Feeling comfortable moving over to pencil, but I need to go shopping.
The difference in density between charcoal and pencil is huge, and tonight I was weary to mix the two because of this. But I want my drawings to have more contrast than they do.
I have noticed that the varying hardness of charcoal really effected the quality of my drawings, so I want to figure out what pencils work well for me too.
I’m sketching out in a 2B and working in detail using a 6B pencil. It’s definitely speeded up mapping out the pose without creating too many heavy lines from the outset, I guess because I’m always sketching with these when I am working on illustration briefs.
I have a tendency to be a little heavy-handed in my mark-making, as I find it gives energy and fluidity to my line. The downside being mistakes are hard to remove.
My Art Teacher at school would sometimes not let us used a rubber in life-class to encourage detachment from the image (to be less precious), and document our mistakes I suppose.
I need to get in a good range of pencils to cover the initial rough lines that map out the form, & then to offer contrast as I go over again in more detail.
At the moment its a hotch-potch mixture of Faber-Castell, Caran d’Ache, Lyra, and some Staedtler.
Our American & extremely chatty model tonight was called Ruby.
Giving me guidance, my class tutor is Frank Gambino, trained as a graphic designer, however in recent years his main practise is in portraiture and figure studies. Frank’s studio is in Belsize Park, London, where he works on commissions and runs popular life drawing classes. However, conveniently for me, he is also running classes in East London, at the Tokarska Gallery.The Tokarska Gallery, a contemporary art gallery run by emerging artist Nadiya Pavliv-Tokarska.