The main difference between this portrait and the one I posted a few days ago — besides the color of the paper and the lack of sticker residue — is that rather than using the white “charcoal” pencil, I used the eraser to lift the color for the highlights in the eyes, and the earring.
The image is from Anastasia Gepp on Pixabay.
It’s been some time since I’ve posted to this blog, but I’ve been doing a fair amount of sketching by copying from illustrations in childhood favorite books, and from some of the example drawings in art instruction books by Barrington Barber. Something best kept in a sketchbook and not posted to social media.
Of course, like every other beginning artist who does some copying, I eventually got bored! So, now I’m back to charcoal (from graphite) and starting to work on more portraits. With the portrait below, I used charcoal pencils, willow sticks, compressed sticks, and white “charcoal”. I’m about to start taking the learn-at-your-own-pace online course Charcoal Like Mad taught by Kara Bullock.
That ugly outline of a rectangle crossing the eyebrow and nose on the image is actually from the gummy tag identifying the color of this Canson Mi-Teintes paper (cinnamon). Ugh! But the paper has sat in my closet for about 2 years now, and the closet is the warmest room in the house in summer, coldest in winter. Time to use the stuff up.
In the meantime, this is just a warm-up to get back in the flow, and playing with charcoal.
My work is based on a Pixabay image by Anastasia Gepp.
This is the first round — no detail, no shading — of a head based on the Reilly method, and as homework for the charcoal portraits online class I’m taking.
Image by Anastasia Gepp from Pixabay
This charcoal is based off an image by andreas160578 from Pixabay.
This work is based off an image by Sonam Prajapati from Pixabay. It was done in graphite, willow charcoal, and white charcoal. I used white paper, and toned it first.
This image is based on a reference image by inna mikitas from Pixabay. I used mostly Richeson hand-rolled pastels from their portrait sets.
This drawing in vine charcoal is based off an image by inna mikitas from Pixabay. The paper is a brown shade of Canson Mi-Tientes. My intention is add color with soft pastels.
This work in vine charcoal was based off a reference image by Sabine van Erp from Pixabay.
This study, done using vine charcoal, was done on white paper toned first with charcoal powder so I could use the kneadable eraser to lift up color for highlights.
The reference image used was by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay.
