In September, I started my third round of the Introduction to Pencil Drawing class at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia. I was contemplating taking a painting class this semester instead, but after speaking to the instructor, Katya Held, she recommended I take this class again but she would move me to working with charcoal, a good, logical step between the leap from pencil drawing to painting. I am more grateful now for the suggestion – working with charcoal took a whole different set of skills, and after getting so comfortable with the control that graphite pencil offered, it was quite a learning curve to now use a medium that could so easily be altered, most of the time unintentionally.
The most exciting difference, for me, was that with only one stick of medium vine charcoal, I could go through the entire value scale of a drawing, from almost black to highlights. Instead of erasers, highlights could be pulled out by wiping the drawing with a paper towel. Instead of shading a large, dark area of the drawing for several weeks with several varying degrees of hard or black pencils, I can now do it in 1/10 the amount of time (or less) with one stick of charcoal and a paper stump. It is an incredibly fluid, easily manipulated medium. But, it also came with several big challenges.
No matter how carefully you store and secure a charcoal drawing in your portfolio, the next time you take it out, it will be smudged, smeared, and have fingerprints all around its edges. Unlike pencil, when you apply it to the paper, it will only come off with an eraser, charcoal almost slips off the paper if you look at it too hard. I suppose this is a good precursor for waiting for paint to dry, but charcoal never dries. Once a piece is finished, it has to be very carefully handled and framed in glass so nobody accidentally touches it.
This drawing, “Le Zucche”, was finished over the course of 4 weeks (about 10 -12 hours total). Besides the challenge of working with the medium to this extent for the first time, my biggest challenge was getting both of these spherical objects to appear as if they were “turning” while at the same time accurately representing the many lines, form shadows, and cast shadows created by the light being placed below and pointing upward toward the subjects.
It was a frustrating project, but in the end, I’m proud of the finished product and grateful for what I was able to learn from it.
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