Preliminary Drawing for Wayne M. Portrait

(Posted from the cottage)

I made a quick drawing based on the photograph of Wayne at the cottage and transferred it to the canvas by colouring the back of the drawing with charcoal and then tracing over the drawing. I didn't have enough vine charcoal with me so I used compressed charcoal, which is very dark. More of it transferred onto the canvas than I wanted. I could wipe it off or wash it over, so I ended up applying a thin layer of Titanium White over the charcoal, leaving only the outline. Two days later, that thin layer hasn't yet dried, which makes me wonder if there's something in the charcoal that is causing the delay... (and yet Ivory Black, which I use as my black paint, is basically charcoal). Guess I'm impatient. I've sketched in some of the lines for the windows, wall and floor shadows, but will need to fix a vanishing point off to the right beyond the canvas to get the perspective lines accurate. The canvas turned out to be smaller than the 30" by 24" size it was supposed to be so my "centre" point changed slightly.

Below is the initial drawing with the figure at 60 cm tall.



Here is the drawing transferred onto canvas:



Now while waiting for the paint to dry, and the rain to stop, I'm getting back to some other unfinishedp projects...