Quilt Barn Pencil Drawing

 

Hello and Happy 4^th of July for everyone in the United States. For this week’s blog, I am going to cover a drawing of my dog Lucy, that I did last winter. This one is one of my first attempts of using charcoal instead of graphite. Originally my goal was to try and mix charcoal and graphite, but I liked the look I was achieving with charcoal, so I just stayed with it.

For each drawing, I like to start with a specific idea in mind for how I want the drawing to look. I also want to have a goal in mind on areas of my drawing skills I want to work on. For this drawing, I wanted to concentrate on rendering the fur and getting good contrast between the light and the dark areas.  I did not what to have to fight with the proportions as well. With this in mind, I started the drawing by transferring the basic outline instead of doing it free hand.

Now many may think that is cheating or that it could take away from the finished work. Yes, even in the art community there is always a lot of discussion about this. In my own opinion, it is up to the individual artist and what they are trying to achieve. For those who think that using some kind of aid to transfer a drawing is cheating, do not understand art. The reason I say this, art is not the method used to achieve a result. Art is the finished vision of the artist that portrays a feeling or emotion in the viewer. It really does not matter the tools used to create the work, but the impression portrayed by the finished product.

Anyway, I started the drawing of Lucy by taking several photos of her with a digital camera and then picking the pose I liked best. Then using Adobe Photoshop, I created and edited several copies in gray scale and changed the value scaled of each. Focusing on the the lights and the darks so I would have a better visual of individual shapes. I also printed one version and taking a 6B pencil, I rubbed graphite on the back of it. This copy is what I used to transfer the image onto the drawing surface. Mainly focusing on the basic shape and the location of the eyes and nose.

Then starting on the left side of the drawing I laid in the darkest values around the eye. As with many drawings I do, I worked from the top left to the bottom right. Again, I do this because I am right-handed, and I do not want to drag my hand across areas I have already worked. To get the look I wanted for the fur, I used blending stumps to draw with instead of charcoal sticks or pencils. I would take the blending stump and rub it on a soft or hard charcoal stick depending on how dark of a value I needed. Once I had the stump loaded with charcoal, would then use it to draw with. I found that I achieved a softer effect doing this over using the pencils directly on the paper. Then I would go back through with both stick and kneadable erasers to pull out individual hairs and highlights. Each area of the drawing I would go back and forth between blending stump and eraser to create layers. This helps add depth to the drawing.

For the lighter fur, I used the same technique as for the black fur. However, I used far less charcoal and pressure on the blending stump. Overall, I liked how the final drawing turned out. As time goes on, I will be doing other drawings using only charcoal. Additionally, I want to practice more combining both charcoal and graphite so that I can really push the limits between the light and dark areas of a drawing.

I hope you enjoy the drawing of Lucy and thank you for visiting my blog. Have a good week.