Medium of choice

I think my favorite medium is pencil. To work with, that is.
I prefer the look of charcoal/conte as a finished result, since it's darker, etc.; however, pencil is much cleaner in process. Pencil can be erased, it doesn't smear as much, a finer line can be achieved, etc.
So really, I guess I prefer conte. Buuuut I prefer the ease of pencil. And that's what I think about that.


So thinking about this portrait.

I enjoyed it. More than I thought.

I chose to do a different expression than just smiling. It's not as interesting, there's less lines in the face, etc. Also, drawing myself smiling seemed like something that could easily turn into something conceited- giving myself touch ups, etc, making myself prettier or something like that. This kept things more interesting, plus I make stupid facial expressions all the time.

As usual, I liked it a lot more once I added the gestural over the controlled contour. It makes conte much more fun to work with. I'm excited to see what everyone else does.

Recent Work

This is the exterior piece we did last week. In critique we said I should change the perspective slightly of the top most roof, and darken the foreground to better create the 4 distinct layers of space.

Here's my foliage. It hasn't been critiqued yet. It's in graphite pencil.

click on the pictures for a larger view.

Foliage

I enjoyed foliage. I'm beginning to be able to render quicker, which is nice since it used to take me nearly 10 hours to get something to where I wanted it. I got an 8B and Ebony pencil to help with dark detailing and it has definitely made a difference. The 8B pencil I got was one of those "woodless" ones, and it can really get a fine, dark line! It's nice! I don't know if I'll be allowed to work with pencil for homework anymore (can't remember), but I think either way I'm going to do conte or something along those lines for the next one.

I got some white conte and grey paper just to play around with. I think it's going to be great.

So I chose dead leaves for the foliage, and I'm really glad I made that choice. They're crisper, have more interesting lines, and layer interestingly on the ground. Although there isn't necessarily as many ranges of depth, I still think it creates a new, almost harder challenge, since each leaf goes back in space, there are less of them, and there needs to be a definite difference, so I've become more focused on each line and how to create the best depth possible. So, if it comes up in critique for some reason as unadventurous, I beg to differ. I found it realistically challenging. Sure it's not some huge tree, but I feel like if I tried that the paper is too small to render it correctly.

I can't wait to draw skeletons!! I've been seriously looking forward to tomorrow's class ever since I saw the skeleton drawings on the walls at the beginning of the semester. I hope I don't disappoint myself!

Exteriors

Exteriors took a lot of time. Rhodes is more complex than I originally imagined, and day light savings time ended, meaning I had less daylight to render it in. But overall, I enjoyed it--I sort of feel like it's something (once reworked to add those two extra layers of space) I might watercolor and give to Andrew (my bf who goes to rhodes)'s parents or something, as like a, "look, your son goes here, and I made it!" type of deal.

I liked working in conte in class. I find it easier to maneuver than charcoal pencils--since charcoal pencils for me tend to not ever get sharp enough, always need to be sharpened, and then the lines that are produced, even when light, are not thin enough. And, yes, the conte can give super-textural lines, but for some reason they can also give me crisper lines.
I would looove to work on grey/colored paper sometime and work in black and white conte. Even if only in line. But I guess I'll probably have to wait until next semester for something like that...