These four drawings are a part of a series of charcoal drawings I made for my Observational Drawing class. I used a combination of vine charcoal and compressed charcoal to emphasize the texture and shadows in these pieces.

I pushed myself to learn how to draw the human figure though a combination of full-body and portrait drawings. I also experimented with movement, perspective, and texture when constructing these pieces.

The above image is a self portrait of myself. It is two feet in width and three feet in height, taking me around twelve hours to complete. I used a process called gridding, which is when the artists grids the reference photo and the paper of the final piece to have guilines to create more realistic proportions. I spent most of my time working on the proportions on my piece to achieve the greatest likeness to myself. However, I also focused on creating realistic textures for my hair and speckled shirt.

I created this drawing to help myself improve on landscapes. I embraced fluid movements and strokes along with varying textures to recreate nature’s wild and diverse attitude.

In this piece I wanted to practice drawing the human form in perspective.

For my class’s final assignment, I created this piece of myself sitting on my bed looking out a window. Instead of focusing on my technical skills in this piece, I wanted it more to focus on a concept. By framing a greater amount of the piece in dark shades, I created a more somber mood. There is also the figure (me) looking out a window into nothingness, allowing the viewer to participate in the drawing by filling in the blanks of what is outside.