Smudgy things

[bunn]

I wanted to have a go with some medium that would offer a smudgy and smearable experience similar to charcoal, but in colour.  Also, I've been playing with charcoal for a while now, and I needed more sticks.

At the art supply shop, I found some natural willow charcoals. They are rather lovely - unlike the manufactured pressed charcoal, they look like natural sticks with knotholes and wiggles.




I tried them out by drawing some landscapes from holiday snaps. Top to bottom: Welsh hillside, Tintern Abbey with God Beams, rooftops of Istanbul.




I also got some sticks of pastel.  Goodness, they are bright, crumbly tricky things!  I'll spare you the worst ones where it all went horribly wrong and I bailed out swearing.   This was one of the early attempts that  I did actually finish. I quite like the smudgy beach background but you can see that I really haven't got the hang of drawing with the fat flaky sticks.   Mollydog (ginger) is particularly stiff and oddly shaped.


  I decided that something with more shades and less fiddly detail might be the way to go, so as there were cows about, I drew a cow.  If you are wondering why her horns are so asymmetrical, that wasn't me. That was her: cow with the crumpled horn!    I have got her eyes a bit squonk though.




Possibly the answer to the detail thing is just use bigger paper.  This picture of a grown up Cottia (from Eagle of the Ninth) on a horse in autumn was on A3, and I quite like it although my brain keeps insisting it must be a picture from the Wild West because of the colour scheme.   I have a story that this fits into but whether I'm going to actually get it finished and include this scene, who knows.  Something not quite there about the horse's front legs possibly.

(bigger)


I was quite pleased with this attempted portrait of a grown up Cottia.  It doesn't quite look like the random photo that I chose as a model, but I think it does look like an actual person.   Eyes a bit too big probably and I think her mouth is too far down her chin, but still.
Click for bigger version


Then I decided I would have a go at Cunoval (Esca's father from Eagle of the Ninth) in charcoal.  With a hound, of course.  And a torc.  At some point I am going to write a story about Cunoval's part in valiantly vanquishing the horrible Ninth Legion.

Philmophlegm feels he looks too much like Lionel Richie, but I maintain that this is because Lionel Richie looks too much like the Dying Gaul.  Again, huge eyes.  I have real problems making eyes the right size.

Comments

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Interesting I've still got somewhere at home a box of charcoal that is willow, in fact the only charcoal I've ever seen in an art shop is willow twig stuff - I don't think I've ever seen 'pressed' at all except in outdoor shops for those pocket warmers.

Are you pastels oil or chalk? I always found the chalk ones too hard at school but good oil ones were great but some boxes do seem to just fall apart or leave lumpy bits on the paper.

Something else I found really good was a set of brass rubbing waxes, rectangular wax crayons in metallic colours (copper, gold, silver) and black, white and a red-brown. So there may be other colours out there. They were quite useful for some art projects (when I still did any).

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think my original charcoals came in a Derwent sketching kit, and I spurned them for ages as too uncontrollable until I read an art books which made a big thing of 'different kinds of mark making' and decided to give them a go. They are much heavier and more regular than the willow stuff and come in three levels of darkness.

The pastels are chalk : I remember chalk pastels from years back as rather weedy underpowered sort of things, but these are packed with pigment. Either the technology has improved or these are a different kind.

I'm not currently drawn to wax or oil pastels as sadly my drawing is not really practiced enough so I really need to be able to rub things out! Am using a lot of kneaded rubber.

[demon-rum.livejournal.com]

I think your smudgy pictures are just lovely. The animals and landscapes especially remind my of Rien Poortvliet, who I've loved since I was a child for his pictures of the Dutch countryside.

and that willow charcoal is totally rad. RAD.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't know Rien Poortvliet, will have a rummage, thanks!

[demon-rum.livejournal.com]

he did all the gnomes with the pointy red hats... he also does wonderful paintings of the Dutch countryside in the 1700s, but it's possible you will be less enthralled with them, unless you are Dutch-ish like me :D

[motetus.livejournal.com]

Yay Cottia! She looks wonderful in the horse picture - now I would rather like to read a Wild West AU with gunslinger!Cottia going about and having adventures/being awesome. I think the problem with the horse's feet is that the hooves comes straight down from the lower leg, making it look very stiff. Horses have a sort of ankle above the hoof - wait no, not ankle... fetlock? I don't know that much about horses! But I do know enough about evolutionary biology to know that the ankle/wrist joint is the one halfway up the leg, and the lower leg and hoof of a horse is the metatarsals and toes of humans.

I am also really impressed with the charcoal landscapes, they are fantastic. Hagia Sophia! ♥

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Aha, you are right! Also I think having inspected horse feet this evening that I have also made the hooves too small. I fear in the past I have wimped out of drawing horse-feet by putting them in long grass so I will have to try sketching some to get a better feel for the anatomy.

Cottia would make a brilliant cowgirl and would love it, but someone else will ahve to write it because I can't even begin to imagine how ridiculously silly my British idiom would sound if it tried to write Wild West. It would be beyond pastiche.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Lovely!

I've dug out my old copy of The Eagle of The Ninth (completed with glued in excerpt from the Radio Times featuring a picture of the lovely Anthony Higgins as Marcus...) and now I'll have to read it!!

Some time...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You should definitely re-read it! It does stand up to re-reading as an adult so much better than other childhood favorites.