Month: April 2021

In this series we will be working from a sculpture in the Met Museum collection in New York. This is a great exercise for learning traditional drawing techniques in charcoal. The MET is a great free resource for artists who want to copy from high quality images and references.

In this session I will show you how to develop the forms in the shadows and halftones by loosely shading in tone.

You can download the original image I’m working from here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect…​

These are the minimum materials you will need:

• Drawing paper
• Soft willow charcoal
• Kneadable eraser

• Use the same soft charcoal as stage 1, but this time you will need to sharpen it a bit as that will give you more control as you add smaller details.
• Start by darkening the shadows if needed. Then you can add the darkest parts of the shadows – this will start to give the impression of rounded forms within the darker areas of the drawing.

• Once the shadows are a bit more developed, turn your attention to the halftones.
• Working in large blocks of loosely shaded tone, start to add the darker halftones next to the shadow edge.

• Keep adding tone (or removing it where necessary) in the same fashion across the drawing.
• This will gradually result in a better sense of 3D form.
• That’s it for now! In the next (and final) session I will show you how to finish off the study.

In this series we will be working from a sculpture in the Met Museum collection in New York. This is a great exercise for learning traditional drawing techniques in charcoal. The MET is a great free resource for artists who want to copy from high quality images and references.

In this first session I will show you how to get started with a light and loose block-in of the main shapes and shadows.

You can download the original image I’m working from here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect…​

These are the minimum materials you will need:

• Drawing paper
• Soft willow charcoal
• Kneadable eraser

• Begin by (very lightly) sketching in the basic outside proportions of your subject.
• Try to hold the charcoal as far back as possible – because this will help you to keep your lines super light.

• Once the outside proportions are in place, you can start to make some light notes for the placement of major features and forms (eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears etc.).
• This is a good time to make corrections – because there isn’t too much to change yet.
• Keep re-working these lines and shapes until they lock into place well. This will save you a lot of hassle later in the drawing.

• Once those shapes are in place you can begin to lightly shade in the ‘shadow’ shapes.
• Shadows are any part of the subject that doesn’t receive direct light from the light source.
• In this drawing – most of the right side of the sculpture is in shadow because the light is streaming from the left.

• Finally, spend some time correcting the shapes of these shadows until they seem to capture the right likeness and expression of your subject.