{"id":1638,"date":"2016-12-29T15:12:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-29T23:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/?p=1638"},"modified":"2016-12-29T15:12:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-29T23:12:42","slug":"willamette-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/willamette-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Willamette River"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Willamette<\/a>

Willamette River<\/p><\/div>\n

Winter in the Willamette Valley has its own stark beauty – cold and gray. I thought charcoal would be the best medium to express this scene interpreted from a personal photo.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This was a test\u00a0to see how some new art materials worked together. The paper is an off-white charcoal paper with a rough texture. I tried a variety of charcoals and erasers on it, but first I made a light pencil sketch outlining the clouds, trees, and reflections. Then I started light with vine charcoal. On smooth paper I can put vine charcoal directly on the paper and blend it out evenly with a paper towel. I tried that in the sky on the left above the trees and discovered that this paper having a rough texture does not blend smoothly. The initial marks stay put. So, for the rest of the drawing I scribbled vine charcoal on a separate piece of paper, picked it up with a paper towel and then applied it to the drawing with a light circular rubbing scrub building up the clouds and their reflections in the water slowly. Next I did the trees and their reflections using vine charcoal directly on the drawing and blended with a small tortillion (a pointed paper stub). You cannot get a deep black with vine charcoal. So, I switched to using a dark charcoal pencil and for the deepest black I used water-soluble charcoal activated with a moist waterbrush. I discovered that once water-soluble charcoal dries on this paper, it does not erase. The best I could do was to lighten the tone slightly. I needed to be careful about where I added the darkest blacks.<\/p>\n

I did this drawing in two sittings over two days. I like to start a drawing one day\u00a0and finish it the next. That way I have a chance to see the drawing with a fresh eye. I often catch things that need adjusting, things that I would likely miss if I tried to finish in one go. In this case I let the darkest blacks in the water go until the next day. I wasn’t sure how dark they should be. The color reference photo had\u00a0a lot less contrast. After sleeping on it, I decided to push the contrast – make the darks darker. It tells the story better of deep, cold water.<\/p>\n

Materials<\/strong>: Strathmore 500 series 9×12 inch charcoal paper. Image 7.5×10.5 inches (19.7×27 cm). Vine charcoal in a homemade reed holder, Derwent Dark charcoal pencil, Art Graf water-soluble charcoal tailor shape block, small tortillion, Tombow Mono Zero eraser and Derwent #2 waterbrush.<\/p>\n

Jim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter in the Willamette Valley has its own stark beauty – cold and gray. I thought charcoal would be the best medium to express this scene interpreted from a personal photo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,37,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-charcoal","category-traditional-art","no-featured-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xTIN-qq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1641,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions\/1641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimblodget.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}