Glass of Water and Shell – Still life Drawing Number Forty

 Charcoal

A slight change here, firstly because it was done without a safety net, (no framer to look through, no plumb line to measure from) and because I limited my tonal range by using only charcoal, no white highlights.

The framer, (you can see how I use it here) is a very useful little tool for setting up a composition, flattening shapes in order to make it easier to see tones, and measuring out.

But I think you have to be careful of becoming too reliant on helper tools, so sometimes it’s a good idea to work without them. For this drawing, I imagined the framer and plumb line. I don’t think it made a huge difference to the drawing, so I’ll think I’ll use it less now.

I used only charcoal, no white highlights, just as an exercise. I wanted to see if I could still get a good feeling of the lights and darks with a narrower tonal range. It means more adjusting of the values in the picture, more translating, but it’s good practice I think.

Continuing the increasing thought I’m giving to edges now, I’ve let the edge of the glass disappear completely at the top back edge and at the bottom left. The missing edge at the bottom left looks wrong to me if I look right at it, but looks fine if I’m looking somewhere else in the drawing. This is something I’ll be devoting a lot more attention to when I get back to painting.

Back to 100 still life drawings