The Prima Ballerina: A Letter To A Student
This is a letter I wrote to an online student, after she sent me a photograph of a drawing that she had done.
I thought that what I instructed her would be beneficial to other and after her encouragement to post it--I here do.
I like that you are using strong darks--to which which charcoal lends itself. I also like the object that you are using, ; it is interesting and is a good form.
A few questions: do you have regular charcoal paper? In classes we have used Strathmore 700 Series drawing paper; which is a sort of multipurpose drawing paper and can take charcoal fairly well. I cant tell from the photo but your paper may be too rough--as I said I cant tell from the photo.
Are you using both compressed charcoal and vine charcoal? Vine charcoal is best for the toning of the paper because it is very soft and can also be erased quite easily.
The best way to tone the paper is get the biggest piece of vine charcoal or the softest biggest chunk of charcoal you can and rub it with the charcoal's side (not the tip) and then rub all over the charcoal coated paper with a chamois cloth which is a soft suede leather--you can buy these at the art supply store.You can also use any soft cloth including terrycloth, paper towel, even the fingers, etc--but chamois works best. This will create an even, toned paper.
The tone of the paper is your mid-value grey. You can erase your highlights with a kneaded eraser, but you will never once again get back to the true white of the paper and if you desire this you can use a stick of white charcoal or white Conte crayon--which is a synthetic chalk muck like charcoal.
For your blacks you can use compressed charcoal because vine charcoal will never create rich deep darks.
Any composition can be described using these values: white, grey, and black.
I like your composition and your choices. One suggestion I have is to make the background--the "ground" behind your object darker than the table top and this will help create depth. If depth is what you want. We push things back by pressing them with darks and bring them forward with light.
Also, you can use a highlight--your lightest light--to tell the viewer where to look, to create a point of focus. This spot is called, by some famous artist whose name I cannot recall, the Prima Ballerina.
There may be much onstage and sumptuous set design and other dancers but you want the audience to most notice your Prima Ballerina. We must always ask ourselves this question, "Where is my Prima Ballerina?"
It is not always easy to establish a strong Prima Ballerina, but it is done in black and white with putting a darkest dark next to a lightest light, and where these two values meet the edges are always sharper. As the eye moves away from this spot the edges become softer. Just like with a photo, as you move away from the center of focus, the edges and objects go slightly out of focus.
I continually forget this as I try to draw or paint something, but as artists we lie in order to tell the truth. We are not trying to just copy nature we are making nature sing.
This is a drawing that the above student and I together did.
I thought that what I instructed her would be beneficial to other and after her encouragement to post it--I here do.
I like that you are using strong darks--to which which charcoal lends itself. I also like the object that you are using, ; it is interesting and is a good form.
A few questions: do you have regular charcoal paper? In classes we have used Strathmore 700 Series drawing paper; which is a sort of multipurpose drawing paper and can take charcoal fairly well. I cant tell from the photo but your paper may be too rough--as I said I cant tell from the photo.
Are you using both compressed charcoal and vine charcoal? Vine charcoal is best for the toning of the paper because it is very soft and can also be erased quite easily.
The best way to tone the paper is get the biggest piece of vine charcoal or the softest biggest chunk of charcoal you can and rub it with the charcoal's side (not the tip) and then rub all over the charcoal coated paper with a chamois cloth which is a soft suede leather--you can buy these at the art supply store.You can also use any soft cloth including terrycloth, paper towel, even the fingers, etc--but chamois works best. This will create an even, toned paper.
The tone of the paper is your mid-value grey. You can erase your highlights with a kneaded eraser, but you will never once again get back to the true white of the paper and if you desire this you can use a stick of white charcoal or white Conte crayon--which is a synthetic chalk muck like charcoal.
For your blacks you can use compressed charcoal because vine charcoal will never create rich deep darks.
Any composition can be described using these values: white, grey, and black.
I like your composition and your choices. One suggestion I have is to make the background--the "ground" behind your object darker than the table top and this will help create depth. If depth is what you want. We push things back by pressing them with darks and bring them forward with light.
Also, you can use a highlight--your lightest light--to tell the viewer where to look, to create a point of focus. This spot is called, by some famous artist whose name I cannot recall, the Prima Ballerina.
There may be much onstage and sumptuous set design and other dancers but you want the audience to most notice your Prima Ballerina. We must always ask ourselves this question, "Where is my Prima Ballerina?"
It is not always easy to establish a strong Prima Ballerina, but it is done in black and white with putting a darkest dark next to a lightest light, and where these two values meet the edges are always sharper. As the eye moves away from this spot the edges become softer. Just like with a photo, as you move away from the center of focus, the edges and objects go slightly out of focus.
I continually forget this as I try to draw or paint something, but as artists we lie in order to tell the truth. We are not trying to just copy nature we are making nature sing.
This is a drawing that the above student and I together did.
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