charcoal art

Anna

Life drawing
“Anna Blue”, 2026, tinted charcoal and pastel pencils on toned gunmetal grey paper, 33″ x 23″

How Anna was able to sustain such a serene expression over hours at the Candid Arts Trust Saturday session is a mystery, but I hope I was at least able to capture a sense of it. A suprisingly challenging pose to tackle, that took me well over an hour just to map out before I was even able to contemplate any details. Despite bringing an arsenal of pastels, pencils, coloured papers, and assorted gimmicks, I ended up working almost entirely in a dark, tinted charcoal and white pastel pencil on grey, with some last-minute additions of red and blue pastel pencil to represent her excellent hair colour and the red walls of the studio, to help draw the figure away from the background.

Beth

Life drawing
“Beth Reclines”, 2026, vine charcoal on paper, drawn from life (20 minutes)

Drawn at a session at Candid Arts Trust Islington – one of my favourite places to draw, especially on their Friday night wine & sketch nights hosted by the very talented Cavin Richards.

A couple of shorter poses earlier in the evening:

Tatiana Reclining

Life drawing
“Tatiana Reclining I”, drawn from life 2025, vine charcoal, charcoal and chalk pencil on toned paper, 12″ x 9″
“Tatiana Reclining II”, drawn from life 2025, vine charcoal, charcoal and chalk pencil on toned paper, 12″ x 9″

Drawn at Soho Life Drawing, both around 20 minute poses. After a few struggles trying to capture some of Tatiana’s exquisite, classical poses in sanguine pencil, I switched to vine charcoal – which is usually a bit too messy and clumsy for paper of this size. But what it did allow me to do was stop trying to capture detail, and use loose, movable sweeps of shadow to define the main areas of light in relief. I probably looked incredibly awkward as I tried my hardest to squint away anything other than the main sweep of the figure. Only after I felt like I had the broad proportions laid down did I try to use some more specific marks to round out the musculature of the back and the lower body. At this scale, I didn’t feel like I wanted to refine these any further. I added some white chalk pencil to capture the top-down lighting in the room and create some lift from the paper.