Figure Drawing with Charcoal on Construction Paper

Continuing my exploration with figure drawing, here are a few sketches done with charcoal on construction paper. The idea for this set came from seeing drawings done on gray paper. I found most construction paper would work just as good as paper specially designed for drawing. Most of these drawings were done on square (12″ x 12″) scrapbook paper, I cropped them to fit an 4×6 ratio.

Drawings: 5-10 minutes

These drawings were quickly sketched. I used charcoal pencil for the black and white Conté for the white. Conté is a type of pencil which has been used for drawing for many centuries, its a mixture of graphite and clay, and it’s one of the most popular materials used in drawing.

Often times a prop is used to add some variation to the poses. Since I’m not very fast at drawing I leave the props to the end, which usually means an unfinished area in the drawing.

Using a color background is a quick way to add impact to the drawing. I use the background color as my base and try to fill in only the light and dark areas, leaving the middle tones for the eyes to fill.

Drawings: 10-20 Minutes

Although I prefer longer poses, I realized I get a lot more out of the drawing sessions with shorter poses. The short poses can be action and expression poses while the long ones are usually resting poses.

On this drawing you can see I began to outline the figure with the white pencil.  Although the pose is very still, these white lines outside the drawing give it some form of action and movement.

The construction paper I used for these last drawings is the larger 18″x12″, which made it a bit more difficult to scan. You can see some dark areas where I tried merging the scans. This large construction paper provided more area to work on and some of the sheets had a nice texture effect added.

I hope you enjoyed the drawings. I have a lot more sketches, but these were some of my favorite ones. Since drawing sessions start with short (1 or 2 minute) poses, many of the other sketches are very rough and unfinished. If I get a chance I will try posting some of those initial sketches, perhaps they can show additional insight into drawing. Till next time.