Skip to main content

Project #3 Sighting Strategies & Establishing Space



The Materials

VINE CHARCOAL

Vine charcoal is a piece of charred willow. It comes in different softness/hardness varieties. Soft vine charcoal will produce dark gray value, Medium will be lighter, Hard produces the lightest value range. It moves very easily on paper. Its easy to manipulate, almost like clay. It's easy to blend with and remove with a kneaded or plastic eraser.

COMPRESSED CHARCOAL

Compressed charcoal is much darker. 
There is a bit of oil in it, and thus the values you can produce will get much darker than vine.  The blackness you can produce is very rick and dark. Compressed charcoal also comes in pencil form. Compressed charcoal works best for fine details and for when you want to produce a rich shadow.
Sighting & Measurement in Still Life Drawings

Make use of a pencil, chop stick or other straight hand held tool that you can use to lay against the still life forms you see. This will help you see angles more accurately.  Think of the room as a standard clock; the ceiling is 12, the floor 6, the wall to the east is 3, the wall to the west 9.  

Your "stick" will be both the hour and the minute hand. Note, they will never bend to become 3:07 as in the above image.  They remain straight in their rotation.  By using this method you are understanding the angle you see into simple linear terms. You can use this method to understand how negative shapes are placed in the still life, so you can accomplish the contour drawing of form. 

Here are some examples:



Student Work: 
First Still Life drawings



Video: A moment of Silence - a Portrait in 2 minutes


Charcoal Tips outside class

WK #4:
Project #3 assignment >
18 x 24" drawing paper
3 rectilinear forms arranged into a composition
In 5 or more values
Excellent composition strategies
Completed in vine charcoal and kneaded erasers



The Charcoal Drawing Process

Popular posts from this blog

Project #9: White Conte on a Dark Ground

This is a fun exercise to try your hand at and your mind, as you must think in reverse! Similar to charcoal drawings we have been involved with, you must, must, MUST work this type of a drawing up slowly, allowing your values to separate slowly -- and pushing the highest contrast areas of value at the very end. Your goal is to develop a separation of values that identify a foreground, a middle ground, and a background. Video: Ficitional Landscape watch for assistance Homework: On a dark piece of paper -- darker than middle grey, create a drawing with white Conte, pastel or chalk. 10 x 14" The subject matter is taken from observation such as  still life, a landscape from a photograph, human figure Here are some examples:
Read more

Student Multi Media Explorations

Sighting Strategies Abstract Wet Media Explorations The Abstracted Self - Value Studies Beginning Figure Drawing SPRING 2019 Negative Shape Drawings and  Explorations of media Explorations of media Self Portraiture Local/Optical Color selections
Post a Comment
Read more

Project #2 Sighting Practices & Atmospheric Perspective

Drawing by Marina Fridman We can depict what we see most effectively by simplifying our observations. Simplifying values  produces a much more cohesive, believable drawing than recording every value and minute detail that you see. Artists realized this hundred of years ago and created a system of simplifying and organizing values called... The Value Scale Artists use a system of nine (or more) values ranging from white to black, called a value scale. The scale consists of four light values (values 1 to 4”), a middle value (also called a half-tone), and four dark values (values 6 to 9”). A value scale is essentially a simplified gradation. Further Link: https://www.thedrawingsource.com/value-drawing.html Dynamic Value Ranges There is a difference between how we see values in our experience and how an artist or designer may wish to depict those values.  The lightest object in our world humans experienc...
Read more