Charcoal Explorations

Invented Landscape in Charcoal

I have been spending about 20 minutes each morning working in charcoal. I generally work without any plan or source. I have only about four basic charcoal colours, but I use mainly black and white. The images shown above and below were both about 15 to 20 minute sketches. I really enjoy the feeling of working on a slightly larger than normal format, and especially without a care about “wasting paint” if the result is less than satisfying.

I found the charcoal, unlike oil paint, does not look very good up close. One loses the effect that the work has when viewed across a room. The photos below shows the A3 pad on my makeshift easel. When I step back, as in the left photo, it allows me to see if the image has potential for a painting. I have since turned the left image (top of this post), into a painting that I am quite happy about.

I love the earthy matt look of a strong charcoal line. I have been thinking of ducks and drakes on still water as the night approaches. Wendell Berry wrote a poem about this:

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. 
This copy from The Poetry Foundation

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