18x24 charcoal and carbon on Arches hot press 140 lb watercolor paper.
This was the midterm for my life drawing class, and my first actual charcoal drawing. I had never used charcoal as a drawing medium outside of some in class drawings, flatside sketches, gestures, etc, so I talked to a student who is really amazing at charcoal (and graphite, and well.. everything I've seen him do) for some technical and paper advice. I think it paid off, and I learned a lot. Also, I took the reference photos myself.
Note: I took this picture with my phone, and I think its an OK photo--But I need to put together a portfolio for my BFA application, and thus, there will be better photos, scans if I can get them, within the year.
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Sta.sh
excelent job!
Care to share the advice from yr friend with us?
The trick is to cross hatch first, then to smooth it out with a pastel sponge. To lighten, crosshatch with a triangular eraser that is cut at an angle to form a sharp point on one side, and then again, smooth it out with a a pastel sponge. I think the best sponges to use are the diamond shaped ones with the handle, but all I had was a filbert shaped one, and it seemed to do just fine. Also, to make avid use of a stump, or stubber (you know those wound up paper things used for graphite blending.) If you stubber it, it will lighten (which may be what you want), but for the darkest darks I stubbed it into the paper, and then went over it again--without stubbering. The sponge also lightens--its sort of a balancing act.
With reddit? or right here right now? I don't really go on reddit, but my boyfriend does, shares my stuff, and tells me about it later. Feel free to share with them if anyone is still interested.
Using charcoal pencils sharpened with an exacto knife and sand paper, the trick is to cross hatch first, then to smooth it out with a pastel sponge.He told me to start with the medium grade, and work up my values with different grades accordingly. Here I used Medium, soft, and carbon mostly. If I used the harder variety, I dont recall where.To lighten, crosshatch with a triangular eraser that is cut at an angle to form a sharp point on one side, and then again, smooth it out with a a pastel sponge. I think the best sponges to use are the diamond shaped ones with the handle, but all I had was a filbert shaped one, and it seemed to do just fine.
Make avid use of a stump, or stubber (you know those wound up paper things used for graphite blending.) If you stubber it, it will lighten (which may be what you want), but for the darkest darks I stubbed it into the paper, and then went over it again--without stubbering. Also for hte darkest darks, such as the back square, I used carbon instead of charcoal.The sponge also lightens--its sort of a balancing act. Once the charcoal is worked into the paper--there's no getting it back to white, so you have to be carefull to keep your whites white while working.There is a scratchy eraser you can buy, that you sharpen like a pencil. if you are finished and lost a white, it will damage the surface of your paper, but you can also get your fine highlights back--it tends to only work on harder papers though.For the lightest, but not white parts, I found that using a lightly used sponge, tested on scrap paper of course, gave me just enough shade.
Another thing I did, was mask with plastic laminate (its a watercolor trick)around the image to keep it bright white, and give me a hard edge. Two problems can arise when masking though--you can cut the surface of your paper (which can only be solved through practice (you just take some, put it on a sample of paper that you are using and practice until you can cut though the laminate but not cut or score the paper--the same can be done with drafting or painters tape (but it's more expensive--and masking tape is a huge NO-NO) the other draw back is that it will lift the drawing off the paper, and you'll be forced to draw it again. Drawing it a second time always seems to go faster.
Another tip my buddy gave me was to use a smooth paper. He said the best that we could get locally was Arches 140 hotpress watercolor, after all, I live in Alaska--and we're damned lucky if they ship here at all! He said that there was one that he found in New York that he liked better, but I dont remember what it was!! Also, I tested stonehenge, a printmaking paper. It has two sides, a smooth side and a rough side, the smooth side worked better of course (and is also pretty rockin for colored pencil), but the arches was still superior when it came to moving the media around.
I think that the one thing that helped me most, after some technical tips and obtaining the supplies, was testing and practice. I made greyscales and shaded spheres untill I was comfortable working with the media and the tools, but I also allowed myself alot of time. This drawing took about 40 hours over a span of 4 days.
It is also from a photograph that I took myself. That was the assignment--I know alot of people are like "well any novice can draw from a photograph given enough time!!" and I think they are right--if said novice is committed to the time and the observation it takes--which I hope is incentive for novices!
I hope that's clear enough an explanation!