Category: Charcoal and Pencils

30-Day Sketches at a Coffee Shop

30-Day Sketches | at a Coffee Shop

While at a local coffee shop today, I found the opportunity to do a super quick sketch and challenge myself. (Coffee shops are good places, most folks are pretty much still mos of the time.) He was a distance away and I knew I had 3-4 minutes and that was it. It came out slightly…

Torso Sketches and Blind Contour Drawing

Torso Sketches and Blind Contour

  The session this evening at the art studio (The San Diego Art Loft) was a fun one! We drew from 2-minute torso poses and one blind contour pose. We also did 2, 20-minute sessions of the same pose. After the session, I went back into the full figure pose to fill in the darks…

Saz Baby Portrait Sketch

Portrait Sketch

I was inspired by my father-on-law taken from this photograph from my wedding. It’s a great photo of him and my wife dancing together, pre-health issues, that he later was to lose his battle with diabetes. Good thing that I had my sketchbook while at the DMV today. You know how that goes and long…

Color Proportions Piece

Color Proportions Piece

This was a fun one, although I’ll have to admit, not at first, lol. I’m having a tendency to lay out the initial drawing with a wide base. This made the model appear wider on paper. We were able to fix this and place the torso in a box frame. My challenges began with laying…

Graphite sketches of eyes, noses, mouths.

Graphite Exercises for Eyes, Noses, and Mouths

Over the first three weeks into the online course (through The Watts Atelier, San Diego), we’ve focused on these areas of the human portrait. I realize that shapes don’t have to be perfect and how much that perspective and depth has to be considered. It has been a fun and still a bit challenging so far.

Grid Charcoal on Charcoal Paper

Grid Drawing, 4 Sections

This was incredibly challenging. The exercise this week was to break down a drawing of our model into 4 sections. I decided to start with the model’s left hand (lower right) and go section by section. Vine charcoal is nice because it’s a very forgiving medium, and I can erase and fix the piece as…

Nose Sketch

Nose Charcoal Sketch

The assignment for week: nose sketches. I chose vine charcoal because of its texture and how I can smudge the medium into shapes. I’m starting to see how this relates to painting by including the background. The darker shade of the background creates a soft line to show the nose and brow ridge. I hate…

Skull Exercise 01-17-2019 001

Skull Exercises

One of the many hardest things to draw in general is a skull. Yet it’s a good way to understand the face, proportions and where the eyes are in relation to the nose, brow ridge, mouth, and ears.

Charcoal and Classical Bust

The Classical Shadows

This was from my first session at a nearby studio, San Diego Art Loft. This exercise is about finding the dark areas of the subject using the side of a charcoal stick. My “aha moment” came from squinting my eyes and focusing on the shapes formed by dark shadows. I think that when it comes…

Warmup Exercise 01-15-2019

Session Warmup Action

A warm up session, the first of the year. It’s also from my first online session with the Watts Atelier. I’m discovering a different way of using my charcoal pencils and sticks. I still have a bit a ways to go in my technique in putting together composition and perspective. Along with my painting goals,…