Tonight I did some tests with charcoal and sanguine to get a good comparative of each material and in a couple drawings I used both materials.
The poses tonight weren’t very dynamic which made for some difficult gestures.
This model was difficult to draw in many poses. I’m not sure what it is but I was struggling through these 5 minute drawings.
Here I slowed down and focused on getting the placement of my lines more accurate, rather than trying to finish the entire drawing.
Again, slowly drawing with a focus on accuracy here rather than finishing.
Here I pulled out the charcoal and sanguine to use them both on the same drawing. The reclining pose was easier to draw than many of the poses so far, so I was able to focus on turning the forms in space rather than just accurate contours.
For this drawing I just cut loose a bit. I didn’t want to worry too much about accuracy or anything. I just wanted to get into the moment and push some charcoal around.
Here is my attempt at mixing charcoal and sanguine together. I’m using Conte 1710 charcoal pencils for the black and Createacolor Dry Sanguine lead sticks. I love the Conte 1710 B charcoal pencils, these are perfect for most any drawing work and I will be using these for most of my figure drawings. I wanted to add in the sanguine because I saw a few drawings by Robert Liberace and really like the old mater look of them, plus the combination of charcoal and sanguine.
My version didn’t turn out quite so good. I’m thinking that the combination is used to add a warm and cool component into life drawing. With charcoal and sanguine alone you can achieve a good since of value, but if you combine both into one drawing then you can add a third aspect of hue.
