Compressed Charcoal Drawing Projects

FROTTAGE

Frottage is a French term and it means to take an impression by rubbing. We’ve probably all done some frottage at some point or other. Have you ever taken a rubbing from a coin when you were little? Then that was a work of frottage. Brass rubbing is another form of frottage.

As a drawing technique and process we can expand and use frottage as a tool to express our ideas and it has been used by many artists particularly in the twentieth century for this very purpose. No less an artist than Max Ernst used this process to great effect in the early part of the last century.

We make frottage very simply. You need some cheap, thin newsprint paper, some compressed charcoal, some fixative, and an open experimental attitude to your resource material. This being any form of surface that has a texture that you find interesting.

We’re going to create a drawing from frottage. Our subject is a landscape because landscape lends itself very much to this process. Firstly, you need to collect a number of rubbings (frottage) from a variety of textures that you can find in the environment around you. Do this by simply putting the paper over the chosen texture and then place the compressed charcoal on to the paper and rub it firmly over the top. By doing this you will recreate the texture underneath. Do this many times over many different types of texture as this forms your resource material for making the drawing that will take the form of a collage (collage is a picture which is built up wholly or partly from pieces of paper or other materials).

These surface textures you are creating can be regular and geometric or from nature.

Ensure you fix the impression as soon as one has made it to preserve it. Now one has collected source material one can now think about the next step in this process.

The landscape we are going to produce needs to be researched. For this, you need to make some basic sketches of the view one has chosen. It would be useful to do about half dozen drawings from different viewpoints, giving you a greater choice of subject matter when you come to do the finished work at home or in the studio.

To start, you need to transfer one of your sketches to a larger piece of paper, preferably A1. The sketch you choose should have a good sense of depth to it. For example it should have a composition that contains a clear foreground, middle ground, and identifiable horizon. Do this in a linear way, drawing around the shapes of the areas that occupy the landscape, creating what appear to be silhouettes around the objects.

You will need to fill in these shapes with textures from your research, to give an impression of the landscape you created in your original sketches. You also might find that one has to make more frottage for particular areas in the picture.

THE PROCESS

1) Transfer the basic sketch to an A1 piece of paper. We’ve established the basic composition, and the space of that composition is well organized on the piece of paper.

2) Take pieces of your frottage and establish where you would like to use them on your drawing.

3) Always start at the what appears to be the furthest point away in the picture when you decide to stick down your first pieces of frottage. This is usually the horizon or somewhere in the sky. For sticking, we would recommend any type of paper glue.

4) Start to stick down the textures one has cut or torn to an appropriate shape that will roughly fit the background shape in your drawing.

5) Once one has layered on the background you can move forward to work on the middle ground. It now becomes obvious why we work from the back to the front in this drawing as it makes covering up mistakes easier.

6) When one has completed the middle ground one can now move on to the foreground and finish the drawing. Putting any final changes to it that one might deem necessary.

It’s always worth spending some time putting in final changes to a frottage composition. Although working from the back to the front of the drawing makes it possible to rectify mistakes as the composition develops, it’s the finishing touches that really create a picture to be proud of.

NEGATIVE SPACE AND CHIAROSCURO

Compressed charcoal is very useful for making strong lines and very dark dramatic tones. The next series of examples will highlight how to use the medium for this purpose.

The drawings use the negative space way of working we encountered in the Pencils section; see the examples after Van Gogh. This well established method entails drawing the space around objects to establish the composition. The second stage of the drawing requires you to look analytically at the nature of light and the way it can be used to describe and express a scene and mood.

Before beginning the drawing, arrange the objects on a table.

1) Establish the composition on the picture plane, i.e. the paper. You can do this by using a window mount to frame the composition that you like best. A tip - don't make it too complicated.

2) Start to draw your composition from the edge of the paper. Draw what you see through the window mount. Remember that your window mount should be in scale to your drawing otherwise you will get distortion. For instance, if your drawing is A1 your window mount should be A5. Draw a line that goes over the top of the objects and off the edge of the paper at the other side.

3) Now go back to the starting point on the other side of the paper, and draw a line that describes the bottom edge of the still life.

What one has produced is an outline of the group of objects.

4) Begin to fill in the shape and form of the objects.

5) At this point you need to illuminate the still life group. Set up a light from an acute angle at one side. This will create a dramatic atmosphere by throwing long shadows across the group.

Draw the shapes of the shadows using line. It’s important the shadows appear as shapes that exist both on and of the objects.

See them as abstract shapes. It will help your understanding if you squint when looking at the group. This action makes seeing the shadows easier.

6) Fill in the shapes of the shadows with the compressed charcoal, making the shaded areas into a dense black. This will produce a very black and white contrasting drawing.

7) Smudge the drawing, either by tonking it with a rag or, preferably, by smearing it with your hand. The resulting black and grey tones will give the drawing atmosphere.

8) Use a good clean plastic eraser to bring back the sharp light effects. Don’t be afraid to lose some of the edges of the objects in the shadows - such loss is true to life and a feature of this type of drawing. You don’t need to give all the detail. Leave some areas deliberately obscure to allow viewers to bring their own imagination to the piece.

A CONSTRUCTED TONAL DRAWING

COMPRESSED CHARCOAL DRAWING DRAPERY

Historically drapery has been used for centuries by artists and studied by students and artists apprentices. One has to go no further than the drapery studies of Leonardo da Vinci to see it was an integral part of their research.

There are three drapery projects that are a fundamental to widening our visual literacy, and compressed charcoal is the medium that is most appropriate for this.

Many artists in the past would use drapery as compositional device to create an underlying structure for their work. This process was devised to guide the viewer's eye through the composition.

One of these methods was to create the idea of movement across and through the picture plane using certain effects with drapery to create this illusion. Nicholas Poussin (1593-1665) and El Greco (1541-1614) both used this process very successfully to effect this illusion. What one must realize here is that these effects were not by any means being used naturalistically. Instead they where formal visual constructions to effect away for us to read the picture.

1) To make a study of this type of work one should first formally set up your drapery still life. Do this by getting a large sheet and twist it tightly and also loosely around a tall object ( we use an easel for this purpose). By doing this we’ve given a sense of movement to the still life. In essence, it’s the type of movement you would describe when you see and try to explain a spiral staircase. In setting the group up in this way, we’ve constructed the idea of an upward motion.

2) Now set up to draw with a large piece of paper - the larger the better for this drawing.

Firstly, draw the outlines of the folds of the drapery using your compressed charcoal.

Immediately one will see that one has created the sense of movement up the picture plane through the nature and direction of the line.

3) We can now give the drapery a feeling of volume that will also emphasize the sense of movement up the picture plane. We do this by adding tone in a very particular constructed way. This process is referred to as front or top lighting and was used by the pre Renaissance artists such as Cimabue, and Duccio. In the finished drawing, the tone is applied in the same way as notice in the detail. It enables us to read the simple sense of form. It works in this way. The surface of the drapery that appears nearest to us is left white, and as the surface moves away from us and into any recesses you gradually make the tone go darker until it reaches black at what appears to be the furthest point away see detailed example. The illusion of a shallow sense of depth is created. As you might have guessed this process is very mechanical and theoretical and at this point can be executed without looking any further at the drapery subject matter.

More DRAPERY

Another way of working with drapery, which gives a more static effect and is more or less the opposite to the previous approach, in that instead of movement we create a sense of form that has a weight and stillness to it.

Artists would use this way of working to create an illusion of mass that would reflect the underlying form. Look at the example below and also refer to the works of Massacio, Cezanne, and some of the works of Picasso.

Drape a large sheet over a simple form (a chair) so it reflects the form of the object.

Now proceed to draw this using exactly the same process as with the previous drapery drawing.

TROMPE L'OEIL -- Deceive the Eye

Trompe L'Oeil means to deceive the eye, to create a realistic illusion. There are many ways to create this effect, but one of the easiest is by choosing an object that is relatively flat, and can be hung on or lie on a flat surface. In the examples, we’ve chosen an egg carton, a tennis bat and a gardening glove.

Choose your subject carefully for this. A favorite coat dress or object that you know well, something that when hanging or lying flat would present us with some folds. When one has chosen your object hang it against a flat surface. This eliminates the problem of excessive depth.

You need to light the subject from the side to cast a shadow on the wall behind the subject. Do this by using any light like an angle poise lamp, and directing the light from the lamp on to your object from the side. This type of light source is very important, as the way the light illuminates the subject and the shadows that are cast will create the Trompe L'Oeil illusion when drawn.

You now need to start your drawing with the compressed charcoal, making first a linear drawing as with the two previous drawings, by fixing your composition on the paper as accurately as possible and to scale and proportion. The next part of the drawing is different to the last two drawings in that it’s pure and very accurate observation, looking at tone and texture in detail. Pay particular attention to minor detail such as creases, buttons, or lining. Don't forget the cast shadows.

TROMPE L'OEIL DRAWINGS OF ORDINARY OBJECTS

Having drawn out the composition of such households as a gardening glove, it’s now the time to focus on the complexities of the textures that glove contains. In the following examples we’ve broken it down to a series of close observations of the way the glove has been manufactured or constructed.

1) At the opening end of the garden glove we are first confronted with a hem type stitch, which makes the border of the glove. This is constructed by making a small channel using two parallel lines that follow the contoured edge of the glove. In this channel we now place the pattern of the stitch, and this consists of a series of diagonal lines that go one way. In the spaces that are created by the lines we now place another series of marks that go in the opposite direction to imply the completion of this texture.

2) We can now begin to observe the texture of the next section of the glove, and this takes the shape of another band that is obviously a lot wider than the first band, so here we have to take into account the relative textural proportions of the glove. This band again follows the contours and the form of the glove, and the texture is constructed by using a series of diagonal lines.

3) In this example we observe that there is now a smaller band that again is following the contours of the glove. This band is about the same proportion as the first band but the texture is very different. We see that the mark to create this texture is a series of dots that change in the angle of placement, as the nature of the form of the glove changes its angles.

4) In this example we can see that we now are creating a series of rows of textures that give the impression of a herringbone texture. This is created by putting two rows of the same proportions together, still following the contours and the form of the glove. Then we place in the top band a series of diagonal lines that oppose our first series of diagonal lines, and in the next band we place another series of diagonal lines that also oppose the lines above. This creates the herringbone texture and pattern that is an essential textural feature for this object. Underneath this is a small band of dots that we did previously, and then you will repeat the herringbone texture again.

5) This section of the glove is finished off by a different type of stitch. Again we observe that it’s a band that is about twice as thick as the smaller band. It’s constructed by placing together a series of over-lapping horseshoe shapes, and in the center of these shapes we have placed a number of lateral marks to give the impression of the stitch.

6) In this section of the glove we see a repeat of what we’ve just drawn in terms of the texture. However, the whole direction and the structure of the texture and the form of the glove have changed. The only added textural stitches are the four lines. These consist of little arced type marks that join to form the line that follows the contours and the form of the glove. The main herringbone texture of the glove should be repeated in the fingers of the glove to complete this textural part of the observation.

7) We now move from the cotton part of the glove to the protective leather part and we examine how we’ve made our observations for this material. In the drawing of the composition you should have drawn out the areas of and defined the leather parts of the glove, and the drawing of this material will be very different to the drawing of the cotton parts of the glove. When applying our techniques to the cotton parts of the glove the drawing was created in a very constructed way, whereas here for the leather the drawing is more organic in its approach and how we

interpret the texture. The texture of the leather is created by scrawling the compressed charcoal medium over the surface of the paper, applying varying pressures as you go so as to give a variety of weight to the mark. There is however, a small added piece of texture to this section, which has a constructed formula to it. This is shown by a row of stitches, which creates a line that follows the form of the glove.

Finally, to finish this drawing one needs to put shadows over the top of the texture that are created by the direction of the light source that we originally placed over the subject.

Remember also to put on the shadows that are cast on the background that your subject lies on, as this is vitally important in creating the Trompe L'Oeil effect. The tennis bat is another example of the Trompe L'Oeil and as we can see here it has be constructed in the same way as the gardening glove.

Firstly draw out the composition of the bat as we’ve done with the other subjects that we’ve tackled. Once one has the composition firmly fixed on the paper one can now begin to contemplate the textural qualities of the subject.

1) The stringing of the bat is constructed by a series of marks that implies the woven tension in this section of the drawing. The direction of the marks gives us the tight woven impression.

2) The construction of the head of the bat is made from wood that has been formed by compressing the material together to make this unusual structure, and this is implied by the tightly compressed marks that are in the form of lines that follow the shape and form of the head of the bat.

3/4) The handle of the bat has been painted and therefore its surface is flat but nevertheless it has a shiny quality to it which is implied by the tonal aspect of the drawing.

There are also graphic elements on the surface of the handle, which must be copied as accurately as possible. At the base of the handle, we have the leather grip. This material has been wound around this part of the bat to form a pattern. Draw this pattern before you put in the textured marks. The marks that imply the grip of the bat are made by rows of dots that follow the winding pattern of the leather material.

Now one has in place all the textural references one can now put the tone observations over the top putting in the important shadow effects to create the 3D illusion that is Trompe L'Oeil. Draw buds as flattened spheres.

Cont. to: Willow Charcoal Projects