The task was to draw two objects with reflective surfaces with charcoal on a large sheet, including the reflections of shadow and light on the surface, and using putty rubber to work out hightlights.
I selected two metal cooking pots for this drawing. I chose large ones, to have more surface on which to observe reflections, and also because I thought it would be better for filling the relatively large A2 sheet. I began with soft charcoal sticks to outline my objects and some of their detail. I did this with soft, short strokes – in my typical way of searching the forms, rather than drawing confident lines. When I wanted to sketch darker areas, I realized that the sticks were too thin to be put on the side, and I switched to a piece of pressed charcoal block.
I had many difficulties with the pressed charcoal. Sometimes it would make deep dark marks, at other times the marks were medium grey at most. The charcoal seems to be unevenly pressed, with some areas soft and others hard. Also I was working rather fast and almost never knew where the tip of the block was, so the lines that I drew only rarely matched the lines I saw and wanted to draw. I wasn’t very satisfied with what I’ve drawn. The coloured areas were too bold because of the rude marks and hatchings. Finally, bringing out highligths with putty rubber didn’t work, it rather smudged the charcoal and the tip wasn’t fine enough to make tiny highlights.
Overall, I found this task difficult. I might have done better if I had attempted only a detail of one pot, like a side with a section of the rim and a handle. Also, I should get more practice with charcoal. I liked this medium a lot in the free mark-making exercises, but here I found it very difficult to control. Especially, how would I make dark areas that are not dominated by my irregular mark making.
The drawing is rather raw, probably typical for charcoal. The reflective surfaces come out better when the drawing is looked at from a distance of three or four meters. Then the strokes from my marks disappear, and the actual pattern of dark and light areas comes to the fore.
