DanM

Since reading the Douglas Graves book, I’ve been intending to try out some figure drawing with the charcoal. I got around to it today with interestingg results.  Today’s model is DanM, making his debut on this blog.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first.  The pose.  I can see what it looks like now and, looking back at the source photo, yeah, it looks bad there too.  I’ve no idea how I didn’t notice.

Anyway, back to the artwork.  I followed Douglas’ methodology, first not using a grid for the initial drawing and second drawing shapes rather than outlines.  Without a grid and outlines, I struggled to get the proportions right.  I think I need to continue using a grid and to just put down light outlines to use as a guide and then fill out the shapes.

I used both the huge charcoal bricks and the charcoal pencils for this one, starting with the huge blocks, trying to map out the biggest shapes, including highlights and shadows.  And I tried to add details with the pencils.  I added a lot of layers of colour, continually correcting both shapes and values.  I did struggled with the pencils.  While I got some facial features out early (albeit not with a likeness) I had problems adding the details.  The pencils (the white one in particular) didn’t seem to make marks on top of the charcoal that was already on the paper.  Maybe charcoal pencils work best on their own.  And maybe I need to supplement my gear with vine charcoal.

So, yeah, I struggled with this one today.  Compared to figure drawings in other media, this is pretty poor.  There’s nothing exciting or impressionistic about it: all I’m managing to do is suggest cylinders with my marks.  A frustrating afternoon all round really, what with all the dusty mess that charcoal creates.  It’s early days but I’m not warming to charcoal.  Let’s see how it goes.