Combining black & colour media

 13/03/21 - Week 23

This week we were instructed to create some pieces in both charcoal and colour media. I chose the task that was two seperate pieces instead of the combination as I felt it would allow me to focus more on details which is hard with such a large material such as charcoal and chalk.

The first piece I created was the female figure. This is my favourite out of the two by far. I paid a lot of time into combining the colours of the chalk to create lots of different tone but still a realistic sense of lighting.

I went first in with the charcoal to get the figure right. I feel that charcoal is a very expressive medium and I enjoyed using it to get the model's curves right in this piece. I did struggle with some areas and getting things exact proportionally. This mainly occurred towards the legs and arms, which is something I struggle with in general. I don't think this necessarily takes away from the piece but I can still see the errors. I thought this angle in particular was very interesting for the arms and legs which is why I chose it in the first place, the leg ontop of the other produces some very interesting, soft and hard shapes which helped further my understanding of the muscles in this area. They also produced a lovely section of shade against the light which was fun to draw in.

In this piece, I decided I wanted to try to get rid of the black line of the charcoal as much as possible, on the outside I did this by creating a background with the charcoal itself, but on the inside I tried to blend it with my purple and blue to create shadows. I think this worked quite well and it helped with the softness of the piece which I really do like. The colours also played into this as blending these pastel colours together creates quite a light and airy feel to it. This is definitely emphasised by the dark background and allows the colours to stand out a little more.

My favourite thing about this piece is the way I tried to capture the colours of the shadow and light into the piece, I think I did this really well, though it is emphasised, and I love the effect this creates. Obviously, this piece is not without fault, I do recognise that the face is not brilliant and I really struggled with the use of the charcoal and chalk to create shading on the face and also the shape of the facial features. Overall, though I am quite proud of this piece from a current standpoint.

My second piece was of the male model. I do like this piece but I went for a different approach and I am not too sure how well it works in comparison to the previous one.

Instead of trying to blend the colours as well I went for a more blocky, saturated approach. This was inspired by the example piece on this weeks learning materials. It is the piece by Crawfurd Adamson. The way that piece uses the colour is a lot more block-like and sketchy which I liked the look of.

As I mentioned, I don't think this has worked particularly well here. The use of the charcoal on the outside makes the whole piece look quite sketchy and stylised which is not really what I wanted.

The use of more saturated tones here isn't my favourite though I think if it was executed a little better they may have worked well.

As for the anatomy in this piece, I think this also brings it down. I struggled lots with the feet and even though the charcoal allowed for the more expressive line work, I just couldn't get the leg area right. I tried hard to get the muscles on the back and arm looking a lot better. I wanted them to look more realistic than that of my pencil drawings a few weeks ago. I think I did a better job but I am definitely still lacking skill in this area and I need to do more studies of the muscles of the body in general when it is twisted.

The chalk and charcoal in this piece definitely did not find the same sweet spot as it did in the last and I do think it is very apparent. There is lots that I could see to improve in this piece in comparison to the previous one but I think as a standalone there are some good things about it. I do like the overall idea and it is just lacking some things to pull it together and make it more accurate. This was an interesting task overall and I did like using these mediums to create the pieces I have even if they were a bit fiddly on some occasions.