The final step towards painting in the traditional atelier environment, the charcoal and white chalk study is a wonderful exercise in value relationships and attaining the full range of values.
This drawing is much like a charcoal drawing, but it introduces a new challenge in bringing together a fuller range of values as opposed to just the white of the paper and black of the charcoal. In a charcoal and white chalk drawing you start with a toned paper, in this case a light blue, that brings a nice cool tone to the drawing, but also helps to serve as your mid tone. From this you will establish your range of whites and darks, usually placing in your lightest light, the chalk, and your darkest dark, the charcoal, and then from that point bringing everything together into one cohesive drawing.
Unlike charcoal drawings, the toned paper and chalk studies tend to have a much richer range of values and more dimensionality to the piece and usually move faster as well. When the paper is able to provide you the mid tone that you need, it eliminates a lot of the tedious work of trying to do the midtone yourself with the charcoal. From this you can concentrate on just getting your 3 basic value ranges established, the mid tone, the darks, the lights, and then punching in your highlights and shadows.
Transitioning from this step to oil painting is a natural progression, as most processes of painting require at least establishing a general mid tone wash on the canvas before you put down your first marks.
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Comments
11/10/07
Amazing!
12/02/07
I love this cast drawing. The way you captured the facial features and expression in this medium is just amazing.
05/11/08
Thank you! This was actually an incredibly fun drawing. Charcoal is a very expressive medium, much like oil paints. It has the same kind of flow to the stroke that you can get from oils, which actually makes it quite fun.
07/02/08
cool, this is an insanely nice cast, how long did this take to make
08/03/08
It took about a month and a half to finish this drawing Mike.
12/06/08
This is a beautiful cast drawing.
02/09/09
Thank you Laura.
12/06/09
Beautiful work. I really love it. I have a question. I don’t see any blue in the photo. Is it a B&W photo or is all the blue somehow covered with charcoal or chalk? What kind of chalk do you use? Is it the same as blackboard chalk?