Discussion on charcoal Lavender hill studio

Discussion on charcoal at my new favourite portraiture school

Learning how to paint Alla Prima

I have been trying to learn how to paint Alla Prima (in one sitting) for the past few month and even if the result is pretty bad, I feel I am discovering new things every week and gradually progressing.

It is all rubbish but hopefully you can learn something from it.

First painting was so bad I eventually used it as a palette to mix my colours ;-)

Second painting I had no clue how to mix my colours or even match the skin of the model, let alone the facial features ;-) This painting was probably my first one actually.

Third one got a bit better but I wanted to be a bit too fancy and stylise the colours to have cold hues in the shadows and warm ones in the light..... way too advanced concepts for me ;-)
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Fourth one is getting better with colours matching, model is still a bit too pink

Fifth one. Now we are finally getting somewhere. The colours were still really hard to match but I was finally having a bit of fun. Notice the underdrawing . This is the way I work at the moment. Working in that manner allows for a semi finished drawing, even if not all the areas are finished. Pros don't do it but I am no pro ;-)

Week 6. Unfortunately it wasn't one model but two we have had this week so things got a lot more complicated. I should have stuck with just one model but I loved the design of the scene. This time was an eye opener. It is common sense but it had never occured to me that I should use white as my main paint and only add a tiny bit of colours to it. Underdrawing done in 30 minutes, painting in 1h

Life drawing week 22

That's it, this week I switched from graphite to charcoal pencils. I admit I am going a bit overboard with the blacks but it is so pleasant to have so many values to play with.

Wednesday class, the model posed with her baby which was really good but it made me realize I have no clue how to draw babies and eventually stuck to drawing the model instead.

Friday class was really good. The model was great and he came with his own props!!!!

This time, instead of speeding up to finish the overal body for the quick poses, I decided I would start with one part of the body, do as much details as possible and make my way down until I ran out of time. It worked out really well for me. It is a lot of fun as you need to keep paying attention to negative space, angles and distances.

One downside to the pencils I use is the fact that they are really difficult to erase. Maybe I should use the HB version rather than the 2b.. If it happens it is less greasy.

Watts demo Friday night

and a pretty good website I had never heard of before

http://underpaintings.blogspot.co.uk/

Life drawing week 21 Wednesday

After drinking too many Tequila shots around midnight on sunday night, I was too tired to attend the Monday class.

Wednesday class went very well today. We started with quick 1 minute poses which I won't dare posting, then quickly moved through 3 minutes, 5, 10, 15 and 20.

We had two models this time again but decided to focus on the voluptuous Jennifer who is a pleasure to draw. We also got some fresh newsprint paper so things couldn't get any better!

I was still working with graphite today, mainly with my favourite 6b Staedler and a HB clutch which didn't give enough range. I will probably try charcoal on newsprint next time.

Life drawing week 20

Here are my drawings for this week, I have been pretty good and attended monday, wednesday and friday class.

 I should sharpen my pencils. I should sharpen my pencils. I should sharpen my pencils. I should sharpen my pencils. I should sharpen my pencils..... ;-)

 I also started using a 2mm mechanical pencil as recommended by Proko. Amazon had a discount this week so I couldn't resist.

This was supposed to be a 15 minutes pose but Adrian our host came back from the kitchen after 5 minutes and told us there was only 1 minute left ;-) I didn't frame that one very well so it is good I didn't have time to finish it

And for the first time I also started using a Conté charcoal, also recommended by Proko but I had no idea how to use it. I think the paper's grain was a bit too heavy. I normally work with newsprint but ran out of paper and my favourite store in Soho just closed down.

This was a 50 minutes pose but one model moves after 25 minutes. Couldn't get the woman on time before she moved to the bottom right of the drawing.

and here is what the monday class looks like. It was pretty quiet that day, probably because of the rain. If you look really carefully you might be able to find me and yes I am dressed up ;-)

Bethnal Green April 2014

Here are some of my last drawings from Adrian Dutton's great life drawing class in Bethnal Green.

Until very recently I didn't really care about my art material and used pretty much anything but having reached a plateau at the beginning of the year, I had decided to do a bit more research and was seduced by Proko's art material video I posted a while back.

Following his advice I stuck with graphite and bought a set of Mars Staedler Lumograph and a pad of soft newsprint paper. The lead on the lumograph is stronger than the regular ones so you can expose the lead more without fearing it will break. It does break though so don't go too crazy on it ;-)

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My favourite pencils used to be the 7b and 8B as they provide with richer blacks but the marks are very difficult to erase. As a matter of fact, someone just confirmed something that wasn't obvious to me. The 7b and 8b are not actually pure graphite so this is why they don't respond like regular graphite pencils when erased. I love those for gestural drawings or background however, due to their composition, they don't shine like graphite when the drawing is seen at an angle which is good but not when mixed with real graphite.

In the drawing below I had started blocking the surrounding area of the hand with the 6b then carried on with the 7b, the result is far from satisfactory. I guess this is why I should skip graphite and eventually use charcoal pencils like some of the best artists in the class.

I can't be bothered for now as I just want to focus on the anatomy and get faster without adding a new variable in the equation.

The following drawings are one month older and done between 20/25 minutes. The one above was 1 hour so... I guess I wasn't as efficient... ah yes I remember. The model above was actually with her new born so she moved her right arm dramatically towards the end of the pose. I had to draw her chest by memory which explains why the navel seems out of place ;-)

 Ah, one more tip. You are not supposed to sharpen your pencils so badly when using a blade!!! Yeah I am just being lazy and don't want to also bring sanding paper when coming to the class. This is not too much of a problem when drawing the figure but it is when you want to shade the background. This is why most of my drawings have really nasty backgrounds.