Here’s a great way to approach tonal studies which works really well in both charcoal and paint. It’s perhaps the most painterly way of drawing and the process translates easily into painting.
Each term, I always look forward to teaching rendering value in charcoal. It’s so unlike the way we all learn to draw – starting with a sharp pencil, drawing lines. It almost deserves its own category: neither drawing, nor painting, it’s rendering. It’s at the core of many pastels and paintings for example, and I start off using some nice messy charcoal.
I begin with a mid-tone application of uncompressed charcoal – lightly rubbing charcoal all over my drawing surface using the side of the twig. Don’t try compressed charcoal, which sticks to the paper a good deal more and is difficult to erase. I then pull out lights with a kneadable eraser (a must – I don’t think I have any square erasers anymore). I’m focusing on the large shapes and relationship of forms in blocks of light. Typically there’s a scary stage where nothing seems to be happening and then, Oh! there’s a ghosted image – faint but real. In portraits, the effect is a bit like the Shroud of Turin.
Now switching to pushing in darks, I then work away with charcoal on the darkest areas, again shapes and not lines , with blocks of light and dark. When you see shapes, you’re creating a jigsaw puzzle, distinct and separate from the subject and this always works the eye rather than the brain – the brain typically being the bad guy: over-thinking , making assumptions, judging.
As if by magic, there’s an image, which only then do I reinforce with some line. An image built out of just 3 values: light, mid-tone and dark, set on a ground of mid-tone and quite unlike those pencil sketches that most are used too.
It’s a technique so alien to many but the light goes on and some find it a revelation. When I first encountered the approach, I almost felt it was cheating. How could drawing be so effective, so quickly? I normally have some doubters who become convinced, even though they may ultimately prefer the directness of line.
It’s a classic technique for figures, portraits, still-life objects and more. I’d definitely recommend trying this in charcoal. Should you have time, you could also try a paint study using the same process: starting with a mid-tone wash, pulling out the lights with a rag and dry brushes (you have to be fairly quick in acrylic) and then putting in the darks with a stronger paint mix.
Here’s an oil painting website with good information: http://www.aristidesatelier.com/blog/wipeout-underpainting
One of my favorite subjects for this exercise is this still life by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin:
