Tag Archives: charcoal

Devil in the details

Posted by Jacqueline on

I visited my friend Liz in New York a couple weeks ago and did this quickie of her reading the paper at a coffee shop.

Liz

Liz (pencil)

And last Saturday I drew this tree in the Boston Public Garden.

Public Garden

Public Garden (pencil)

Now I want to try to catch up and show what I’ve been working on over the year. I started my oil-painting class last June, so let’s go sequentially from there.

The first assignment in class was a value painting, using only black, white, and one color. We had to copy from this one particular photo in a book. I chose burnt umber (but I think I used raw umber when I went back to finish it in the second class!).

Pears

Pears (oil on canvas board)

I think the nasturtiums must have been the second painting I did last year. I took this picture at some point of near completion and gave the painting to my mother before taking a finished photo. It’s just 5 x 7 inches. This one marks my fatal plunge into minute detail. The pears value study didn’t give me the chance because it was such a simple photo, but when I started working from my own photos, all was lost. I got into the habit of trying to copy every detail of my photos picture and I’ve been struggling against that ever since. You’ll see.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums (oil on canvas board)

Here’s my oldest drawing. It’s from a class in college, and the paper is stained and crumbling so I framed it behind glass, hence the reflections, sorry. That’s a nice big one, 18 by 24 inches I guess.

Garlic

Garlic (charcoal on paper)

Now then

Posted by Jacqueline on

My workplace:

Manor House

Manor House (BlackBerry camera)

For three years I’ve been working here in this old mansion in a small town on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and now the company is moving to Boston. In two weeks I start commuting on the train to a city office building and working at a desk without even cubicle partitions, instead of an office with this view:

Office View

Office View (6B pencil)

This is the first drawing in the little sketchbook I bought a few months ago and have been too scared to use. When I started an oil-painting class last June, the teacher had us work from photographs and that’s all I’ve done ever since. Recently a painter acquaintance pointed out what a disservice this is to new students, because there’s so much more to learn by working from life. I’m not quite ready to paint from life, so I decided to start with sketching.

I happened upon a podcast, “An Illustrated Life,” by Danny Gregory, in which he interviews artists and illustrators about their sketchbooks. He’s just published a book of the same name that features these people’s work. (See http://dannygregory.libsyn.com.) I’ve been inspired by some of these interviews and I’m going to try using my sketchbook while working on my painting.

Harbor Lowtide

Harbor Lowtide (charcoal pencil)

The second sketch in my little book, low tide at the side of the harbor.