Charcoal & Ink

Giovanni 14 December, 2018

This drawing is called the King of the Cats and is an example of a drawing that uses charcoal and ink. I drew Norman, my cat, by using many different techniques including shading and enlarging. I also drew Norman by using a graph. I first took a picture of Norman, then I drew a graph over the printed picture, making sure that the drawing is proportional to my drawing surface. In this case, my drawing paper was two times bigger than my picture, meaning that when I draw the graph I would need to make sure that it is two times bigger than the other graph. I also had to make sure that whatever I drew was mimicking the picture, square by square.

I drew Norman, and the bag, with two different materials; ink and charcoal. I used the charcoal to add shadows and darken certain areas of my drawing. The ink, on the other hand, was mainly used to dd finer detail, including the fine hairs of Norman's pelt and other smaller details. The paper itself that I was drawing on is the medium "gray" of my drawing, meaning that anything lighter than a medium gray had to be made lighter. I used a white charcoal stick to make the white areas of the drawing. The blanket, highlights, and Norman's eyes and whiskers were all made out of white charcoal. There are some other, smaller, examples of the use of white charcoal in my drawing. Norman is made up completely of ink, besides a little white charcoal, and each hair is one individual line of ink.

I wish that I had more time to work on this project. There are some things that I would of liked to add if I simply had more time to work on my project. If I did have more time, I would have added more hairs on Norman, to make his coat look darker. Norman is a black cat, and his coat should have been as dark as the shadows behind him. Besides that, there was not much that I would have changed about the drawing. I love the way that it turned out and I hope that I will do even more realistic drawings in the future.