Tuesday, December 6, 2011

2nd Entry for Nov. 28, 2011




These are two 10-minute studies, and s 25-minute one of D-    below.  All of them are on 18 x 24" sheets of the Canson Sketch paper ( what I typically call `cartridge paper' here. )
The top two are done with the hard Nobel compressed charcoal sticks. The middle one has a lot of background shading with an HB Conte crayon.  With the broader variety of drawing materials and paper I've tried over the past year, I realised that I hadn't given Conte a shot on the Canson or other heavier papers.
The lower one is done exclusively with Conte. Like a litho crayon or coloured pencil, I found it tended to `cake up' in dense areas of shading, and I couldn't coax the sensitivity of mark in dark values that I've come to like with harder charcoals.  (examples are the shadows inside his right arm, his hands and where his torso sits on the ground.).
That might be diffferent if I was aiming to do longer drawings and build values methodically. My interest lies in part in having the freedom to set a lot of information down quickly and sensitively, to ideally keep the pose duration as short as possible.
But HB Conte on a smooth newsprint is another story. There, I find its texture finds its fullest flower. Too bad the paper has no longevity...

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