Illustration One Day Workshop

 Today, I worked in the illustration classroom creating a charcoal and white pencil drawing of St Benedict, I have used charcoal multiple times over the years making it a familiar material to me however, previous to this workshop I haven't used white pencils and the brown paper to create tone and depth within the piece. That I really enjoyed and found extremely effective that I will go into more detail about below. 

Before adding anything to this piece I sketched out a basic outline for the positioning of the head and certain areas that need to be emphasised using the white pencil extremely lightly. I then used the white pencil to begin to add the areas where the highlights are on the face and blended them out using a paper roll, to make it all extremely smooth. I applied the white pencil by making strokes at a 45 degree angle some closer together and some further apart while, making sure that every stroke continues to be in the same direction to ensure the seamless blend. To really emphasise the crisp whiteness in the lightest areas I went over the top of it a few times to layer the white pencil and ensure I had really crisp white lines that will contrast with the depth of the black charcoal. I believe that the white pencil worked really effectively to create the sharpness of the highlights that I wanted to achieve, I think that the white pencil worked well to do this because it was easily blendable yet, pigmented that made sure it was smooth and blended while keeping the brightness of the white to define the highlights. But, if I was to use the white pencil again in a similar way I would layer up the white pencil more and more and take more time with it to achieve the whitest possible white I can, that would just add to it that little bit more. I chose the white pencil because I liked how pigmented it was as well as how being in a pencil form I could be a lot more precise with it, to illustrate all the small details and curves of the face and beard. 

    After getting the base white highlights down onto the face I began to work into it with the charcoal, throughout this piece I switched between compressed charcoal ranging (soft-hard), willow charcoal and charcoal pencils ranging (soft-hard) . I believe working with all of these different types of charcoals and switching between them allowed me to get a complete new range of tones while maintaining the definition between the light and dark within the face. The way in which I approached adding in the shadows was by firstly using the willow charcoal to blend slightly into the white areas before again adding back into the highlight areas with the white pencil but only along the edges of the facial features to really dramatise the white areas. After going back in and working into the highlights more with the white pencil I then took the charcoal pencil to carve out all of the curves and outlines before blending out the charcoal pencil with willow charcoal and a paper roll. The picture below shows the result of all the steps above I completed that I feel as though is very effective because the blend between the charcoal and the white pencil is smooth and consistent and the slight bit of brown paper showing through where the charcoal and white pencil meet worked really well in showing the transition of colours. Whereas normally i would just blend the charcoal into the white tone i'd use (normally soft pastel but white pencil in this case) rather than leaving that slight section of space that separates the two colours, forming a boundary in a way. 

I feel as though my experiment with the white pencil and the brown paper was successful because, it created separation between the tones creating a greater definition between the lighter tones and the darker tones. What didn't work very well is how i darkened the eyes as i should've left them a lighter tone of grey as opposed to the black within the socket, to improve upon this i would use the darkest tone of the black within the socket and blended it into the socket leaving the eye a lighter tone to the crease of the eye. But, by keeping the crease very dark with a fade into the main area of the eye creates the right sense of depth and realism to the eye areas. Based upon my evaluation above and what i've learnt throughout this process my practice could be improved upon by working with a similar statue figure and practicing using the white pencil before any charcoal to highlight the lighter areas prior to working into the shadows and creases, as this would allow me to become more comfortable with the process and gain a lot more technique with the ways i apply and blend the charcoal and white pencil. Ideas i have to further this piece of work involve me layering and working into the background a lot more to create the darkest possible matt black tone for the surrounding areas of the head as this would make the highlights a lot more prominent and allow the head to stand out from the background. The only problems i encountered throughout the creation of this piece was when an item of clothing or areas of my hand and arm hit the paper it removed layers of the charcoal making a lot of areas become lighter than others, I solved this problem by adding another layer of charcoal on top of the areas i hit to even them back out. Also, i decided to start leaning on pieces of paper when adding to areas where my arm/hand or clothing may have come into contact with the piece preventing the cause of smudging.