Category Archives: Charcoal

You Say You Want a Revolution

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Last year at the Holland Tulip Festival in Holland, MI, one of the larger windmill attractions recreated a revolutionary war camp.  This is a recreation of a photo taken of one of the recreators.  He came over a hill looking exhausted — though it was probably from posing for hundreds of pictures rather than fighting hoards of redcoats.

I drew this in charcoal on 18×24 paper as part of a one hour (or so) demonstration to my nephew who has an interest in art (Skype is a wonderful thing!).  Lots and lots of problems with it, but I’m not terribly upset with it considering the speed with which it was drawn.

 

Self Portrait

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My first attempt at a portrait.  Made my nose too long, and didn’t capture the look of the bandanna correctly.  It’s been about 3 weeks since my last serious attempt at drawing anything, so I’ll cut myself a little slack for not remembering to check my measurements against more than one reference point.

Figure Drawing Class

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I haven’t posted here in a long while.  But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped drawing (although I have not been drawing as much as I would like).  I’ve been taking a figure drawing class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I’ve been hesitant to post these drawings.   I have a number of nieces and nephews whose parents might object to them seeing drawings containing nudity.  I also have several colleagues who have been known to check out my drawings while at work; where viewing pictures of nekkid people is usually frowned-upon.

So rather than my normal posting policy of one post per drawing, I am including several drawings in this one post.

Before you click the link to read the entire post, be warned: The following images contain artistic nudity.  If you are offended by depictions the unclothed human body, do not click the link.  If you are under the age of 18, get your parents’ permission before clicking the link.  If you are at work and there is even the remotest chance that someone in your office will accuse you being a pervert, wait until you get home to click the link.

You have been warned.

OK.  Now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, here are the rest of my drawings from class so far:

Lincoln Park Conservatory

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lincoln-park-conservatoryThis building near the Lincoln Park Zoo is comprised of a bunch of greenhouses and is one of the more interesting looking buildings in the area.  My perspective is all screwed up on this.  Also, I should not have tried to capture such a detailed subject with charcoal in such a small format as my sketchbook.

I’m going to have to give this one another go sometime soon.  Unless the weather doesn’t hold out; in which case, I’ll have to wait til spring.

It’s Honeycrisp Season

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honeycrispAs much as I hate to admit it, I learned about Honeycrisp apples from Oprah Winfrey.  It was on one of her lists of her favorite things, and I stumbled across it on the web some time ago.  I thought, “I like apples, what the heck… let’s try these honeycrisps,” and that was it.  I was ruined for other apples.  Now, I look forward to September/October the way a kid looks forward to Christmas.

The season is almost over, though the local grocery stores will continue importing them from some place south of here for a little while longer.  Thought I would capture one so I could daydream until next year.

Brown Paper Bag

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paper-bagHobos are known to share their brown paper bags.  I’m not a hobo, but I am still willing to share mine with you.

This was drawn in class this evening.  18×24 charcoal on Canson drawing paper which was graciously supplied by the instructor.  This was too large for my scanner, so I had to photograph it with my phone (because it seemed like too much trouble to dig out the good camera); that dark spot on the bottom-right is my shadow.

My Secret is Out

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broken-eggSo there you have it: the eggs that I’ve been drawing are hard-boiled.  Just a little insurance against one of them trying to make a run for it, taking the death leap from the table to the floor in a misguided attempt to escape.

Simple Still Life

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still-lifeFollowing the lead of my drawing instructor, I purchased some gesso and have painted a couple of common items flat white.  This helps to simplify the light/shadow interaction and allows me to focus more on shape and shade rather than having to worry about things like reflections or distortion caused by viewing things through glass.

You’ll probably see these items appear again in future drawings.

Drawing Class

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eggsFall is officially here.  Summer activities are no longer in the way, and the weather isn’t completely frigid yet, so it is the perfect time to sign up for a drawing class.  The School at the Art Institute of Chicago offers evening and weekend drawing classes, and I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a drawing class for a while now.  Classes started on the first of October; I am enrolled in ‘Beginning Drawing’.

I drew these eggs last night as part of my homework.  This week was our second class, and the topic was shading.  We spent the bulk of the class drawing white objects on a white surface.  As boring as that sounds, it turns out to be a great way to learn to see subtle variations of tone; and as you can see, white can actually be pretty darned dark.

My hand-eye coordination still needs some work — the egg on the left is a bit misshapen.  But I feel like I am improving even after just a couple of weeks of class.  If nothing else, I am becoming much more comfortable with charcoal (check out my previous attempts with charcoal to see what I mean).

Diversey Harbor

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diversey_harborThose of you who stop by here regularly were probably wondering where I’d gone.  Well, let’s just say that between a hectic work schedule, a nagging back injury, playoff hockey, less-than-seasonable weather, and a general artistic funk, I haven’t been making much art (if you can call it that) lately.

This drawing was done Saturday morning — EARLY saturday morning.  The cat decided that 5:30 AM is a good time for humans to be awake, so she made it a point to ensure that I was.  The sun was out, so I chugged a cup of coffee and headed down to the harbor with my sketchbook.

Of course, I got down there, got settled, and started drawing, and the weather turned.  You can see the effects of high humidity and drizzle if you look closely:  the charcoal started to cake, and the paper stopped taking it very well.

The bridge in this picture is where Lakeshore Drive crosses over the waterway between the harbor and Lake Michigan.  When I was running every day, this was part of my normal route; I miss seeing it every morning.

Compact Fluorescent, Two Ways

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cfl_charcoal

This is a compact flourescent lightbulb.  It is supposed to save us all from global warming.  And it is supposed to last nine years.  Well guess what?  I installed this light bulb less than a year ago and it is already burnt out.  Let’s hope the global warming thing fares better.

Funny thing about this drawing… I wasn’t planning to draw a light bulb.  I was actually planning to draw a pair of pliers; had them in my hand and was on my way to my sketching station (a.k.a. the dining room table)  when this little beauty caught my eye.  It was sitting on the kitchen counter, because I have no idea how to properly dispose of the darned thing.  To be quite honest, I was planning  to leave that problem to the next owner of our condo.  So much for that plan.

As I was saying… I sat down, pulled out my charcoal and sketched a rough outline, then proceeded to shade (being careful not to avoid inadvertant smudges along the way).  Unfortunately, I was so caught up in the process of shading, that I forgot to take a good look at the overall form of the drawing.  Result: a lightbulb that looks like a failed refugee from a Salvador Dali – wilted, but not quite enough to hang out with those amazingly relaxed clocks.

So that led to sketch #2:

cfl_penThis one was done with a Micron 03 pen.  I was more cautious about getting the shape right on this one.  I stood over my sketchbook rather than sitting; and I think it helped a lot.  Some of my lines are too sketchy, though.  This was a problem that I had in my early highschool art career, and I can still hear my art teacher in my ear: “Make a line, dammit.”  Something to work on.

It was interesting to tackle the same subject with a couple of different mediums.  I actually think the pen was more appropriate for the subject matter, but I probably should have been a little more bold with my line and used dark, fluid shapes for the shading instead of trying to draw it as if I were using a pencil.

On the plus side, I kept this lightbulb out of the landfill for another hour.  That’s got to count for something, right?

Chandelier

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chandelierWe recently replaced our dining room chandelier.  I like the shape of it and have been wanting to draw it for a while.  And since I’ve been playing with charcoal recently, I wondered what it would be like to draw it with charcoal.

As with most of the stuff I’ve done with charcoal, there are parts that I like and parts that I don’t.

Starting with the stuff I like… I think I’ve captured the overall feel of the chandelier: the general shape is there; basic pattern of light and dark.  I like the dark on dark of the drawing.  And I think I did an OK job pushing the rear lights into the background.

Now onto the “not so great” stuff:  the lines lack any sort of sympathy for the subject.  Instead of modeling the shape of the light domes and relying on form and shadow to create separation, they’re mostly separated by lines.  There are a few too many spots where the lines meet the background which lack any degree of blending whatsoever.   There is an overly dark spot in my background below the lights on the right of the picture.  And I should have put a little more contrast between the background and the light domes — they’re dim, but they’re not THAT dim.

I was shooting for a soft, ethereal feel to the image, and I’m just not sure I achieved that.  But for those of you wondering, I actually DID use my kneaded eraser in this drawing to pull out the highlights in the light globes.

Charcoal is a difficult medium to gain any degree of control over.  But I will continue to work on it until I feel it’s time to move on to something else.

St. Clement Church

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church

Charcoal continues to kick my butt.

There are thousands of beautiful old buildings in Chicago, and I want to be able to draw them.  The weather is finally turning nice, so I should start to see more opportunities to do just that.  I am really enjoying my charcoal adventure.  But I am really struggling to get a good handle on it.   The evidence is in the massive inconsistency between the bell tower and the main facade of the church.  Though, to be totally fair to myself, I did stop before I felt like I was finished due to time constraints; and I did focus a little more on the bell tower.

I spent an hour sitting on the sidewalk across from this church which is two blocks from my condo.  I had several false starts until I finally set my mind to finish a sketch no matter how badly it starts.

Anyway, I am starting to learn some things about myself that I thought I would share:

  1. I tend to let the looseness of a really soft charcoal dictate a very loose drawing style.  I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
  2. I tend to focus on the negative space and the shadows much more than the object itself when I am working with charcoal.  The result is a much more impressionistic approach than when I am sketching with pencil.
  3. Once I have an implement in-hand, I tend to use it until I am forced to switch — especially when drawing away from my normal space, where I can spread out all my pencils, erasers, and such.
  4. I don’t erase.  This is true when I am using a pencil too.  When I first picked up my pencils back in October, I made a conscious decision to not use an eraser — it was an exercise in discipline, to force myself to learn to make the right line the first time.  But now that I have switched to charcoal, I think I might benefit from using an eraser at least as a shading tool.
  5. My sketchbook is not necessarily receptive to the combination of charcoal and fixative.  The charcoal separates in spots, which might be related to my habit of blending with my fingers.

Of all these things, point number 2 is the most interesting to me.  I really do think differently with a piece of charcoal in my hand.  I wonder why that is.

Drawbridge Control Tower Over the Chicago River

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drawbridge_control_tower

Chicago has more drawbridges than any other city in the country (if you believe the guy who does the PBS specials).  This is a control tower for one of those drawbridges near the Sears Tower (soon to be renamed the Willis Tower, but I’ll be surprised when people around here start referring to it as such).

I drew this during the last 15 minutes of my lunch hour; we are finally starting to get some nice temperatures here.  Given the short amount of time spent, I was obviously not going for a great amount of detail — I just wanted to capture the shadows.  My proportions are off a little — the tower is actually a little more squat than I have captured here.  But I am still glad to be able to get outside to draw.

Wine, Lemons, and Song

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wine_and_lemon0001

OK, well, wine and a lemon anyway.  The song is up to you.  Why did I choose these items to draw tonight?  For the very profound reason that they were sitting on the kitchen counter near each other, and I happened to be standing next to them when I decided I wanted to draw something.

This is my first try with vine charcoal – two sticks; one hard and one soft.  Vine charcoal does not seem quite as black as willow, and it seems a little easier to control gradation with the vine. Maybe I’m just getting more comfortable with charcoal in general; I won’t really know for certain until I do another drawing with willow.

It’s probably a little early for me to be rushing to judgment, but having worked with a couple of different kinds of charcoal and different degrees of hardness, I think I prefer the softer charcoals.  Working with a soft, mushy stick of charcoal feels more like painting than drawing.  The hard charcoal seems like it will be useful for working with finer detail and lighter shades of gray, so I won’t be throwing it out or anything.

Things That Make Me Cry

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onion_stitched_cropped

It’s tax day in the US; and that always make me a little weepy.  Appropriately enough, this red onion brought a tear to my eye too (Everyday Matters Challenge #179 – Draw an Onion).

Continuing with my exploration of charcoal, this was done completely with willow charcoal in an 11×14 Strathmore 400 Series drawing pad that I bought back in January and haven’t touched since.  The quality of the scanned image is a little weird in spots, because my scanner is puny, so I had to scan in four separate images and stitch them together — will have to consider using a regular camera in the future.

I’m still trying to get control over the charcoal so I can get a good range of shading, especially in the mid-tones.  When I lay it down, it is too dark; then when I blend, it gets too light.  Or, I wind up with all the mid-tones appearing to be the same shade, and the resulting image (in this case, the face of the fat part of the onion) looking flat and boring.  Then I start mucking with it, and overwork the whole thing until I kill any remaining life in the thing.  Obviously, Jeff needs more practice.

A Little Warmth on a Cold Spring Day

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stove

I tried to get outside to draw today.  I really did.  But it was cold again.  Maybe I’m just a wimp, but the thought of sitting down somewhere for thirty minutes or more when the temp is in the 40′s is just not my idea of fun.  So, another inside pic.  Sigh.

More charcoal play, though.  So that was fun. I’m really enjoying the organic quality charcoal is bringing to my work; though not so much on this one as the vases.  I can’t wait to try it on an outdoor subject.

In the meantime, I claim victory over Everyday Matters challenge #159 – Draw a Favorite Cooking Tool.  A stove is a tool, isn’t it?

Vases

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vases

I finally broke down and bought a box of willow charcoal today.  This is my first charcoal sketch (well, my first one in 22 years).  Between illnesses, a heavy work schedule, a bunch of home projects, opening day (woot!) and some good-ol-fashion laziness, this is my first sketch at all in several weeks (unless you count some sketches I did as part of the planning phase of those home projects).

The weather in Chicago has not been cooperative, either.  I keep telling myself, “if it’s nice tomorrow, I’ll get outside and draw.”  And then the next day is cold, windy, rainy, snowy, or all of the above.  I know this is what ‘Everyday Matters’ is all about, but I’m not afraid to tell you, I’m getting real tired of drawing the stuff sitting around my home.

That said, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to draw with a burnt tree.  The charcoal is nice and dark, and smudgy and splotchy and, well, almost paint-like the way I can push it around on the page.  As far as a rendering, this is most definitely not my most accurate work.  But I felt like I was really able to connect with the sketch in ways I haven’t felt up to this point.  I will definitely be doing more charcoal sketches; I just need to figure out a way to not get charcoal dust all over the house.