Plane Shifts

A plane shift is where two planes meet, creating a corner or point in the contour. This week we’re working on a cardboard box still life in charcoal for the drawing class. We need to find a cardboard box, this is what we’ll use to practice the plane shifts, and then put some objects in it. I chose a stuffed animal I got for Christmas one year from my aunt and then one of the tennis balls lying around the house.

We start by making a ground using willow charcoal. So, I learned willow charcoal will only go up to a value of 5. (If it seems darker, it’s just the pigment laying on top of the paper.) Remember the value scale from last week? Values range from 1-9 with 1 being the lightest and 9 being the darkest. Yep, so 5, right in the middle. How convenient! This makes it easy for the next steps - initial sketch, subtract the highlights, add in the darker shades, and violà!

Add in the darker shades with compressed charcoal

We also learned about chiaroscuro which is a strong contrast between light and dark. An example in my drawing above, look at the left side flap of the cardboard box. To the left of the flap is middle grey 5, then comes the edge of the box which was in shadow. Then a light highlight, and finally a darker shadow on the flap. So it is like alternating light and dark to integrate the foreground object into the background.

Monster Portrait

We’re using three paints here: transparent earth yellow, alizarin crimson, and mars black. These should all be cool colors. Unfortunately, I didn’t have mars black or any other cool toned black, so I ended up using van dyke brown, which is a warm transparent. Hopefully things will still turn out okay!

We’re working light to dark and blocking in the light, medium, and dark areas using the corresponding colors. Yellow for light, crimson for medium, black for dark. Then we pull out highlights with the subtraction tool making sure the head tilt and the eye to nose measurement is correct.

So far, it is looking pretty monstrous. I’m hoping the painting is just at the ugly stage right now and it’ll get better as we go along. Fingers crossed.

initial subtraction step for the monster portrait — Subtraction step for the monster portrait, source photo to the left

Flesh Tones and Complements

So, first, I completely adjusted her and made her head bigger. I kinda feel like I placed her head too high and the painting would look better with more space at the top. In this layer, we’re starting with the filbert 30 and blocking in the larger areas of color along the plane shifts. To make the flesh tones, we mix two complementary colors together. Complements are red-green, orange-blue, and yellow-violet.

second layer of paint on the monster portrait — Second layer of paint on the monster portrait

Painting Plane Shifts

So here, our task is to finish up the painting, with each plane shift as its own distinct color. The woman’s face in the source photo had pretty distinct highlights and shadows with many orange and red tones. Looking at my finished painting below, she kind of reminds me of the Titans from Attack on Titan. All the different blocks of color for the plane shifts feel similar to the exposed muscles and ligaments on the Titans’ faces.

an oil painting of a woman looking to the side in vibrant colors — Monster Portrait, final

Blocking in a Charcoal Portrait

This drawing is like a combo of the other two assignments. We use similar methods to before. First doing a loose drawing of the subject with emphasis on the dark areas to subtract out of. Then work on subtracting out highlights, then adding darker areas.

I chose the source photo of Audrey Hepburn. She’s my mom’s favorite actress and we used to watch her movies (Sabrina, Charade, How to Steal a Million) when I was a kid. It is kind of funny, the ones we watched together weren’t even Hepburn’s most famous ones like Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Roman Holiday.

Anyways, I think I pressed too hard with the charcoal on my initial drawing. There’s some marks on her face that would not erase out. Good lesson learned here, be more gentle. I am very pleased with how her hair came out.