More eyes...

I have been doing some more testing of various pencils to come up with the right combination of technique and material to determine which direction that I want to head in my drawing. I had a desire to stick with charcoal in it's various forms, and my previous eye posting was using mainly compressed charcoal pencils and stubs to blend the charcoal. I tried 2H to 6B compressed charcoal and found it easy enough to work with and I like the blending but, unless the image is large the detail is tough to impart.

I have resisted using straight graphite as it tends to be grey and shiny and the result is typically less contrast. The trade off is that more detail can be incorporated and the application of graphite is easier to control than charcoal without having to blend anything and this works for smaller images. I have a range of 6H down to 8B which gives me a fairly wide range of contrast, I can add some of the charcoal if I want a blacker highlight contrast, pupil of the eye for example.

Here is a graphite eye that I tested with:

I added a darker charcoal blend pencil for the pupil. Now the iris needed a bit more work, actually the whole eye is still incomplete but this was only a play test to see how it would work out. I was concerned about the coal sticking to the graphite but it seems to have adhered decently.

So, I have reworked one picture using charcoal a couple of ways and now I have started one with graphite. It's not as interesting doing the same face multiple times but it gives me a frame of reference for direct comparison as well as a familiarity that allows me to lay the face out quickly for this sort of experimentation.

I'll post my next attempt.

Jeff.