I went into this project absolutely dreading it. I'd done something similar in high school, and hated it. However, this was my first time using charcoal, truly using it (that line-drawing stuff doesn't count, bleh), and I had fun.
Before we began "drawing light," as Mrs. Parker would say, we had to outline everything using measuring and angling techniques we used on the skull and the pottery.
Before we could get started shading, we also had to "block in" areas of light, which basically means splattering areas of the outline with dark, middle, and light shades to refine later. This is something I did not enjoy doing at all; I refine as I go and this will not be a technique I use again. Of course I tried to do it my way anyhow, and got chewed out for it.
After the blocking-in was done I began refining, my favorite bit that I'd been itching to do from the beginning. Also, the fifth bag, which is seen a tiny bit in the above picture, just above and to the left of the leftmost bag, was allowed to be taken out, as it lacked cohesion once the picture was nearing completion. Not enough of the bag was seen from the angle I had taken to even give it any distinguishing features. At this point, outlines were beginning to blur into the forms of the bags themselves, so they appeared more 3D.
Something that I had trouble with up until the very end was getting the floor to lie flat behind the bags. There was very little floor to work with, and I had to inject some imaginary shadows in the upper left so it would appear to bear any semblance to flat ground. I really loved highlighting all the corners, and blending the shades together to erase any sign of handiwork, giving my piece a clean, smooth finish. Overall I'm very happy with the finished product. After all, that's what art does for me. Isn't it supposed to?
This piece was done on gray paper with charcoal in white, black, and 4 intermediate shades.
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