It was very exciting on Friday when I turned up at the studio of local artist Robert (Bob) Wood for an introduction to drawing with pastels and charcoal.

Bob had a small portable photo booth set up with a still life setting of apples and lemons on a board for us to start with and he showed me how he has it placed so that different lights can shine from various directions to give a variety of shading effects.  This booth also helped to block out periphery paraphernalia.

He demonstrated first while I attempted to take it all in and then follow his example.

Bob’s apple stage 1

I had to take progress pictures from the left hand side of him while he worked, hence the reason they looked squashed. 

Bob’s apple stage 2

He showed how to layer the pastels and spray the fixative between each refinement of the picture.  I was pretty surprised at some of his colour choices and he showed me in detail where he was looking and what he was seeing to help me pull those subtleties out of the whole.  It was fascinating.

Bob’s finished apple

Then it was my turn.    I kept wanting to turn the paper round so that my small broken piece of charcoal didn’t go over the outline I was trying to form. 

Claire’s apple stage 1

 I couldn’t seem to get my hand to go in the right direction to get the sweeping lines along the apple sides, but I gave it my best shot, and he was very patient.

 

 

So here they are.  I haven’t got the right shape and my apple is clearly on some kind of a different surface than his (!!!!).  I haven’t got the depth from front to back that he has either BUT I can at least tell that it is an apple and I do have radiating lines.  I drew mine on water-colour paper because that was what I had and it has a very grainy surface so I was never going to get the smooth finish Bob has.

Charcoal lemons

 We then moved to charcoals.  Mine is the one at the bottom front of the picture and, again, I haven’t got the shape quite right but it sits better than the apple did.

I learned a lot.  Bob isn’t a ‘smudger’ when he uses these mediums so we applied them using the sides of smaller pieces, the tips and sharper corners, hard and soft sticks to get the effects he wanted.

It took 2 1/2 hours to get this far and then he sent me away to play on my own. 

I now understand how limited my beginners pack is and I need to widen my range.  I don’t hate them any more,  I can’t say that I’ll use them every week but I got less dirty and messy than I thought and I got a far better understanding of their potential.

Bob kindly showed me some of his work and let me photograph this piece.  Not only does he paint and draw but he is an accomplished clay sculpturist.  He is currently concentrating on Chinese brush painting to widen his experience.