Cross Contour: 

This was a really fun exercise. I approached this similar to “wire frames”. You see the old school computer models of figures, shapes, etc. and I treated this the same way. I pictured first the horizontal lines and the contours of the subjects. Then I went in and added the vertical lines. It’s interesting that it was almost natural drawing the lines to fit the contours of the subjects. The hat was a lot of fun due to the inherent folding and indentions. I think it came out best.

Light and Dark:

This was extremely challenging for me since I am not very good with charcoal, especially a LOT of it. I first put the base “medium gray” down and blended it uniformly. Then I took the brightest of the highlights and used a plastic eraser to define them. Then I took a medium and/or hard compressed charcoal to define the darkest shadows and shading. I blended the dark compressed charcoal with the already medium gray of the background to get a more intermediate gray color that didn’t blend with the already “medium gray” that I layed down. When necessary for a more neutral gray shading I used vine charcoal. I blended with a paper stump. I went over the subjects with the plastic eraser again trying to get the most “pop” out of the highlights. I love how the kettle turned out!

Positive and Negative Space:

I didn’t have any good chairs like the examples so I used a standing TV tray. It’s the same principle. I tried to follow the negative space surround the subjects the best I could and found that things were’nt lining up like they do when drawing positive space. I noticed I was looking less at my drawing and more on the subject in front of the light. And I’m still not a fan of charcoal!