1st entry for Apr 1, 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.)

I came back the next night, to continue exploring the woodless charcoal sticks I picked up.  K-  was working that evening. Above from top are a 5-minute study, two 10-minute studies, and a 15-minute one. These are all on 18 x 24" sheets of cartridge paper.
I was having better luck handling the charcoal, but still working more slowly and having a harder time keeping the scale of the figures within the 18 x 24" paper, which really does feel like a tiny playing field to work on.
Based on what I had noticed in reworking the previous night's drawings a bit.I also tried adding some passes with the side of an 8B graphite stick to the lower two drawings. It did give them a broader value range, and more sculptural volume, but a little bit at the expense of a freshness and `airiness' within the images. Which makes me wonder if there is a point where a smaller amount of graphite would be just the right amount for these studies.

2nd Entry for Mar 31, 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 three longer studies of A-  are an initial experiment in mixing graphite with charcoal. The topmost one is a 15-minute study, initially done with charcoal on 18 x 24" cartridge paper. The two lower 20-minute studies were done with charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of different Japanese papers.
At first I found the `grain' of the charcoal on the paper too coarse. Later in my studio, I was looking at them and tried laying some broad graphite strokes atop the charcoal, and I liked how that gave a much wider tonal range, by filling in some of the white between the charcoal dots, as well as being a tiny bit like a blending stomp in effect.
I felt that was something interesting to pursue further.

Also, it was that night that Chris, the animator was sitting beside me. He once took one of my classes, and remarked, just before A-  started back to work, "Oh no, my teacher is sitting beside me. I better not f--- around now... ". So I wrote a note on it and passed it to him, informing him that I really hoped that my presence would spur him to f--- around more, not less.   After all, messing around is an important element of creative discovery.

1st entry for Mar 31, 2011

On the Thursday I got over for some drawing at the TSA. A-   was working that night. These are some 1-minute studies, done with charcoal on 18 x 24"  cartridge paper.

2nd Entry for Mar 29, 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.)




The upper two images are done with charcoal on 18 x 24" cartridge paper, They, and the lower one are all 20-minute studies. The lower one is done with 8B graphite on Japanese paper.
I was gaining some degree of control of the charcoal in the longer poses, but my drawing was not at its best.  The pose S-  took at the end was the one I most connected with - it was an unusual angle, and lots of foreshortening and subtle values on her torso. The drawing is richer in terms of subtlety, but the graphite seems washed out beside the more intense charcoal.  Somewhere in between these two seems to lie my ideal medium.
Overall, I didn't feel it was one of my better drawing nights. I could have omitted most of these, but I think it is worth sharing some of the weak studies as well as the good ones, to underscore that you can't have one without the other.  Also, I had some personal matters that were weighing on me from the day before, which may have been part of why S-    looks particularly blue in a lot of these.

And as I've said before, anyone who knows of a 22 x 30" inexpensive acid-free cartridge paper with a nice tooth, please let me know...

1st entry for Mar 29, 2011

Tuesday night I was over again at Artists 25.   S-   was working, and doing a good job at it, but my drawing was not very strong.  I was still wrestling with the unfamiliar charcoal I had picked up, and having less success than usual in setting down S-   's likeness.  These are two 5-minute studies above, and a 10-minute one below.
These were all done with charcoal on 18x24" sheets of cartridge paper, but the heads themselves are quite small on the sheets.

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.

3rd Entry for Mar 27, 2011

Above are two 10-minute studies, and below two 15-minute ones. These are also charcoal on sheets of 18 x 24" Canson XL series cartridge paper.
With the charcoal, the size of the paper feels smaller than I'd like. For many, 18 x 24" is a good big size, but I would really like to find a comparable, modestly priced sheets of 22 x 30" paper (i.e 20 - 25 cents a sheet) for warm-ups...

The amount I was setting down was less than usual, owing to being more conscious about trying to control the charcoal. It tends to get dark very quickly, necessitating a very light touch, which for me means going slower.
I got better results in the 15-minute studies, where I was beginning to get a little bit of a handle on the material.