4th Entry for Mar 27, 2011

(People looking for life drawing instruction - or basic perspective instruction - should take note that I have an intermediate/advanced life drawing class on Wednesday evenings starting in a few days at the TSA, and a perspective basics class on Tuesday mornings. Both run for 10 weeks, and you can get more info through the TSA website. There is still space for any interested students, and all ages of adults are welcome.)




These two 20-minute studies finished the evening. Both are done with charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of Japanese paper. 
I tried out this type of woodless charcoal stick for the first time on Japanese paper on these two studies. Initially I mostly noticed that the texture on the paper was more coarsely-grained than I wanted, but ion hindsight, I'm not entirely unhappy with the topmost study. It has good, bold blacks in it. Still, I prefer the finer grain of the 8B graphite on the same paper. If you look at the 5th entry for Mar 24 as a comparison, you can get a sense of the subtle difference.


It occurs to me that in some ways, this is like a photographer experimenting with the coarseness or fine-ness of the silver grains using different papers and printing/developing techniques. The charcoal here is more like a high-speed film - coarser grain, more contrasty image.


The shadows on B-   's face are a little dark on the lower study for my tastes. His seat and the background tones were added later - I was looking at the study at home, and that's what it seemed to need.