drawing portraits with charcoal

a drawing material i haven't used in a while is charcoal. what i like about charcoal is how easy it is to smudge. well, the "easy to smudge part" of course also has it's downfalls. what i love to have handy is a rubber eraser (you can knead it like play dough). i think i discovered this lifesaver eraser when anja brought it to school one day. soon after i went and bought one myself and have used it ever since.




three years ago some close friends of ours invited us to join them on their beach vacation in florida. we had an extremely good time. lots of picture taking too. our friends' beautiful daughter is one of my favorite little models, so when their anniversary came around i had a plethora of photos to choose from that were taken on the trip which i could use for drawing a portrait (the one you see above).
what i found cool was that the little girl was only one and a half (was born with a full head of hair in case you wondered why it's so long) and she immediately recognized herself in the portrait.

getting back to the charcoal smudging easily, when our friends had the drawing framed the guys who did it made a smudge on the drawing, it bugs me every time i see it. but i think i'm the only one who really notices.

you can see another charcoal portrait here, the style is a little different there.

have you ever worked with charcoal before? 
if not do you think you'd like to give it a try? it's fun, and you should at least try everything once, right?

4 comments:

PoesyGirl said...

Wow! You are so talented! I can't even draw a stickman that looks decent. I'm always amazed by people who can draw and paint.
You did a beautiful job!

Marianne said...

....and how amazed her parents were, when they found a print of your beautiful picture in our guestroom! Thanks a lot. (We are proud, too, showing off our daughter's talent).

Anonymous said...

This is seriously amazing, oh my gosh, it looks fantastic. I'm so impressed with your talent.

Claudia Neubauer said...

This is great, I love it! Thank you very much for your lovely comment on my page, from now on you have one frequent reader more ;-)! Love from Austria, Claudia

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