The last three are self portraits. I used conte crayon for the first few and a plain old mechanical pencil for the last. I probably don't have to say that I was frustrated with the crayon. I think that shows. As I progressed, it seemed less bulky and more controllable. I won't give up. I will get this media figured out. I want to dig out some of my other paper and test it on different textures.
I must have been feeling young today. My self portrait reminds me of a young girl I once was. It brings memories to mind every time I look at it. It is nice to have those little reminders. It is energizing.
There is a much larger tonal range in the graphite vs the conte crayon. I have not practiced mixing the different crayons for tonal effects, but that is my next task. I am not a fan of the blended look in crayon as much as the rough texture it creates in hatching and scribbling. (At least on my sketch paper) My biggest complaint is that I crave a sharp point in the crayon and it wears down so quickly that its very difficult to maintain that sharp edge. It will be interesting to see the difference between these first few sketches and some I do in a month or in a few months.
My daughter and I have challenged each other to do a page a day. As a writer, she must write a full page. As an artist, I must produce a page of sketches. These are going to go in my "Saturday Check Up" where we swap books and check up on each other. There is no quality requirement. This is a quantity requirement. It is a little experiment we are doing to stop the self editing problem that creates block for us. This is an idea I got from Art and Fear. We will see how well our quality improves after a year.
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