For this composition I chose a stainless steel cocktail mixer and a ceramic milk jug. I placed the 2 items next to each other, on a table in natural light.
I used charcoal as instructed and after making an initial outline worked on building up the tone and lifting out the areas of reflected light.
I found using both the charcoal and the putty rubber difficult and think that I was quite hesitant about working in too much dark and then became frustrated at not being able to work the putty rubber to show the light in the way I wanted. As in previous exercises, I also found that the longer I worked the more of the reflections and tones I could see and as the day began to draw on these began to change and deepen in intensity. I didn’t have any difficulty in identifying the different reflections, but feel I need to work a lot more on how I represent this. I don’t think charcoal is a good medium for this as I don’t find it is subtle enough, i.e. it is too chunky and its does not seem to lend itself easily to varying degrees of tone. However, given that I’ve seen brilliant pieces of work using this medium, it would actually suggest that I need much more practice!
Below is the finished piece.
Deborah McAulay 