Artistic Explorations: Figurative study (2)

In the first few weeks of my figure drawing class I realised that when using a medium with a fine nib such as a pencil or pen I have the tendency to focus too much on detail. As mentioned in my previous article about figure drawing I enjoyed working with indian ink but I wanted to experiment with some other mediums too. I love the texture and effect you can create with charcoal but black is not my favourite colour. After some research online I found Cretacolor's Art Chunky Charcoal. These are large sticks in 12 wonderful colours, they hold well in the hand and can be used to cover a large area (on the long edge) or to be more precise (with sharp edge).

Cretacolour Art Chunky Charcoal

This medium really suits my style of drawing and they are in particular great in combination with a textured surface such as collage. Recently I made two mixed media drawings on grey cardboard using the charcoal sticks;

"Fibrous" is a drawing of a part of a cast (statue) on top of a collage of scraps of a painting, woodchip paper and old cycle toute maps from The Hague. Apart from charcoal I also used indian ink pen.

"Fibrous"

"Fibrous" close-up

"Fibrous" close-up

"Hermes" was created with a male model in the class room. The collage consists of sheets of A5 paper printed with a travel theme which I bought online and sections of my expired passport with travel stamps and visas. I also used some White liquid acrylics from Golden for the sheet and pillow and indian ink pen for the left hand.

"Hermes"

"Hermes" close-up

"Hermes" close-up

"Hermes" close-up

"Hermes" close-up

"Hermes" close-up