Charcoal Drawings

The new year brings new creative energy! Recently, I've been drawn towards using charcoal for my portraits. In keeping with the natural theme of my ink and feather drawings, I love the textures and expression that charcoal allows for. 

It was so nice to be able to use my fingers to smudge and really feel the faces I was drawing - something you can't do with straight ink! There's something very primitive about this medium which gives it a very special significance, especially for portraits. Life begins with the earth and we all turn to dust when we finally make our leave.

These pieces were created for fun, mostly in the space of an hour. I have started to develop my technique further, using newspaper cutouts and ink to create more drama and a bring a certain personal touch to each piece. Stay tuned to see how this progresses... 

Well, I did promise crazy, so here's some of my latest experiments using charcoal:

'Call of the Andes' featuring Kanti Qena of Lokandes

 'Secret Garden' featuring Chris Robinson of Dandaluz

'While my guitar gently weeps' featuring multi- instumentalist Alex De Alfaro