Sargent copy - playing with charcoal

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11x8.5, vine charcoal on paper, 2/7/16

We've been taking care of sick babies the past few days (crossing my fingers I don't catch it, but I've been sneezed and slobbered on enough, I figure it's inevitable). I put a copy of this John Singer Sargent charcoal drawing on my easel yesterday, and I've been working on copying it little by little when I have a minute. It's nice that I can just pick it up and do a little bit at a time :) I don't have much experience with charcoal, so I'm really just playing and figuring out how it works. It doesn't erase quite as well as graphite--but then again, that could be the paper, too. I don't know.

As usual, I can see from the comparison below that I'm trying to enlarge the features--and everything else. I always, always do that! It's so much easier to see when you take a picture of it. I guess I could avoid the problem by gridding the image out more, but I really just want to figure out how to see more accurately without all the scaffolding. I'll keep working on that :P

And that John Singer Sargent... he had some kind of strange magic :)


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