Mixed Media

For these pieces I wanted to show how I can make a realistic portrait of something using only charcoal and ink, and demonstrate my knowledge of shading values. It was hard to demonstrate the accurate shading values in the final piece, but I feel as though I accomplished these goals and am proud of how it all turned out.

For my mocha piece, the only materials used were ink, charcoal (and charcoal pencil), and a singular graphite pencil on watercolor paper. This is because I wanted to experiment with materials I usually don't work with, and expand how I shade and do realistic portraits. So I used a graphite pencil to begin with a light sketch, and then began my shading with my charcoal. Finally, I used my ink to fill in the completely black places, and then added the final little details and it was finished. For my shaded value strips one was made with graphite pencils, and I went from darkest/heaviest to lightest pencil and blended it all in. For my charcoal value strip, I started out soft and continuously built up the shade value. And finally for my Ink value strip I started with very few light brush strokes, and slowly transitioned into many heavy brush strokes.

For these pieces I did not use a lot of research. On the other hand, for my mocha piece I used a gridded reference photo of her to accurately and proportionality draw her out. It took awhile to get the exact measurements I wanted, and when gridding my art piece I had to redo it on multiple occasions, but once it was finished I was happy with the final piece.