Charcoal Drawing

I took some photos of my son's girlfriend the last time I visited him because I think she is a beautiful woman and I want to paint her. I especially love her mass of unruly hair. This is a life size charcoal drawing I did today.

I want to try something different and use a gray toned canvas. I've painted on pre-primed gray canvases for some of my landscapes but I don't think I've ever used one for a portrait. I don't have any pre-primed so I'll mix some black into some acrylic gesso and go from there. I've seen some portraits recently with a plain gray background that I really admire, so I want to experiment.

Melanie

17 x 23

Best Friends

The second day of the Arnold Expo was a long one. Artists were required to be 'on stage' all day and we were to work on the piece we started the first day or start another one. I had a wonderful photograph of Allia and Janea, who are best friends in the WGP Spirit group that was competing over the weekend. The trouble was I didn't have a canvas with me so I decided to use charcoal and do a drawing. The drawing turned out great- both girls look happy and I wish one of the others would have purchased it, BUT although they loved it they could not afford to.

This is basically a three color drawing: black soft charcoal, with white conte and a cool gray conte crayon for accents.