Author: Julia de Wit

Portrait of Estelle

This is a graphite and charcoal portrait drawing of a female classmate.
This is a graphite and charcoal drawing of my classmate Estelle. It’s a portrait, so she is facing me straight on. I started the drawing by sketching out basic facial features and doing some shading to establish some 3-dimensionality. Then I began to add finer details both in shading and subtle lines that make Estelle look more like herself.

Cross Hatch Still Life

A still life of a round bag, garlic, two books, a ball, a candle holder, dropper bottle, and mug. All cross-hatched for dimension and value.

I drew this still life of various objects from my room by first sketching out basic forms. I drew the objects on top of these basic forms and corrected them as I saw appropriate, using sighting and measuring techniques. Finally, as I decided that the forms were correct, I added cross-hatching to add dimension and inform the shape of the objects. I used vine charcoal and conte crayon for the basic shape and form of the objects, and finalized them with a graphite pencil.

Reductive Value Origami

A black and white charcoal drawing of an origami swan, a ball, and a broken sphere.
A reductive value charcoal drawing. An origami swan sits in the foreground in a rounded platform. Behind the head of the swan is a ball, and next to the ball is half a sphere that looks as if part of it has chipped off. The light source is to the right of the drawing, casting shadows to the upper left of the piece. The value of the swan is mostly light, with many highlights on the creases of the origami paper.

Reductive value is the process of adding value to the paper and then erasing to create shapes and definition. After establishing lighter value shapes, I went in with a darker charcoal and added shadows, as well as using a white conte crayon to add highlights when an eraser wasn’t enough. Since this image is so zoomed in on the still life, there are only three major forms in frame. The origami swan is the focal point, and the lightest form in the image.

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