It’s been so cold and ugly outside that there’s really no point in leaving the house. For today’s drawing I thought I would do one of my favorite styles/media which is compressed charcoal drawing/renderings on stonehenge paper. After all these years it’s still a pretty hard combo. Since you really can’t erase any of the heavy charcoal marks on the paper, if a drawing is going down the wrong direction I normally just tear it up and move on.
So this drawing is based on one of my photos (as they usually are). I chose it because I thought it would a nice challenge to try and render the blacks and textures. If folks hadn’t noticed I often do drawings that show the difference in materials like denim, leather and other cloth. It’s definitely a meticulous way of moving that old charcoal stick around.
There are a million ways to draw and this is just one. If I were working on an original piece from my head you’d see mark making all over the page, but this is a specific type of rendering.
So there was going to be another person in this drawing. I wasn’t happy with the likeness and instead of scrapping the whole thing, I just ripped the paper in half and decided to finish the first figure. There’s already enough wasted days in a year (and a lifetime) so I figured I’d just go ahead and enjoy my music and warmth in my room working on a drawing.
Here’s the good ol pocket cinema camera recording me drawing. It’s definitely sharp and the cloudy window light today was enough for small apertures. Its prores files are the source of the animated GIFs you see here.
White balance of a photo is a creative choice and doesn’t always have to be governed by correctness. Even in different types of paper stock there are subtle differences in the level of “white” in them and their respective cool or warm leanings. The second photo of the drawing definitely recalls the ones I did back 15 years ago. The simple light from an incandescent bulb and my crazy playlists in the background.
Charcoal Pencil and Compressed Charcoal and Cotton Swap on Stonehenge Paper
