Still Life
Exhibition Text :
This piece is a study of an animal skull. In this piece, I wanted to improve on my techniques and ability to show form through value. Using charcoal, I worked to push the shadows and highlights, showing the details and form of the skull. I used vine charcoal and compressed charcoal for the shadows, and white charcoal and an eraser for the highlights.
Process :
Before I started working on the actual artwork, I looked at my subject to observe it and make note of where the different values and lines were, as well as look at the basic form. With this, I started by covering the entire paper with a layer of vine charcoal. This made it a lot easier to erase and add highlights later on, as well as establish a base value
Once I finished with this, I started sketching out the basic shapes with the vine charcoal, paying a lot of attention to detail and where all the different pieces were in comparison to each other. I wanted to make sure the proportions were as accurate as possible, and that it was recognizable as the skull I was using as reference. I spent a lot of this time looking at the cracks and texture of the skull, paying attention to where different parts of it had dirt on it, where the cracks were in relation to other parts of the skull, and how the texture actually looked on the surface.
After finishing the sketch, I started to block in the basic values. To do this, I looked at the skull and took note of where there were large blocks of shadow and light, and went off from that. Using compressed charcoal, I started by placing the darkest shadows. Then, I began layering to achieve different values to show the form of the skull. One I placed the majority of the shadows, I used an eraser to block in highlights, using it to expose the brightest parts of the paper. Once I had the majority of the base values in place, I worked off my base sketch to refine a lot of the smaller details. I used a combination of compressed charcoal, vine charcoal, and a white charcoal pencil. I paid a lot of attention to things like the placement of the cracks in relation to bigger elements, where there were raises and dips in the surface, and how the different surfaces looked in the light. I worked on blending out the hard lines from the sketch, and making it so the edges were implied, especially around the edges of the skull in itself. As I was finishing this piece, I finalized the details, making sure it looked as accurate to my subject as possible, and I was done! |
Reflection :
While working on this piece, I learned a lot about charcoal and how it works. It is not a medium I was super familiar with, since I had only used it a couple times many years ago. While it wasn't an easy medium to get the hang of, I ended up really enjoying it. I really like how you can achieve super dark and light values using the compressed charcoal and erasers. I struggled a lot with blending, which I had to use a lot of trial and error to look decent. Whenever I would try to use my fingers or a smaller piece of paper to smooth out the edges or make a smoother transition of values, it would tend to just wipe away and the color would be lost. I was able to get around this by being as precise as possible with how heavy or light handed I was being, blending it with the charcoal and not with anything else. Another part that I struggled with quite a bit was the proportions. Since my reference was a 3D object and not a photo, even jut adjusting myself in my seat would change the view of the skull slightly. I had to make a conscious effort to make sure I was able keep the perspective and proportions consistent throughout my piece. Overall, there were many thing I had trouble with that I was not expecting while I was working on this, but I really enjoyed working through it and just learning as I went.