AVT 595-Chalk Pastel (Soft)

I think this may be the first time in my life I’ve ever touched pastels.  While I was excited to give them a try, I’ll cop to being a little nervous about working in yet another medium that tends to eschew the use of lines, and to work in solid color.  As an undergraduate drawing major, most of the materials with which I’m most familiar are grayscale: Graphite, pen and ink, inkwash, charcoal…we did use conte crayons occasionally, but even those were limited to a 3 color palette.  For whatever reason, in my drawing program color was treated like your uncle’s drinking problem at Thanksgiving: We all know it’s a thing, but we’re trying our best not to acknowledge it.

Having never used these before, the first thing I did was head to Michaels to pick up a Faber-Castell box of 24 soft pastels.  This is perhaps more colors than were necessary for a beginner, but was the smallest set of “studio quality” materials in stock (the lower quality “student grade” was available in a 12 pack).  They rang up at $19.99, but since this was Michaels, expect to pay half that anywhere else.  I also went with a 32 sheet, 9x12” Strathmore Charcoal paper pad simply because it said “Ideal foundation for pastel” on the cover.  The paper was $15, but again, Michaels.  Buying from them is like paying the Canadian rate they used to list beneath the “real price” on books and magazines.  If you choose to buy your supplies from Michaels, consider the mark up an “idiot tax.” 

Supplies in hand, it was time to go about figuring out how these things work.  Soft pastels feel very similar in texture and consistency to vine charcoal.  Just kind of making marks willy-nilly, varying pressure, and rubbing the results with various blending instruments worked well for me in that medium, so I replicated the same tests this go round to similar results.  I was immediately struck by how malleable the marks were.  It’s quite easy to go from soft and delicate lines, to hard, intense areas of color with just a little firmness of hand.  A kneaded eraser can pick up a good 80-90% of the pigment in most applications.  Blending was silky smooth with a tortillon, a paper towel, a Q-tip, or a finger.  Simply laying down 2 colors next to each other and swiping between them with a single pass of an index finger creates a smooth, pleasing gradient.

This ease of blending can work as a double-edged sword.  With charcoal, having residue on your finger (or tool) before blending offers no real consequence.  In a color medium, being careless about cleaning can quickly lead to cross-contamination and muddied colors, something that plagued my final drawing even though I was aware of the issue at that point.

Also, to a certain degree, working with soft pastels is like trying to draw with Pixie Sticks.  The powder just kind of sits on the surface, if a butterfly flaps it’s wings within a hundred feet of you your drawing is liable to blow away.  Keep in mind that chalk powder WILL be everywhere when planning a workspace.

The final drawing was just a matter of combining what I’d learned through experimentation and applying it to a larger project.  For my subject matter, when in doubt, draw a piece of fruit.  There’s not much to say here, as it was a standard process of blocking in a shape with pencil, and then laying in color.  Aware that my color knowledge was an obvious shortcoming, I stuck with our Exploring Studio Materials textbook’s advice and limited the number of hues at my disposal.  I think I kept it to just the primaries, plus green, and tried to create any other colors I needed through blending.

One thing worth noting that I wish I’d discovered earlier is that chalk pastel seems to work best with a light to dark approach, as opposed to the dark to light method I used.  It was late in the process when I discovered that the lighter yellows and white highlights I tried to apply in the final stages just weren’t showing up very well.  As mentioned earlier, I did a poor job remembering to clean my finger tips between blending passes, significantly muddying up my colors.

All in all, this was a fun experiment, and chalk pastels are definitely something I’d like to get more familiar with.  It strikes me as a lower stakes entry point into painting, something I’m also inexperienced with (a seemingly running theme of these blog entries) and a quick and easy way to begin building a knowledge of color theory.  I think I can only improve from here, and I’m excited to try.

Some notes about usage in a classroom context:

-Fixatiff is necessary to bind the final drawing.  As always, take that outside or have an adult do it.

-While similar to charcoal in terms of tactile fun, methodology of use and safety of materials, I actually think chalk pastels can skew much younger.  They’re appropriate for practically any age group.  The final product will appear much more refined if created by a person thinking in terms of volume, light and shadow, but as this is a color medium, even abstract markings can create a vibrant, engaging piece.  With charcoal, smearing powder all over a canvas will basically lead to a solid black mess.  A pictorial representation of the infinite void.  Color pastels are a lot more forgiving, and can be approached by very young children as powdery, easily smudged crayons. 

AVT 595-Charcoal

Charcoal, my old nemesis!  As someone who primarily draws in line, the emphasis on light, shadow and blocks of value required for working in charcoal has always been especially challenging for me.  I’ve also historically struggled with the physical application of the medium.  I just flat out don’t know how to manipulate it well.  I tend to go too dark, too soon, I have terrible accuracy with thick sticks of vine or compressed charcoal, I leave smudges and fingerprints everywhere despite my best efforts, and I seem incapable of making smooth gradations in tone.  It’s not for lack of trying.  I own several books on charcoal drawing, have watched tutorial videos etc.  At the end of the day, I feel like a righthanded musician trying to switch to a lefthanded guitar.  I understand how it works, conceptually, but my hands are too awkward, clumsy and uncoordinated to do what I want them to do.  I feel pretty confident that I could teach how to draw with charcoal, as long as I could skirt having to demonstrate the techniques with virtuosity.  I could ghost write a book on the subject, how about that?

All of that said, I really like the look of charcoal work. I love the smokey, ethereal atmosphere that can be achieved when used well. I appreciate its malleability, it’s forgiving nature, and that it forces the use of a different way of thinking. It’s something I’d love to get better at, which is why I chose it as my first medium to experiment with.

Rustling through my box of art supplies turned up sticks of vine and compressed charcoal (both thick and thin) as well as Derwent and General’s charcoal pencils in light, medium, soft and white.  All of these materials are dirt cheap, though the packaging touts their “finest quality!” so I guess they’re fit for gods and kings.  Charcoal drawing necessitates a lot of blending, so I armed myself with multiple types of tortillon, a paintbrush, Q-tips, paper towels and fat fingers.  Again, super cheap, but also, the best money can buy.  For erasing (but really, another method of drawing!) I grabbed a kneaded and retractable stick eraser.

As I hadn’t touched any of this stuff in a few years, the first thing I did was go into my Canson XL mixed media sketchbook and start playing around, trying to remind myself of what each of these things do, how they work together, and the types of marks you can make with them.  I did several pages like this, laying down marks, varying the pressure, rubbing over them with other tools and just generally testing what was possible.  The short answer?  Everything.  There are approximately 1 trillion different effects that can be achieved with charcoal.  My Canson sketchbook has some tooth to it.  I really like the textured marks that come naturally on this kind of paper.

For the actual drawing, I moved to a Strathmore Toned Gray drawing pad.  I use these things for everything, as they provide a built in midtone to use as a starting point, and work well with both dark and light mediums.  Bonus, they’re cheap! 

I pulled up a stock photo of a head to use as a reference for general feature placement and a lighting set up, but didn’t concern myself too much with a likeness, for down that path, madness awaits.  First I did a rough block in of structure, proportion, and some of the darker areas.

From there, it was mostly about laying down marks and manipulating them with my various blending tools, trying to get some smooth tonal shifts while hopefully retaining some of the handmade feel.  I don’t like things to look too smooth, and try my best to retain some texture, stray lines, happy accidents and evidence that this is a drawing.  Personally, I have no interest at all in photorealism.  I also tried to use the erasers as a drawing tool as much as possible, blocking in areas of tone and then cutting away at them with the kneaded and stick erasers.

Then it was just about refinement.  Honestly speaking, I’d say over refinement.  I think I pushed this past the point where I should have stopped, noodling away at little areas that don’t make much of an impact at the expense of stepping back and looking at the drawing as a whole.  The proportions are a little weird in places, some of the planar edges of the face way too hard, and I went overboard with the white charcoal in the final stretch.  I made use of every tool at my disposal to some degree, but by the end, found myself most comfortable working with just vine charcoal, my finger for blending, and my erasers.  I definitely grew more comfortable as I went, and learned a lot that I would apply from the get go in my next attempt.  I’m not hanging this on my parent’s fridge by any means, but all said, probably one of my more successful charcoal drawings.  And hey, I had fun doing it, and isn’t that what really matters?

Some notes about usage in a classroom context:  Fixatiff is a necessity if working heavily with loose, powdery vine charcoal but is prohibited from use by small children indoors.  Take it outside to spray, or have an adult do it after class.  The charcoal itself is relatively harmless to kids, though maybe not their clothes or your walls.  I guess it could provide a potential choking hazard, but in my experience, most non-consumable objects do if you eat them.  We still let kids have access to crayons and glue, so, this shouldn’t be any worse.  There’s no need for children to use a knife for sharpening their charcoal pencils, a regular ol’ plastic pencil sharpener will work just fine.  Knives and blades are best saved for pretentious adult artists, determined to impress people with their needlessly artisanal tools.

From a feasibility standpoint, I think charcoal can be used by students of practically any age. As a tool, it’s not that much more sophisticated than chalk or colored pencil. It has some of the simple, tactile fun inherent in something like finger paint. Due to the methodology behind it, it’s probably better suited to slightly older kids, say, 4th grade and up. To take advantage of its strengths requires artists who can think in terms of form, light and shadow as opposed to line.

I'm On a Roll

Toilet paper roll “portraits” modeled after the work of French artist Junior Fritz Jacquet.  Much like the Stop Motion Animation project from earlier in the semester, this was an assignment I quickly found myself obsessed with.  Like that one, I became consumed by the iterative process, starting something new from a point of ignorance, making discoveries, and trying to refine my methods as I went.  I really appreciated working with wet cardboard.  With a medium like clay, it’s so malleable that if the end product is terrible (and it usually is) I’m completely to blame.  It’s my own technical incompetence.  A soggy toilet paper roll can be manipulated, but only to a point.  It’s difficult by any reasonable person’s metrics.  I find that I need that balance between freedom and constraint to quiet the hypercritical voice in my head.  If I screw this up, how much can I beat myself up?

I attempted at least 10 of these hideous little bastards, stopping only because I ran out rolls.  Some of them ripped, some disintegrated, some of them just didn’t look enough like faces.  The ones you see here were the most successful of the bunch.  I’ve already started collecting more materials, including larger paper towel rolls, to continue playing with this concept outside of class requirements.  If I die before figuring out how to form a convincing nose, my entire life will have been in vain.

(Click to advance images)