OCAD Studio: Chalk and Charcoal Portrait Drawing Part 4

26th April 2020

This series of lessons will walk you through the complete process for drawing a portrait in charcoal and white chalk on toned paper.

The session will be adding white chalk highlights to the brightest parts of the drawing and doing a final pass over to correct edges and details.

Begin this final session by using sharpened white chalk to add in highlights to the brightest parts of the face an props.
I made the metallic rim of his glasses a very bright white and used a slightly less strong application of white to lighten the highlights on the front of the face.

Then you can spend some time refining the forms in the face.
Use a hard piece of finely pointed charcoal and your kneadable eraser to even out the patchier tones.

You can also add some more subtle transitions and the smallest forms.
These will be barely perceptible from farther away but they will lend the piece or more delicat quality.
That’s it! Make sure you fix your drawing with fixative or hairspray to protect it.

Materials:

19th April 2020

This series of lessons will walk you through the complete process for drawing a portrait in charcoal and white chalk on toned paper.

The session will be refining the dark and mid halftones to find the smaller forms in the face.

Begin by refining / sharpening up any detail elements using a sharp piece of charcoal and the kneadable eraser rolled up to a point.

Then start working on the medium forms (cheeks, brows and noses etc.) .
Add darker tones as the form turns away from the light (making sure not to go darker than the tones established for the shadows.

You may need to do passes over larger areas (such as the whole cheek / side of face above).
This will help maintain the overall sense of the larger forms (egg shape of the head for instance).

Materials:

5th April 2020

This series of lessons will walk you through the complete process for drawing a portrait in charcoal and white chalk on toned paper.

The session will be focused on getting all the major tones in place and we will start developing the forms in the face.

Start by laying in the darkest tones quite heavily.
Make sure that you don’t add any very dark tones into any areas outside the shadows at this stage.

Then you can lay in the backgorund tone (this will vary – sometimes it might be very light or it might be dark – it just depends on the setup).

Finally, you can start adding the halftones into the lighter shapes of the face.
It’s best to work in blocks or planes of tones for now.
The haltones will be darker nearer to the shadow tone.

Materials: