What we’ll be doing

This is going to be a little more of an in depth project that I would expect will take some time to do if you want to bring the drawing to a finish.

In the live session, I’ll be showing you which values go where and bringing at least one of the eggs and some of the cloth to as close a finish as I can.

I’d encourage you, after the session, to continue working on the drawing over the following week or two, practising exercises where you need to in order to develop the specific skills you need for parts you struggle with – most likely even value blocks and careful gradations of value.

We’ll be using the charcoal and chalk layering technique again, so although this piece will take a while, it will give you time to consider very carefully the values in each area and repeatedly check with the Munsell value scale to ensure that you’re getting as close as you can.

There’s also quite a challenge of gradation technique too in those eggs.

What you’ll need

You’ll need your white chalk and compressed charcoal. We’ll be layering the two together. I’d advise Canson Mi-Tientes paper for this, or something very similar. You can use the smoother or the more textured side.

You’ll also need your putty rubber and sandpaper for sharpening. Titty is also allowed to use her pencil sharpener 😀

If you have a clutch pencil that fits your chalk and/or charcoal, that will help too.

I’m expecting this session to be around three hours.

Preparation

Before the session, please have your paper ready set up and a 6 by 7 inch rectangle carefully measured and drawn out, with a central vertical and horizontal grid line lightly drawn too.

Please also have the main shapes of the composition blocked in with a straight line block in, so we can get straight to the values. Printing the photo out and placing it beside your drawing on the drawing board is very useful for blocking in the main shapes, but don’t use it for judging the values.

Reference photo

Click here to download the reference photo.

If you prefer to print it out, make sure to select the option in your software that prints it actual size – it will be “100%” or “actual size” or something similar. It should print out 6 (height) x 7 inches, not including the value scale on the right.