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.
