Charcoal References

              Charcoal is also a versatile medium. While you can create extremely realistic, sensitive drawings with it, there is something about picking up that dusty stump of charcoal that frees us to go big, expressive and gestural.

Charcoal of All Kinds: Charcoal comes in several different forms.

• The compressed stick, which can can be hard, produces a grayer shade, or soft and very deep black.
• A softer charcoal is easier to smudge: it’s the one that will get all over your hands, your paper, and probably your clothing and face too!
• Pressed charcoal also comes as a pencil. This is useful for detailed drawings because it can be sharpened to a fine point. It is also much less messy!
• Willow or vine charcoal comes actually as a willow stick: it is long, cylindrical and wiggly. Willow charcoal is also very soft and produces a velvety, dove grey. It has a great texture to draw with, but is also very smudgy.

Charcoal Drawing Techniques:

• Charcoal can be used in the same way you use a pencil to draw and shade anything, but it’s best suited to to more expressive types of shading like hatching.
• Charcoal can also be used to do the preliminary drawings of a painting on canvas.
  • Once you’ve blocked in your shapes and values, spray with a workable fixative and start painting. Turning your charcoal stick on its side and filling in major areas of a subject is a great way to train your brain to see shapes rather than contours.
• One of my favorite thing to do with charcoal, however, is gesture drawings. It’s the perfect tool for executing the large, sweeping strokes needed to capture a gesture.
  •  Use a nice chunk and a big pad of cartridge paper to get the most out of your drawings.

This picture interesting because the lady is upside down.  I love the shadow below her chin and her curly hair. it looks so real.

I love the technique of this picture. it makes that girl look mysterious. For me, if i look at the mysterious picture, i will look that picture for long time and make me want to know who is she, why, what, etc... and not every result can be 'eye catching'

I for four techniques of charcoal drawing, first is just a line by charcoal but can present pattern ; Second one is like strokes from left to right from black to white. It present that charcoal can make highlight and shadow but depends on our hand ; Next is like ++++ or ####,  it interesting because not many people use this technique.The last technique looks interesting too, it makes pattern and i think its good for background. i want to try it soon!

I love the shadow and highlight in this picture, even just a fabric, but it looks so real and soft.

The last is so interesting, it looks 3D, the man like in the hole and looking outside the paper. I will make it soon!


Have a nice day,
JAJ

Matthew Cusick – Map Art Collage (Inspiration)

New York based artist, Matthew Cusick has made a name in the art industry by creating intricate artistic representations of humans, animals, and water and landforms made out of carefully crafted pages of recycled maps, atlases, encyclopedias and school textbooks. His map collages are made by meticulously crafting sliced pieces of maps from various old cartographic sources into more lively and familiar forms. Matthew’s map works have gained massive popularity around the world and have been held in numerous collections including the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and the Progressive Art Collection. The world has seen his works in various solo and group exhibitions and publications.

Bru - The Street Art (Inspiration)

The amazing world of visual arts does not only ends on the use of paint and canvas, film, photography, design and form. Another awesome variation where most likely almost all the elements of artistry is applied is street art. It is commonly developed in public places in a form of paintings in giant canvases such as walls, windows, roads, bridges and other architectural forms. Over the years, the term is coined with graffiti work that can be called as unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives. Although this is still somehow true today, more and more street artists have emerged to bring new forms of street art including LED art, murals, stencil art, street sculptures and installations, woodblocking and even video projection. Speaking of street art, one name has emerged to be one of the most popular and influential street artists over the last decade. His name is Blu, an Italian artist who conceals his real identity. He lives in Bologna and has been creating street art since 1999. In the early years of Blu’s career, his technique was limited to the use of the typical medium of graffiti work – spray paint. It was in 2001 when his unique characteristic style appeared. He started painting with house paint, using rollers mounted on top of long sticks which allowed him to increase the size of his canvas and communicate with a stronger intensity. His works are characterized by large human figures, sometimes sarcastic or dramatic that look like they were lifted from comics or arcade games. These massive paintings started appearing along the streets of Bologna around his time.

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I love his art work because if you look the wall, he tell us some messages. Second reason is i want to draw on the wallsince i was 3 years old but everyone always forbid me to draw on the wall -__- till now i don't have empty wall to draw on it. one day i will make it on my own house :B

Have a nice Tuesday!!

- JAJ -