Head of a Man - 32" x 45" - charcoal on paperFor a while now I've been intending to start a series of drawings in charcoal. Up until now I haven't had a chance to really get started on them, but I've had an image in my mind of how I want these drawings to look. The idea was to keep them quite loose and almost "painterly", but with focused areas of tighter detail. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get the effect I was after just using straightforward vine or compressed charcoal on it's own so after a bit of experimenting, I've found that a combination of brushes, stumps, pounce bag, pencils, powdered and compressed charcoal gets pretty close to the idea I was trying to get at. I'm still looking for a way to "paint" with powdered charoal. I think spraying it with something and spreading it with a brush is the way to do it, but I need to work out what to use, possibly some kind of alcohol. I'll post more of these as they come.
13 comments:
Beautiful work Neil!
Wow! You do great work. I love the oil paintings. I am a fellow daily painter and I was wondering if you'd be interested in doing a link exchange. Mu blog is:
austinmaloney.com
My email is"
amaloneyart@gmail.com
This drawing is stunning. I'm so glad to see your new post. May I ask how you achieve the white areas? Are you simply preserving your white, or erasing out, or are you scraping in some way? Would love to know some of your process!
This is a beautiful drawing Neil. Very moving and with a wonderful balance of freedom and control.
Thanks for your comments. Susan, depending on the effect I'm looking for and the value of the light,I generally leave the white of the paper to show through as much as I can for the lightest lights. In the slightly darker light areas I use the eraser, but I try to do this sparingly - I'd rather try and match the value with the charcoal correctly in the first place, and use the eraser for certain light effects. Usually it's a matter of thinking ahead and planning where the lights will be and trying not to touch them. The lightest area in this drawing is the top of the hair, and this is the only place on the drawing where the pure white of the paper is showing through. The rest all has medium on in to some degree. Hope this helps.
Oh Neil, this is beautiful! I can't wait to see more.
Neil, just stumbled across your blog. striking image! you definitely captured the painterly look you were after.
Amazing work.
Brett
so awesome neil!
Your charcoal work is beautiful. I do not see it as tight. It is loose and fully captures the spirit of the model.
Absolutly stunning!!! Painterly and well rendered drawing. Congrats on such a fine job!!!
Wow! Beautiful drawing!
What an amazing drawing ! wonderful work
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