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Project #4: Sighting Strategies and Charcoal Studies



The Materials

VINE CHARCOAL

Vine charcoal is a piece of charred willow. It comes in different softness/hardness varieties. Soft vine charcoal will produce dark gray value, Medium will be lighter, Hard produces the lightest value range. It moves very easily on paper. Its easy to manipulate, almost like clay. It's easy to blend with and remove with a kneaded or plastic eraser.

COMPRESSED CHARCOAL

Compressed charcoal is much darker. 
There is a bit of oil in it, and thus the values you can produce will get much darker than vine.  The blackness you can produce is very rick and dark. Compressed charcoal also comes in pencil form. Compressed charcoal works best for fine details and for when you want to produce a rich shadow.
Sighting & Measurement in Still Life Drawings

 Make use of a pencil, chop stick or other straight hand held tool that you can use to lay against the still life forms you see. This will help you see angles more accurately.  Think of the room as a standard clock; the ceiling is 12, the floor 6, the wall to the east is 3, the wall to the west 9.  

Your "stick" will be both the hour and the minute hand. Note, they will never bend to become 3:07 as in the above image.  They remain straight in their rotation.  By using this method you are understanding the angle you see into simple linear terms. You can use this method to understand how negative shapes are placed in the still life, so you can accomplish the contour drawing of form. 

 Here are some examples:



Student Work: 
First Still Life drawings



 Video: A moment of Silence - a Portrait in 2 minutes


 Charcoal Tips outside class

 The Charcoal Drawing Process

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