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| The Speaker. Portrait of man in charcoal |
I started this drawing while waiting for my son at an appointment. I worked on it a little more while my daughter was having a music lesson and then carried it in my art bag for about a week while I fiddled with it now and then. My source material was very poor and the image I was working with was small like a postage stamp, so I had to interpret and embellish quite a bit. It was done in charcoal pencil using a 2b, medium and extra soft. I used a little white charcoal in places to soften the tone and highlight parts in the shadow such as the ear. I enjoyed building up layers of dark shadows on top of lighter shadow.
I feel that some of the freshness might have been lost and am afraid I overworked the portrait a little, since there were some stray 2b pencil marks that were worked over and lifted out, had I left them in it would have had an interesting effect.
I wish I had a better image of it but my camera and lighting equipment leaves a little to be desired. There is more detail than I have been able to capture here.
I might take this as a study for a more complex portrait using several media such as ink, watercolor, acrylic and maybe print process. We'll see what I am able to do.
