I've been having a lot of fun in this semester's Drawing II class! We've worked with charcoal almost the whole time, except for a brief section on gestures with brush and ink. I've learned so much about the different types of charcoal, techniques, and tools for it.
We've used a mix of vine charcoal and compressed charcoal. Our vine charcoal comes in thin, pencil-like sticks that are very light and delicate. They're very soft and light, so they work well for the initial layout and values since they smudge and smooth out so easily. Our compressed charcoal comes in short rectangular sticks and is very dark, so I usually save it for the last layers on the darkest sections.
One of the techniques we've learned is to cover a large area with the charcoal, smooth it over, and then add darks and erase lights from it. This can help to give an overall sense of form to the subject more quickly.
For tools, we were briefly introduced to some blending tools that are sponge-like and come in different shapes depending on the need. They're helpful for getting a really smooth look and are much faster than blending with a finger or blending stump. I've used them a couple times for the background of pieces, but still need to experiment with different effects I can get from them.
So far we've done three finished projects with the charcoal. The first focused on establishing only the main three values - black, one gray, and white. It was sometimes surprisingly difficult deciding whether to draw a light gray as gray or white, or a dark gray as gray or black. However, it was also surprising how realistically a form can be captured with just three values. One of my friends offered to pose for this drawing since we need to draw from life. It took about 20-30 minutes, and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!
In class practice with ink:
Finished project:
The second was for our unit on hands and feet, since people often have a hard time drawing those. We learned a bit about the skeletal structure of the hand to help us in drawing it, and did several types of practice.
In class practice:
Finished project:
In class practice: dealt with foreshortening, and focusing on what we see rather than what we "know" to be true. In-class practice for these ranged from 5-20 minutes. Some poses were more foreshortened from my angle than others - we sit circled around the platform that we pose on, so we all get different angles. My roommate posed for this one (huge thanks to her - she laid there for an hour!).
In class practice:
Finished project:
More gestures from class with ink and charcoal - mass gestures (blocking in the whole shape rather than outlines) and line gestures:
Lasly, more people sketches! I'm already almost to the 60 we need to have at the end of the semester, and we're just past midterms. These are a lot of fun to do when I have a few free minutes in the cafeteria or student center.
I'm looking forward to the second half of the semester! We'll be getting into more of the head proportions and facial features, so I'm excited.