My latest piece: captured in an array of warm siennas and purples, a baby dreams of life’s discoveries and adventures.

Here is one of my latest pieces, a little baby sucking on her hands. Below is the first charcoal layer. At first I was not sure what colour to do the under painting and then began leaning towards something neutral like ochre, similar to the apples I did previously.

I decided on a coral ochre under painting to the charcoal for a soft finish.

And here is the finished piece below. The pink ochre gives the piece a warm and soft feeling, And it’s amazing how the combo of pink and brown pastels only produces this effect. It looks as though I have used some greens and oranges.. I’m guessing that had I wanted to take this piece to “full colour” there wouldn’t be too much work left from this point in. I still have so much to learn regarding pastel layering, but the fun is in the journey right! for this piece specifically I don’t wish to add any more colour ranges to it. I’ll keep it simple…

This is the start of my latest piece, "Find A Way"… I have just finished the charcoal base of the woman. I’ll more than likely apply an ochre base to it and at some point before that I need to figure out what the background is doing or will be… at some point.

I’m definitely feeling this piece, this one is personal, a definite must for what I want to say right now and where I’ll be going… sometimes it gets deep, you know how it is…

This is my favourite piece to date! This one is also done in charcoal.

Here is the very first piece from my class, and my first ever charcoal piece. It depicts two women hanging out laundry…

Working with charcoal is so much different from the techniques I use with pencil. When using graphite you typically start with your lights and gradually build upon them to make the necessary sections darker, however, with charcoal it’s the eat opposite where you first begin with your darks and subtract to gain the lights.

And of course charcoal is MUH faster so I an essentially complete a piece in a few days, as oppose to a few weeks. I just need to do a few more of these to gain a better understanding of how to find the various light/dark values in any photo and transfer them into the piece.