Practice Makes Better

 11 x 14 charcoal on colored paper 

I have been enjoying getting back to simple drawing practice.

I started working on 14 x 17" newsprint. It's not as expensive as the nicer drawing papers and that makes it conducive to learning and FREEDOM! I found a pose online. This one to be exact:

I put the photo on my iPad where I could prop it up within view and tried pretending that I was back in college. Ha! First of all, I worked twice as large in college and second of all, a photo comes nowhere close to the energy of a live model. But . . . one works with what one has.

Here's my first sketch:

There's a certain amount of energy to it that I like. But, the proportions were off. I wasn't concentrating when I did this one as much as I was just having fun imagining I was 20 again.

Using the same photo I did another:

This one had lost energy but the proportions were more similar to the photo.

I did another:

Instead of shading with the regular charcoal, I got out my new Derwent tinted charcoal blocks!

Fun! Now it was time to get out nicer drawing paper and have one more go.

First session:

The second time I worked on it, I finished it the the point you see at the top of the page. It took me probably less than 2 hours in total for that finished piece. I really liked using the tinted charcoal. The colors are beautiful and subtle. What I didn't like is the size of the charcoal blocks but that's on me. I work so small that it makes them a bit too clunky. I ended up lifting the color, from the block, onto my blending stump and then drawing with that. In a way, the larger blocks may be better for me in keeping me a bit looser. However you can buy tinted charcoal pencils.

Lastly, I want to share a bit more drawing advice. I put the original photo into Procreate to highlight what it is that I look for when I'm drawing. One of those things is negative space - shapes and angles created around the subject matter. I'm often looking at triangular shapes and sizes.

There are also other visual measurements. How the arm on the left is not vertical; how the arm on the right hangs out quite a good bit more than the rest of the subject. I pay attention to where the heel of her shoe falls when I draw a line straight across to her pant leg; the rectangular shape of her chest. Lastly, I make sure that the hand resting on her knee is properly connected to its arm (though you can't see that through her other hand) and that the knee where that hand rests is in line with the thigh. You can get so caught up in small shapes that you lose sight of the larger ones and how they're connected.

I did this little exercise in Procreate when I was all done with the piece. It would have been a helpful thing to do at the beginning of the drawing. But, as I said before, though I'm trying to be acurate, I was more concerned with enjoying myself.

Thanks for stopping by!