Question For Zindy About Shading

[SWIndy]

Hi Zindy

I have a question about your drawings and how you get some of your drawings to be a clean, even shade of black for hair or background? What Charcoal Pencils, type, do you use to achieve this even smooth darkest black? Mine always come out really rough and never really deep black. I draw with Derwent Charcoal.

Like for example in this drawing: http://zindy.zone.dk/html/drawings/s...ica_alba43.htm

Her hair is so smooth and black, but mine always comes out rough and you can see the lines sometimes no matter how many times I got over it or shade it using kleenex, tortillion etc.

Any advice please let me know.

[firefly]

Oh, I wondered, too.How it looks so clean and this shining of the hair...

[Little_Freek241]

You may want to try practicing the different shades you can make on a separate piece of paper first. If you are constructing an observational sketch look at the different light and dark areas and practice redrawing them, pressing down softly, pressing down hard, taking light strokes across your paper etc.

Also, you might want to invest in an artist putty. These work well if you need to rub anything out.

[Nici]

I don't know how she does that,but maybe it looks so dark because it's scanned,when i scan my drawings they look lighter than in real,maybe her scanner makes them darker? Or she has her own secret to let her drawings look so fascinating!!
i was thinking about this as well. (but i think she can answer your question much better than me )

[SWIndy]

You know I have just started trying different pencils on different kinds of paper to see if I can get the desired effect of smooth black. And I learned that charcoal leaves little white dots, real tiny, so it's not fully black and I have to go over the black hundreds of times to try to make it all one solid color. Plus eventually the black fades so it's not a dark as it was before. And if I blend with kleenex then that only lightens the black.

I need to know from Zindy what kind of pencil she uses (Number, brand) to achieve the very dark smooth black and what method.

Yeah perhaps it is the scanner. I did scan a few of my shades and adjusting them with my computer can achieve a close effect to what I want, but that would mean my actual drawing is sacrificed and then I end up with 2 results to my drawing.

[Zindy]

I use a coal pencil from Faber Castell and Cretacolour, I am not sure how much of a different there really is on these pencils, as long as it's pencils. I have tried a few and they seemed to be the same. The worst kinds are the nonpencils one as they never give enough blackness from them.

Maybe the problem is not your pencil but the paper you are using? Make sure it's a very smooth type of paper. When you shade use your fingers.. that's what I do when using coal. You should be able to achieve the blackness with coal.. it's hard not to I think

I always use a soft coal pencil.. it has no number...

No my scanner stays very true to the original when scanning my coal drawings, so no magic or tricks there