Charcoal Panorama Series Part Four

The gravel from the end of our drive meets the more orderly road and creates a very interesting effect. Doesn't it seem like the less you can see of the sky in my pictures the better it looks in the end?

Charcoal Panorama Series Part Three

This is to the left of number one. Quite a pleasing, sweeping composition. The sky's not brilliant, again, but the posts vanishing into the horizon work well.

Charcoal Panorama Series Part Two

This is what you see to the right of the first one in this series. The car went very wrong! The telegraph pole and the wires tying the whole picture together is a nice touch though.

Charcoal Panorama Series Part One

See, I fixed the sky here! Down the end of the drive, I took four photos to copy from. Here's what I see looking away from my house. I like the tree on the right best, I think. I could've done more with the grass on reflection.

Charcoal Garden - Shrubs and a Dramatic Sky

I say dramatic sky because I started off quite understated and then went over the bushes again and everything else looked too pale... Maybe if I'd left it at that stage it wouldn't have looked as silly as it does now! Still, my grass technique makes a return and the bushes work pretty well too - if I'd filled in the space where the bushes were to go and then gone over it with the same approach as I've used in the finished product here, I don't think it'd have worked as well. Sure, they look a little disconnected, but they're interesting (and you can tell what they are!).

Charcoal Garden - Trees and Hedge

Sorry I've been away from the blog, I've had a load of other stuff on recently. That, and the weather hasn't been exactly favourable for drawing outside. Either roasting or freezing! I had to go out and get some more paper and a sketchbook to get started on this next assignment - drawing outside. In the meantime, I thought I'd do some drawings around the garden on my leftover paper. This one's ok: I particularly like the hints of the fence in the hedge and the unusual stippling effect I did for the grass. I balanced the charcoal and pushed it away from me at a specific angle until it sort of bounced across the paper... Took a while, but I needed something good to define the different textures.