Charcoal - 18 x 24"
This drawing was done this past Sunday (November 9, 2008). It is a charcoal drawing of a copy of a Sargent portrait of a woman, also done in charcoal. Sargent retired from oil portraits early in his career but continued doing his beautiful charcoal drawings for clients who wished to have their portraits done by him.
The drawing was done as a demonstration using an exercise to improve one's drawing ability. The procedure comes from the famous author and artist, John Ruskin from "The Elements of Drawing." The exercise goes as follows, for the image to be copied, you mark the highest point, the lowest point, the most extreme left point and the most extreme right point of the image you are copying and make corresponding points on your drawing. Then with only those four points to go by, you precede to draw the major areas, striving for complete accuracy in drawing. Then you put tracing paper over the original and trace the original and then put the tracing over your drawing. Continue to adjust as necessary until your drawing matches the original. Try to refrain from continually checking and rechecking the tracing, rather depend upon your own drawing skill as much as possible to get accurate drawing. Once the major shapes are determined, one can freely concern oneself with values and edges (soft or hard). The drawing was done completely upside-down so as to focus on abstract shapes (which is what drawing really is).
