What we’ll be doing

We’ll be developing the approach we began with the garlic drawing, using charcoal to look at the modelling factors of light and shadow and what affects them.

The main skill we’ll be adding and practising in this session is gentle and smooth gradations.

This may seem like a simple thing to do, but it’s difficult to do well. It requires a lot of focus and sensitivity to pressure.

Stretching this skill will lead us into the next stage of the workshop, which is using Munsell and a layering technique with black and white chalk/charcoal to develop more complete drawings.

In this session, we’re going to approach the lemon in the same way as we did the garlic bulb to begin with, but we’re going to be challenging ourselves to add much finer gradations from light to shadow.

We will still be simplifying and resisting adding detail in the light areas too much, but we’ll be focusing particularly on how careful handling of the half-tone can show us the form.

What you’ll need

The same materials as the last session. Charcoal, putty rubber, something to sharpen your charcoal with. Make sure your paper has enough tooth to take take charcoal well.

It would be a very good idea to have your board set up ready with card taped to it so that you have a soft, forgiving surface to work on.

Please do draw along, but see this session more as a demonstration of what you’ll be practising. There’s no need to pressure yourself too much to create a finished drawing on the first attempt when we so this live, try to focus more on the ideas and techniques and make sure you understand them. Do ask questions if your’e not sure about anything.

I’m expecting this session to be a little longer than session one, as we’ll be taking our drawing a little further this time.

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 5 (height) x 7 inches.