Charcoal Drawing - Megan

This is a time lapse YouTube video I put together when I was sketching my niece Megan in charcoal, I put it together in iMovie on my iMac. I was really just practicing and getting to grips with some new willow charcoal sticks I bought. I forgot how beautiful it is as a medium, I was kind of put off as they always seemed to be really messy whenever I used them. It seems that having the paper nearly vertical helps to keep the artwork clean, well it did for me.

This whole sketch took me about 2-3 hours to complete and although a fairly nice image, I don't think I captured my niece as well as I wanted to.  I ended up using only one stick of charcoal for the whole image, by the time I had finished, that stick had shrunk to the smallest stubble of charcoal you could just about hold!

Though I have really enjoyed this session in charcoals and I expect I'll be visiting my willow charcoal sticks again, soon.

Here is the final image: