THE ANGLED CURVE - TOBIAS ALLEN WOLF: charcoal

Showing posts with label charcoal. Show all posts

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Real life drawing? Like...from life?

Some recent drawings...from actual life! Yes, real life. Eat hot sh*t COVID. Lots of it.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Daily Figure 6-1-2020

Started using Cretacolor's XL Nero Art Sticks here for light values and halftones in place of the Prismacolor Art Stix. They're less waxy. And wider. Much wider. So they cover a lot more ground in less time while still allowing for sensitive restraint in building-up values. Which suits them well for life drawing—where time and control are at a premium due to the fatigue factor forever taxing the model.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Daily Figure 2-26-2020

There is something so striking about an untouched solo mark. Pure. Unfussed. To the point. Efficient. Using a massive chunk of charcoal here on those large peripheral strokes.

Monday, January 27, 2020

Daily Figure 1-27-2020

Using a multitude of various charcoals and tools here. Of particular usefulness as of late: Prismacolor Art Stix for upper-tier halftones and incredibly light values. It doesn't play with other media so well due to the strong wax content and a heavy application really puts this into high relief; but strategically used—it's perfect for gentle, light, and subtle gradations of value. Especially on really light or bright white surfaces where subtle slight value shifts can be difficult to keep tamed.

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Not filling in the shadows

In having spent so much time drawing from life—you are continuously forced to make editing choices due to the time limit of the pose. What to include, what to exclude. Over time, I've come to appreciate that this creates it's own aesthetic. As in life, sometimes the things left unsaid are more beautiful than anything manifestly expressed.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

The forever moving target

A recent exercise in drawing the figure from reference with a bit of experimentation in tools—using one brand of compressed charcoal for the core shadows and another to fill in the shadowed sections. Whereas one of the brands (Cretacolor) is much more loosely bound and softer, and the other (Conté à Paris) is much harder. I used the softer of the two for the core shadows and the harder for the fill shadows and mid-tones.

The advantage with this approach was that a dark registration of the shadow cores was quick and easy with the softer charcoal, and then I could more easily control the structural reveal of the forms in the half-tones and fill shadows by using a slower application process with the harder charcoal. Using the harder charcoal was particularly useful in taming the level of reflected light bounced into the shadow fills—so that the nuances of the anatomical construction were retained with subtle fidelity.

There's a tendency for many to use the same tool or approach in their work over and over, as it's how they were taught. I did this myself—often. For years in fact. Although as I've learned, and come to enjoy—the application of specific tools and techniques for specific circumstances is so much more effective in terms of speed, control, and/or effect. It just takes some time to work through where, when, and how to go about it. And it seems that this process is never complete nor is there an approach that is 100% applicable to every circumstance or subject. Failure is a constant. Every work it seems, in some manner or another, requires a kind of special consideration—if you're really paying attention. Even a 5-minute drawing.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Pushing it further—Mark Session Back Pose 08/05/2017

For the curious—I went to the trouble to make a animated gif (it may take a bit to load) which illustrates the progress of this life drawing that has been furthered beyond the time with the model. The original is what was achieved with the model posing for 25 min. The image with the additions was completed in about 40 extra minuets. So about an hour in all.

Although I still use Newsprint for 2-15 minutes poses, I've moved on to using a higher quality paper for most of my short pose work in the range of 20-25 minutes. Because of this, I've felt compelled to take these a bit further with additional work. As many may know, Newsprint doesn't take reworking very well at all. So it's a pursuit I've never really gotten into with short pose drawings. But it's a lot of fun to push the notation inherent to short pose work into something more fleshed out so to speak. It really allows you to think a bit more about what you want to emphasize and what you want to play down while still attempting to keep it all tethered to reality somehow. Oftentimes I wind up liking the original better, but as always—there is progress in the destruction.

Mark Session Back Pose 08/05/2017 - 25 Min. Pose (image 1) - 25 Min. Pose with additional work (image 2) - 18" X 24" - Carbon Pencils, Vine Charcoal, and White Pastel Pencil on Charcoal Paper

Sunday, March 12, 2017

A collection of Sara Streeter Works

Sara Streeter Session 1/16/2016

25 Min. from Life

24" X 36"

Charcoal on Paper

Sara Streeter Session 1/23/2016

2 Hrs. from Life

24" X 36"

Charcoal on Paper

Sara Streeter Session 9/6/2016

25 Min. from Life

24" X 36"

Charcoal on Paper

Sara Streeter Session 1/14/2017

2 Hrs. from Life

18" X 24"

Charcoal on Paper

Sara Streeter Session 1/24/2017

5 Min. from Life

18" X 24"

Charcoal on Paper

Sara Streeter Session 2/08/2017

2 Hrs. from Life

13" X 15"

Oil on Canvas

24" X 36"

Charcoal on Paper

25 Min. From Life