Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal, black pastel on toned Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal, black pastel on toned Strathmore rag 2 ply Bristol

Edna and I got together last Friday afternoon, October 26, to draw some more. Cathy, my wife, particularly liked the top drawing. We’re still working on the toned ground. Edna and I only worked in the afternoon last Friday. I had spent the morning drawing from the model. Interestingly enough, I found that the two and half hours I drew from the model in no way helped me or “warmed me up” for the afternoon. This is the first time we did not spend the morning playing around with drawing. I understand now that this is the time we work out the images that appear in the afternoon. Each of us has a dozen or so old “morning” drawings tacked to our studio walls, but these drawings are “cold.” In the morning following our usual routine, we may take some of the “cold” images and “warm” them up or work up some new imagery for the afternoon, when we work to get the finished drawings. Those warmed up images were missing Friday afternoon. That made the drawing more difficult.
Posted by Chuck at 03:45:24 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Drawing with Edna

 
 
 
Untitled, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pigment, charcoal, black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol
 
 
 
 
Untitled, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pigment, charcoal, black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol
 
 
 
 
Untitled, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pigment, charcoal, black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol
 
 
 
Edna and I got together last Monday, October 1, for another day of drawing, this time at her studio. We continued with the toned ground paper we used last time.
Posted by Chuck at 03:28:33 | Permalink | No Comments »

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Edna and I Do Some more Drawings

 
 
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel on hand toned strathmore 2ply rag Bristol
 
 
 
 
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel on hand toned strathmore 2ply rag Bristol
 
 
 
 
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel on hand toned strathmore 2ply rag Bristol
 
 
 
Last Thursday, September 13, Edna and I got together for another day of drawing. We decided that we liked the way we are toning the ground. We did another small drawing, 14 1/2″ x 11 1/2″ (37cm x 20cm), and the three large ones shown above. For inspiration we leafed through my collection of childrens’ drawings. Small children don’t consider any formal elements when they draw. They just do it. The character of their marks varies with their age and motor control - from scribbles to careful lines. The way we’ve applied the toned ground allows us to erase down to the white of the paper making it possible to produce white lines and areas. We got some good laughs making these drawings.
Posted by Chuck at 05:15:29 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Two New Drawings with Edna

 
 
Untitled Drawing, 14 1/2″ x 11 1/2″ (37cm x 29cm), charcoal pencil & black pastel on pigmented Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol
 
 
 
Untitled Drawing, 14 1/2″ x 11 1/2″ (37cm x 29cm), charcoal pencil & black pastel on pigmented Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol
 
 
These two small drawings are the product of last Wednesday’s, September 5, drawing session. One aspect of drawing on the larger paper - four times as large - is that fine lines don’t hold their own with dark or black passages. We were always heavying up the narrow, light lines. After the session in which we drew the following drawing,
 
 
 
 
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol
 
I was logging photos of the work on my computer. I usually have to make some adjustments to the photos to get them to accurately as possible represent the drawings. For fun I applied what my photo program calls “equalization.” It produced this.
 
 
 

Humm. I liked this darkened version. I e-mailed a copy to Edna and asked what she thought about it. She liked it to. I instantly knew what to do to create the grayish ground on the paper. For the time being I’m not going to disclose what I did. I will after we have an opportunity to show them. I quartered a sheet of Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol and toned the paper. Last Wednesday afternoon we did three small drawings on toned paper and one large one without toning. The large one didn’t work. I discarded that one. On the first small toned paper we used our typical marks (not shown.) We noted that the narrower, finer lines worked better better in the smaller format. It’s really not possible to appreciate the difference in the photos reproduced above. In addition the toned ground can be erased down to the white paper, which allows a different appearance of highlights. As you can see, we approached the drawings with an even more light-hearted than usual scribbling mode using charcoal pencils in addition to the black pastel. We’re going to pursue this line for a while.

A digital camera and modestly priced photo program offer the abilitiy to test out ideas very quickly. 

Posted by Chuck at 05:48:10 | Permalink | Comments (1) »