, but it's good to be back doing something creative.

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

Winged Goddess of Victory - Sketch

This is my first submission to Sherry Massey's "History of Art Challenge" blog. The challenge was to portray, in any medium, a chosen image from Ancient Greece. I chose a very famous statue currently housed in the Louvre, Paris: "Nike of Samothrace", a marble statue from c. 220 - 190 BC, which depicts the winged goddess of victory in full flight. I am woefully untutored in the art history of this time even though I studied it at university. It was an interesting exercise for me as I was enchanted by the pose; the huge triumphant gesture and those delicious folds of drapery. However, to capture those in detail would require a larger sized paper and possible rendering in graphite pencil. Big congratulations to Sherry Massey for starting a challenge blog with an academic angle. I look forward to watching it grow from strength to strength.

"Nike of Samothrace"
Charcoal & Carbon Pencil on Paper - 16" x 12"

More Value Sketches for Portraits

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.)

Sketches at last...

I haven't posted any drawings or sketches on this blog for nearly six months due to spending most of my time painting. This has resulted in mediocre drawing which is frustrating. Today, I decided to practice drawing faces as I am entering a blog challenge this month with a self portrait. I just threw pencil at paper today and came up with these two strange sketches but I have to say, I enjoyed doing them for some reason or another. Maybe it was the lack of messy oils and not having anything to clear up afterwards that was a bit of a break, but even though they are not that hot, I am putting them up here to chart my progress with my self portrait project. The first drawing is from a photograph and the second one is a 'made up' face I did while listening to an online class, which was a strage experience, but there you go.

Pencil on Cartridge Paper
8" x 8" (Approx.)

"Looking Down"
Pencil on Cartridge Paper7" x 5" (Approx.)

Charcoal "Homage to Rembrandt - Variation I"

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"

Charcoal Portrait - Final Version

After looking at the charcoal portrait I did last night in the cold light of day, I saw a few changes that had to be made. I am happy with the result. I must do more of these and get the correct paper for charcoal. This paper is not smooth enough.

Portrait

Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 11.5" x 11.5"

Another Quick Sketch

I have had no success with painting this August, so I have been feeling the pinch of failure and despondancy that projects are lying around unfinished. I got home from work tonight aching to do something, anything, that could be called 'creative work'; this quick sketch is the result. It took me 40 minutes and it is based on and inspired by a self portrait by Fantin Latour. I loved the darks and tried to emulate that in my charcoal sketch, and succeeded up to a point, but the flash photography ate into the coal blacks which is a pity. I might just take another photograph because this one is really not the best, but I am happy that something has been done this week, and so I am posting it. I learned an amazing amount about the medium of charcoal in the short 40 minutes - more than I have learned in a lifetime - so I shall definitely process more charcoal work. Only it is so messy and where do I store it?

Quick Sketch in Charcoal