Nature or Still Life?:

Our first week we also had to draw a still life with an art medium I had never used, "vine charcoal." I hated it rather quickly. Here's a small picture of what vine charcoal looks like.

I attempted to draw a leaf, stick, and acorn in my very windy parking lot during lunch. I was not at all pleased. This stuff is like drawing with a burnt stick. If you draw over another mark, it completely erases it. It was like drawing with chalk dust. Blech. I hated my drawing when I finished, but I must admit that last night I ran across that little drawing (four weeks later) and I kind of like the leaf. I don't even have that one scanned it, but mayhaps I will scan it in sometime and post in on here for you.

I asked my fellow classmates for tips and suggestions for using charcoal since I am completely unfamiliar with it. I guess it just takes practice (and another form of charcoal.)

Later that same evening I stopped at Mom's to draw outside using the vine charcoal. Once again, I hated it - but, this is what I posted:

I found it very difficult to get any dark values. It was all so "gray" and blah.

Here are some of the comments I received:

"Hey Sara!I understand your frustration with charcoal. Try getting a few different kinds of charcoal. You'll find that they all do something different. When combined they produce the results you are looking for. The biggest thing is to just practice with it. And make sure you practice with the kneading eraser too. It's such a great tool.You have a good start. Just get some compressed charcoal to add your shadows and then use the eraser to add your highlights." - Candice Bruegeman

Well, apparently I did not read the directions very well. I thought it said ONLY vine charcoal!

"Candice, I completely missed the part in the assignment that said we could used the compressed charcoal sticks! I thought that we were to only use the vine charcoal. Thank you for your suggestions, I truly appreciate them and will definitely take them into consideration for future assignments. I may have time tomorrow to rework my drawing some. I am unused to the broad strokes that the charcoal delivers. I kept trying to sharpen the edges to a point, but that doesn't last very long. I would create dark edges, blow the excess powder away and the dark color would disappear with it.Thank you again," ~Sara~

"Sara, it is a good start. You definitely have good control. I find a piece of medium or fine sand paper is handy to get a finer edge with any lead or charcoal medium. Erasing the dark space helps to. Practice Practice." - Jacob Seright

I then took the said compressed charcoal and tried to define some edges and darken and shadows. I ended up with an outlined mess. lol

Here was my resubmission:

Here is what was said about this version:

"Sara, I am looking at both of your submissions-though the first one has a lot of dark tones and definitely needed contrasting lights, it also had more interesting marks in the grass. Right now the grass needs a few dark marks to break up the greyness.The bigger areas line the light grey geometric area closest us still needs a variety in value (it should contain more than one tone) Also the grass behind the trees should get darker-to indicate that that space is further away from the viewer." - Prof. Yevgeniya Baras

"This is really good, You seem to have your perspective down and the water looks realistic to me. I like your Mom's little planter, it is cute, especially in front of the background. Great job!" - Erin Norton