Fleet Art Society were delighted to welcome back Rodney Kingston, who last time gave us an excellent demonstration of painting a still life in oils.  This time he introduced (most of us) to a different medium - liquid charcoal, which he was very keen to show us.  He had chosen a high contrast portrait to paint, sourced through www.rawumberstudios.com  He said it is very similar to using watercolour and he used watercolour brushes and watercolour artboard.  He used a small tin with a lid for his palette, which has the advantage of keeping the charcoal moist once out of the tube, and can be easily reactivated with water.  He showed how it can even be reactivated on the paper - even after months!

 

He started by putting down a medium tone ground to work into, using a large brush and very free strokes.  Then he used a slightly thicker mix to put in marks to indicate the height and width of the head.  He said to always check and correct as you work and try and make the drawing as accurate as possible.  He explained about the placing of facial features, looking for relationships between features and angles.

 

Next, he blocked in the dark tones or shadows.  He suggested simplifying shapes - eg a small square for the corner shadow of the mouth or a triangle for the highlight on the forehead. Rodney advised that it is important to balance the charcoal and amount of water, so that the charcoal layer beneath is not reactivated.  He showed how you can remove excess lines with water on the brush.  In this way, you can also take away some of the charcoal to show the light areas on the face.  

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After the break, Rodney moved to a smaller brush and thicker charcoal (less water) to add darker detail to the hair and the deep shadows of the eye sockets etc.  Then he realised he needed to go back to the larger brush for showing the shadow and folds of the jacket.  He softened some of the facial shadow edges and moved around some of the background tone to his satisfaction with a damp brush. 

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Rodney made using this medium seem so effortless and was so enthusiastic that many of us afterwards said we have to try it.  Sales of liquid charcoal might increase around the Fleet area very soon!

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