Week 5: Subtractive Tone

This week our focus was on revealing an image using subtractive tone, which is making light marks on a dark background, instead of dark marks on a light background, as is often the norm when drawing. We were using charcoal and covering the page with it, before 'drawing' into it with a rubber.

I found this technique to be one of my stronger areas despite having rarely done it before! It just seemed to work with my preferred style, which is generally more sketchy and rough. I think this is because you couldn't really create much detail with the technique - you just didn't have enough control over the rubber and it wasn't small enough to make delicate marks. You just had to go for it, using broad sweeping strokes. I found that I often had to work quite hard to create some of the lightest areas, which created some really interesting hazy textures and midtones.

My first drawing is probably the weakest of the 4 that we made in the session, simply because it was a pose heavily reliant on foreshortening which, as expressed in a previous post, I find very challenging! The model was directly facing me, and I had lots of trouble getting the legs to look anywhere near accurate. In the end, I decide to leave them and just focus on the upper half. This perhaps wasn't the way to deal with a mistake, but I think the upper half isn't too bad, so the legs were really letting the rest of the image down. I think there could be a greater contrast between the figure and the background, as the darker tones don't stand out too well, but I quite like having this piece as a record of my first attempt and it taught me many things which I think are reflected in my later images.

40 MIN TONAL STUDY / CHARCOAL AND RUBBER

The next study was another 40 minutes, but this one was much more successful. The model was now facing sideways, so firstly, that exposed lots more of the background which I could include and really strengthened the composition. The proportions aren't quite there, but I can see several strong areas which demonstrate a greater understanding of the medium and using the tones to my advantage. For example, I think both of the hands have a delicate gentleness that I would have struggled to achieve with a harsher medium, such as pencil on white paper.

40 MIN TONAL STUDY / CHARCOAL AND RUBBER

My favourite study of the session is my next drawing, where the model remained seated but reclined more in her seat, which was a lovely relaxed pose to capture. The softer mediums really lent themselves to this and help convey the relaxed nature of the model through the image. There are elements which could have been developed more, such as possibly going back in with charcoal to darken the shadowed areas, but I think compared to my first drawing you can clearly see development of tone. For instance, especially on the thigh, the light is vividly captured. The background has also been rendered to higher clarity, and I think that the sharp edges separating light and dark frame the figure really nicely.

40 MIN TONAL STUDY / CHARCOAL AND RUBBER

Lastly, the model took a standing pose, and this was a nice change and allowed light to shine onto different areas of the body. This study was only 20 minutes so I didn't have time to include any background context, which is a shame as I think it would have benefited from this. However, drawing upon what I'd learnt in previous sessions regarding proportion and measuring, I feel that my figure is nicely positioned and mostly proportional, so the composition is successful. The top of the figure caught the most light, and I think that you get a sense of that when viewing the drawing, as I erased the most charcoal in that area. It's maybe not as defined as it could be had I had more time to work back into it with charcoal lines, but for a quick 20 minute drawing I'd like to think you get a sense of the light and dark quite well.

20 MIN TONAL STUDY / CHARCOAL AND RUBBER