Throw Back Thursday - Jenny Charcoal, 2004

I remember working on this drawing like it was yesterday. I remember the adrenaline that kept me up for hours, trying to finish it in time for my 8am class the next morning. It wasn't yesterday though, it was 10 years ago! (Oh, how time flies!) It was 2004, my freshman year of college, my first semester. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I lived in an all girls dorm, with my best friend as my roommate. 

This drawing was inspired by pure forgetfulness. I don't remember what I was doing, or what distracted me from remembering that I had an assignment due the next morning, but there we were, about to go to bed when I remembered! Where was I going to find a subject for my drawing at this hour? And like a good roommate and true friend would, Jenny allowed me to draw her as she was getting ready to sleep. What you cannot see very well here (this photo was cropped a little tight) is that she is reading--otherwise she just looks like she fell asleep sitting up. 

I love this drawing, mainly because it reminds me of the dorm days with Jenny, and of that first year of college. So many memories for a year filled with so much transition! 

For this type of charcoal drawing, I often start with a medium gray (I rub some charcoal over the whole surface and smooth it out with a cloth or my finger) then I use an eraser to pull out the highlights and more charcoal for the shadows. I like the push and pull of it.

My favorite detail of this drawing is a toss up between the bear and her camisole. I like the shadows on and around the bear, and the spaghetti straps of her camisole always catch my attention, with the way they stick up above her shoulders. The shadows cast by them are fun too. 

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Chalkboard Art

I have really enjoyed seeing the interest in chalkboard art grow within the last several years, because the more interest, the more creativity and innovative uses, and the more I see and am inspired by it. There are some really talented hand-drawn type designers/artists out there, and I love seeing their work.

I have been so inspired recently, that I decided to try my hand at chalkboard art. The following two examples are my first and second attempts (I see some improvement already). I thought I'd show you some of my process work, including ideation sketches, well, mainly because these sorts of "behind the scenes" things are my favorite. (I'm a sucker for special features on DVDs too. I could watch the interviews for hours, and I have.) I hope they are interesting to you as well.

Attempt #1: Business Cards

I decided to hand-draw my business card to show that I love to work with my hands, and as much as I do a lot of design work on the computer, I mostly prefer the old analog ways of doing things. There is something really nice about the quality of something hand-drawn or hand-made.

Here's the process: 

First, I sketched out my design on regular old paper–I almost always do this. There are parts of the design process that come together better on paper, and some that come together better in the program. Since this was going to end up being a hand-drawn design, it might as well start that way. Once I got it generally the way I liked it, I made a sketch on the computer to see if what I was thinking would really fit proportionally within the card dimensions. It didn't really, so I changed a few things. Then I used the computer drawing as a template for my drawing. I used black card stock and a "white charcoal" pencil. How is it possible to make white charcoal? It cannot really be charcoal, right?

I transferred my drawing using graphite pencil before I began with the white charcoal pencil. Turns out if you use graphite first, the white pencil will not draw over it. So, I had to erase each letter and redraw it moving from letter to letter, element to element. Again, this was my first attempt at this, I was not expecting to move so slowly, nor was I expecting to have to erase and redraw in this way. But this is how we learn...

Below is the finished drawing on card stock. I then scanned it in and used Vistaprint for printing because the coupon I had cut the price way down, and hey, I'm just starting out on my own. The start up costs are really piling up.

They came in the mail this weekend, and I was stoked! The cropping wasn't great, but for the price, I think they turned out well. I had also hoped to be able to chose a rounded corner option (which I know they had before at some point) but I couldn't find it. Allora, I am content with these.

Attempt #2: Framed Gift

I recently joined the hospitality committee at our church, and the first event I will be helping with will be a thank you and "going away" of sorts for one of the teaching pastors and his family. I'm sure there will be a post in the near future showing all the fun flowers we made out of paper, and maybe even a few photos from the event itself. But this post is about chalkboard art, and so I wanted to share another piece I designed and hand drew as a gift for the family. 

The process:

Again, I started sketching on paper, but this time I didn't do any computer work. As you can see in the image below, I tried to work between individual element inspiration and the larger composition. 

Once I got a pretty good idea of what I wanted, I moved to another sheet of paper to sketch out my final composition to see how it worked. I knew I would still make a few changes during the actual execution, but I wanted to work any major issues out on paper first.

So, I went out and bought a framed picture for $10 from a flea market, took out the artwork, and painted it white. Then I cut some black paper down to size and used the matting that came with the picture to make the border line. Then, using a ruler, I mapped out the ribbon.

Next, the larger words were drawn in, using care not to smudge. I smudged anyway, and had to fix it, but such is life. I finally remembered the old scrap paper trick and used it under my hand when working over the already drawn words.

Then the smaller words and a test to see how thick I wanted the border. You can also see here the scale of the piece.

I was not satisfied at all with the "P" in peace. I must have redrawn it 15 times before I settled on one that I liked. But finally I left it and moved onto the other elements.

The finished piece (more or less):

I framed it and set it behind glass in case the spray fixative doesn't work as well as it should. I'm very pleased with it, overall, and have been seriously considering changing up the look of the header of my blog to reflect this sort of fun style. Actually, I had the idea to change the header before I even did my business cards. But, since I went through with this look for the cards, it only makes sense to give a cohesive look between them and the blog. What do you think?

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Portrait of Carrie

Being a part of the military means you make friends and then they move away (or you do). It just comes with the territory. I recently made a new friend here in LR and now she's about to move to Japan. I was so happy to have made this particular friendship because she is a fellow artist, and her husband works in the same squadron as mine. Carrie has been especially helpful to me because of her willingness to go for lunch and impart to me all the wisdom she's gathered in regards to taking the leap into creating artwork full-time. Thank you, Carrie!

Carrie is an amazing watercolorist who primarily paints still lives. You should she how she captures glass! She is self taught, and very talented. Visit her website here or like her on Facebook at Carrie Waller Fine Art.

So, since she is leaving, and I wanted to say thank you, I thought, What better way is there between artists than to make her something? So the other evening I sat down to paint a portrait of her and her son inspired by a photo posted on Facebook. I have been watching some videos, lately, of a talented dry brush oil painter from Russia that I admire greatly. I have wanted to try out his techniques, so I thought I'd give it a shot on this portrait.

I took out my watercolor paper pad, mapped out the proportions of the final piece, and began the sketch.

Then I got out my oils, chose a brush that I thought would work well, mixed up some color, rub rub rubbed it on a pallet and...turns out I have the wrong paint (not slow-drying), or wrong oil, brushes or paper, or something because it was just not working! This man uses his brush to apply paint as if it were make-up, very softly, rouging the shadows in here and there. My paint was not rouging, it was streaky and any back and forth strokes made for horrid lines on my practice paper, which thankfully I had the foresight to use because I did not want to have to sketch this out again.

Below you can see all the oil dry brushing I did before I decided to scrap the idea and go for charcoal.

Once I decided to go with the charcoal, I felt like I at least had the control I wanted–I could smooth the color with my finger instead of it drying immediately upon application.

I took the below photo to show that the process of charcoal can be quite forgiving. I wanted to shade the majority of her face, so I lightly rubbed the side of the charcoal across the textured surface leaving this...

It's scary looking at first, but that's why you can use things like a chamois cloth or your finger to even it out. Then, you can either use more charcoal or use a kneadable eraser to get the desired tone. This sort of pushing and pulling is what makes charcoal fun.

I did go back and finish the left eye in oil as well. Actually, I ended up doing quite a few things in oil on this portrait, so I didn't master the technique I wanted, but at least I learned another use for oils in conjunction with charcoal that I like. Happy mistakes.

Here's what my set up looked like for the evening...

And, of course, the final piece. I have not been able to photograph it the way I like it–the way it really looks. Capturing the subtleties of the gradations as well as the overall contrast is difficult. I guess it is better that a drawing look better in person than in a photograph, but because I do not end up keeping most of my artwork, I would like to be able to get a photograph as close as possible to the original. Hopefully as I am able to build or buy a light diffusing studio setup, I'll be able to capture those elusive subtleties.

Happy Wednesday everyone! Come back tomorrow for another Throw Back Thursday piece. This week's will be a self portrait from elementary.

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