Saturday, September 12, 2020

Gender confused meets charcoal

 

No. I'm not gender-confused. But the person in the picture is. It was supposed to be a male, but for some reason, it doesn't look exactly male to me. I mean, it doesn't really look like a female either... So, that's why it's probably gender-confused. I did this in colored pencils and then, when it was done, I busted out my brand new white posca pen and added the highlights. And I'm in love. Be ready for me to sing praises about that pen. The YouTubers are right about this one. It works like a charm! I don't ever wanna go back to using that old paint pen I had before! Heck, even actual paint was better than that! But this is awesome! 
Back to the picture. I think he (yes, I'm calling him a He, regardless of what he actually is) looks a little surprised. Or maybe even scared? Or, since he is, confused. The drawing was done on a rather small format - A6, whatever that would be in inches for you inch fanatics out there. I don't do inches. Nuh-uh. Not gonna. Inches confuse me. But yes, what I was saying. Done on a small format and in a sketchbook. Please tell me what you think about it, okay? 

And we got one more. And this time I busted out my charcoal. Not too long ago I bought some vine charcoal. It was on sale and I couldn't resist. I don't think I've ever used vine charcoal apart from art classes when I was still in grade school. So, I was really excited about it, but until now, I had no inspiration for a charcoal drawing. So I was happy when that inspiration struck me today. I have this sketchbook with a really smooth paper in it. And it was this sketchbook's turn to be used. I'm right now filling in five sketchbooks at once. So, I'm grabbing this sketchbook and then I'm looking through my drawers. And I spot that charcoal. So I take it out and start messing with it. Turns out vine charcoal is one of the best sketching tools. I had so much fun figuring out what would go where on the paper! 
When I was done with that, I used it for basic shading. Just blocking out the main areas that would be shaded. And then I had to find my soft, darker, charcoal. This one was in pencil format, which is great for detail work. So, I found it and started adding details. Deepening some of the shadows, and so on. And then I'm like... Nope, I'm not blending this with my fingers! Nope. I was trying to not get myself completely black. And again, I went looking through my drawers. This time looking for a blending tool. And I found my homemade blending stick. Which is basically just some rolled up paper that is held together with a bit of tape. Still, it works. It gets the job done and it worked wonders on this pic. 
One thing I should probably invest in though is a charcoal eraser. The ones I have didn't work very well. I mean, they did an okay job with the vine charcoal, but definitely not with the darker, softer charcoal. Which forced me to again add the highlights with my posca pen. Though this time I only did it after spraying the whole thing with a fixative spray. I didn't want to completely contaminate my posca with charcoal. 
I would like to hear in the comments what you think of these two pics and which one you like better. :) If you think there's a specific area I need to work on when it comes to my art, I would love to hear about that too, so long as you manage to stay polite. No need to insult each other, even though I insult a lot of people on a daily basis. They just don't know it as I only think those insults. So, see you later. :)

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 13th of August, 2020

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