Line variations

 

Exercise 1

More exercises on exploring mark making, only by using a different medium this time: Charcoal. Unfortunately, I still haven't bought willow charcoal. So I was limited to chunky IXL blocks, made of charcoal, instead. Which I happen to love using, but they don't have a lot of line variation. It's chunky, or it's mostly chunky.

I may do these exercises again, once I get some proper willow charcoal.

 Exercise 2

There are numerous ways to represent images, via different line making. We had to explore what we were capable of. I actually strayed a little from the exercise, in that I decided to use a black and white, alternating sketch book. Which worked well, with my black and white IXL charcoal blocks.

White charcoal? Is there such a thing? Not really. IXL blocks are a composite of charcoal and other ingredients, which is why they range from black, to white and a few other, natural colours, in between.

Exercise 3

We even played around with natural disadvantages, effecting how the lines could be drawn on the page. Which is why this one looks all wobbly. It creates different marks, when deliberately creating obstacles between you and the page.

While the above sketch is not my favourite to look at, I appreciate the different effects it creates. I can change how I make my marks, if I want to.

Exercise 4 (start)

The final exercise, was the most challenging! We had to take an initial sketch from the reference image we had, and turn it into something else. The geometric shapes in my initial sketch, called "city-scape", to me.

Was it? Not sure. It kind of looked like one. So I gave it a try!

Exercise 4 (finish)

It looked more like a ghost town, afterwards! I'm finding in all these exercises though, it's more about practicing mark making, than it is about the "completed" work. Which is challenging for me, who harks from a background of representational art. Or Illustrations. So starting without a goal in mind, doesn't feel natural at all!

Yet it's exciting and strangely addictive, to continue pushing myself, outside my own comfort zone. It's like having to unlearn, what I have learned. It feels like I'm constantly fumbling too. I'm okay with that however, because I want to learn new things.

Monochrome Bromeliad

I haven't been very good at updating my progress on the Touchstone course. It has now officially completed (the live session anyway) but we are free to return to the private members group on Facebook, to continue sharing our progress. I will endeavour to continue updating this blog, with the art I made during this time.

Recently, I drew a monochrome study, as part of the course. The aim was to get a feel for the different values between white and black.

Bromeliad - click to enlarge

It was recommended charcoal and gesso (thick white paint) be used together. Although I found it really difficult to work with them. The gesso went over the charcoal, no problem, but the charcoal ate into the gesso - leaving indent marks, instead of black.

I switched to an oil pastel however and it worked much better on the gesso. If I were to do this again, I would just use my white and black charcoal blocks. It was a fun exercise nonetheless.

Mushroom

I'm not sure if its a mushroom or a toadstool, but I'm calling it a mushroom because it looks like one to me. The picture came from a free photo resource here. Always click on the image to make sure its free - it will say so!

This was done in my new tinted charcoal pencils (Derwent) and small black pad. It was a lot of fun and the pencils, easy to work with. Charcoal always blends so well.