Entry for April 19, 2015

I went over to the ARC studio on the Sunday. July was working, and this is a 2.25 hour study. Materials are graphite, ink washes and some Pitt oil-based pencil for detail shading, on an 18 x 24" sheet of Strathmore watercolour paper.
In lieu of one `magic bullet' material that makes everything work, I'm finding that different materials can lend themselves to different parts of doing a drawing.
The fine mechanical pencil line is good for the initial laying-up of proportion/perspective on a smaller paper size; washes establish broad value zones and the more coloured-pencil texture of the oil pencils allows for specificity within values.
My drawing is still rusty, and the composition here is a little too static:a small centered cluster of body shapes and a lot of white space, with an awkward balance of the ladder isn't working so well as a picture, at least yet. Cropping may be the answer here, and developing a little more in the way of background texture and value.