Six Portrait Drawings
These drawings happened in a little run around the end of April. I was pushing because I had a feeling that something was about to come through, as a result of working just in line, and I wanted to keep going till I got it.
There's no doubt that my drawings went very strange when I stopped using tone to concentrate on line. They were all over the place. But through this little run of six drawings, they calmed down. By the last two or three I think they are as good as any of the others, in fact I think they're a bit better observed. It's a difficult thing to put into words, but after the first three drawings I knew I was relating the shapes I could see to the shapes I was putting down on the paper better. Actually, I can't put it into words so I'm not going to try. Suffice to say I think the practice is paying off.
The proportions are all over the place in this drawing, I didn't do a very good job of drawing what I saw.
This one was drawn two days later, and came out better. I think it's the start of the line drawings coming together a bit better, like I'd finally stopped panicking that I wasn't allowed to use tone any more. It is forcing me to look more carefully.
I've only included the lines I could see, so I couldn't draw anything on the far side of the nose until the shadow stopped, so there's a gap there. I think it probably would have been better to include the shape of the tone block there.
This drawing has the dubious distinction of being the closest likeness of my nose yet. That's pretty much what shape it is. The fact that I notice that leads me to think that the rest of the drawing is not that close though.
If it weren't for the Bargue drawings, I would have struggled with this. As it is, I actually sharpen my charcoal now, like I was in a proper atelier and everything. This drawing taught me that it's possible to draw as finely with charcoal as it is with pencil. It's taken some of mystery out of Sargent's charcoal portraits for me. I could never understand how he could draw so neatly around the eyes with a big stick of charcoal, but he wasn't, he had nice bit of sharpened charcoal for those bits.
I fell flat on my face after this drawing, and haven't done a portrait drawing, self or otherwise, since this one over two weeks ago. I'll be back at them soon though. I seem finally to have got over the self-portrait weirdness that was going on before. That's good news, because my most easy going model has just come out of his sulk, and he's ready to sit again. I think a series of charcoal self portrait drawings would be a good idea at this point. I think I'll do ten of them, it's such a nice, round number.
