smudgedAt the art supply shop, I found some natural willow charcoals. They are rather lovely - unlike the manufactured pressed charcoal, they look like natural sticks with knotholes and wiggles.
I tried them out by drawing some landscapes from holiday snaps. Top to bottom: Welsh hillside, Tintern Abbey with God Beams, rooftops of Istanbul.
I also got some sticks of pastel. Goodness, they are bright, crumbly tricky things! I'll spare you the worst ones where it all went horribly wrong and I bailed out swearing. This was one of the early attempts that I did actually finish. I quite like the smudgy beach background but you can see that I really haven't got the hang of drawing with the fat flaky sticks. Mollydog (ginger) is particularly stiff and oddly shaped.
I decided that something with more shades and less fiddly detail might be the way to go, so as there were cows about, I drew a cow. If you are wondering why her horns are so asymmetrical, that wasn't me. That was her: cow with the crumpled horn! I have got her eyes a bit squonk though.
Possibly the answer to the detail thing is just use bigger paper. This picture of a grown up Cottia (from Eagle of the Ninth) on a horse in autumn was on A3, and I quite like it although my brain keeps insisting it must be a picture from the Wild West because of the colour scheme. I have a story that this fits into but whether I'm going to actually get it finished and include this scene, who knows. Something not quite there about the horse's front legs possibly.
(bigger) I was quite pleased with this attempted portrait of a grown up Cottia. It doesn't quite look like the random photo that I chose as a model, but I think it does look like an actual person. Eyes a bit too big probably and I think her mouth is too far down her chin, but still.
Click for bigger versionThen I decided I would have a go at Cunoval (Esca's father from Eagle of the Ninth) in charcoal. With a hound, of course. And a torc. At some point I am going to write a story about Cunoval's part in valiantly vanquishing the horrible Ninth Legion.
Philmophlegm feels he looks too much like Lionel Richie, but I maintain that this is because Lionel Richie looks too much like the Dying Gaul. Again, huge eyes. I have real problems making eyes the right size.
