Charcoal Drawing the Reclining Female Figure

This charcoal drawing was done from a live sitting using charcoal and pencil.

Charcoal is a great media for achieving the rich dark tones that will give you a good contrast for your charcoal drawing. For this drawing, the artist used a brick compressed charcoal stick, 2b charcoal pencil, hb graphite pencil, and a kneaded eraser on medium textured white paper.

For this figure drawing, the artist began by lightly blocking in the head first, using a pencil/graphite hb lead He focuses on achieving accurate size, shapes, and proportions of the head as he plans to use the size of the head as a reference to measure out the rest of the figure. At this beginning stage, the artist also considers the overall composition, or the placement of the subject on the paper, as he eyeballed how the rest of the figure besides the head would fall onto the page. It is important to keep this lay-in pencil drawing stage light and not press hard on the paper, so one could easily keep on erasing the marks untill the accuracy is established.

Here, the artist began blocking in the body. He measured the height of the head as the reference and used comparative measuring technique to map out accurate proportions of the body. The artist keeps the lay-in stages light but accurate.

This artist prefers to establish a complete and accurate lay-in, or block-in before going ahead with rendering the figure. But it is not wrong to start off aggressively with the darks and start to render the figure right from the start in a painterly approach. There are many different ways to draw and this demonstration is just one of them. The artist here works in a safe mode. Step by Step to avoid encountering mistakes and corrections. A good third of the time was spent on blockin in for this live drawing session.

After the artist feels comfortable with the lay-in he starts to render the details. Here he chose to start with the eye. The artist prefers to start by marking in the darkest toned area. This way one can quickly judge the value scale that will be pursued throughout this charcoal drawing as every value will now fall in between the white of the paper and the darkest dark marked. In this stage, the artist began using the charcoal on top of the graphite lay-in.

Here on, the artist continues to render the forms of the face. Tightening, polishing and blending neccesary passages. The artist considers the light source, how the light falls on the subject and how it turns into shadows as the forms turn, always thinking about the roundness of the forms as a sculptor would. Also the artist concentrates on achieving the likeness of the sitter, trying to capture her personality and expressions/gestures as well as the acurate measurements of the features. The artist carefully rendered the eyeballs, so that the small highlights can be achieved by leaving the paper entirely white.

Now the artist renders the hair with a brick charcoal to produce the rich dark tone. He smudges and blends with his fingers and stomp tool as he renders. He takes extra care into differentiating the textures of the hair and the ribbon.

The artist proceeds to render the rest of the area the same way he did with the head, rendering the subtlety of the forms of the body, considering the roundness of the forms.

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