Several of our students now feel pretty comfortable using a range of HB pencils, and have a pretty good understanding of form and value. Time to move on to the next challenge - charcoal!
(Don't worry - if you are new, charcoal can be a great thing to start with, too! Please feel free to join us for this project even if it is your first time drawing!) The most challenging part about using charcoal is that typically you start with a darker value and erase the light areas instead of adding darks, like you would with pencil on paper. Then you start the process of adding darks and taking away lights simultaneously as you move along. This process will become intuitive after a little bit of practice, though it may feel awkward at first. Most students are very pleasantly surprised at their first attempts at charcoal drawing. For our first charcoal drawing, we'll be looking at fabric. A great way to study value, and also a great way to allow yourself to make some mistakes while you're still learning - no one will be able to tell if your flowing fabric is slightly off! Last week, students finished up their still life drawings and we also did a study on value with the leftover time. Up until now, we have been using pencils and it can be frustrating to cover so much space with such a small tip - not to mention getting all of the values of different shadows and highlights just right! I am hoping that this value study will help us to remember just how many variations of grey there really are. In this still life, students really started to understand that things aren't so black and white. There is a whole, huge range of greys that help us distinguish objects in a still life drawing.
We also did a study on spheres. Even though we may not be drawing spheres all the time, this study helps students draw anything that is round by understanding a few different things:
See a few images of some student work in progress below. Next week we start on charcoal! |
Teacher
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