Monday, July 2, 2012

2nd entry for June 15, 2012






These are some 15-minute studies, plus a 10-minute one that ended the night.  For the top three I tried a paper I hadn't used before called Durotone Butcher White paper. It has a waxy-smooth, somewhat mottled surface. The top study was done on it with hard Nobel charcoal, while the next two were done with HB Conte crayon. It was the first time in ages I had tried Conte, but I still found it a bit coarse-looking on the more rigid paper.  I had a feeling that either the Durotone Extra White or possibly the Butcher White would be especially good, but some of my initial enthusiasm for the Butcher White paper may be chalked up to `Magic Bullet' syndrome: the feeling that a given new material is THE answer. It takes multiple trials to really see how a paper behaves. The sheets are 24 x 36"

The lower study is Nobel hard charcoal on an 18 x 24" sheet of Canson Recycled Sketch paper, with some light tones added using a Prismacolor black drawing stick, which gave a very fine-grained gray on that paper. It wasn't a wholly successful likeness, but the more fine-grained tonality it adds is interesting to me.

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