Muhsin's Art Class

Hello, Muhsin here! This Sunday I'll show off my drawings from my art class. I took this course in Fall semester of 2020. All classes were remote, and this was no exception. The course I took was just called "Drawing". The tools we used in the class were pencils, pens, and charcoal. I was familiar with pencils and pens, but charcoal pretty new to me. I had difficulties not only because it was messy, but also because I bought the wrong charcoal. If you ever need to buy vine (soft) charcoal, make sure the you don't get the one with thin pieces!

Most of the class consisted of copying either real-life items or imitating artwork. The class's purpose was to develop our ability to translate the what we see directly into the paper, while improving our technical skills. In this post, I'll pick my favorite and the most educational art pieces for each medium.

Pens

The pens

The pens were fun. We had different tip sizes, .005 (very tiny), .02 (typical thin pen), .08 (bold), and a brush pen. The brush pen in particular was really cool since it could fill spaces really well and it could create some very expressive art if handled correctly.

Pen value chart

Since value (shading) was a very important proponent in the course, we were made to do 10 levels of darkness for each type of drawing tool. Note how dark the brush pen (right) can get compared to the .005 (left).

Blind Contour

Reference

The professor had us look at an object and draw without looking at the paper and without lifting our pen off of the paper. It's a fun exercise and gives you a little idea of how your brain is processing what you see. Contour means that we're not worrying much about shadows, instead trying to represent the objects with solid lines.

Curtains

I think this is my highest quality pen drawing. The reason it's so soft looking is because I only used the .005 pen (which sadly broke as a result of this drawing). I built up value slowly by layering crosshatching and paying attention to the dark and light spots of the curtains. To differentiate the objects, I tried to apply different types and directions of crosshatching, called changing the "texture". Pen is really cool because unless you pour ink on the art, you don't ever lose the details that you put down at the beginning of the work.

Pencil

The Pencils

We had to get four pencils, each with an individual hardness. HB is the hardest, then it got softer from 2B to 4B to 6B. The reason for the variety of hardness is that the harder pencils mark lighter, and the soft pencils mark darker. So, we'd get a much wider range of value, and shading dark objects is way more efficient with the 6B compared to the HB. One of the most interesting things about drawing in pencil was that it was easier to use blunter pencils than sharpened ones. Sharper pencils, especially the HB, could risk indenting or even ripping the paper.

Pencil Value Chart

Pencil is more difficult than pen because its tough to find the balance between pressing hard enough to make a dark shade but ensuring the paper won't get indented. As you'll see in the upcoming photos, I actually struggled with generating a very dark value of pencil.

Sphere in Pencil

This was one of the first pencil drawings we did in class. We basically copied a photograph of a sphere. One of the very important things things I learned was about reflections. The reason the darker crescent of the sphere is not entirely shaded dark is because theres a reflection from the table onto the circle's bottom. Having a reflection like this really fleshes out the object and makes it look three-dimensional. Something you can't see about this drawing is the time I took. I spent maybe four or five hours on this drawing since I was afraid to use darker pencils and unable find the "balance" of pencil pressure I talked about earlier.

Negative Space of Hamzah's Pothos Plant

This exercise, similar to the blind contour, was meant to improve our perception. In art theory, the areas where an object exists would be considered positive space, and the other areas will be considered negative space. By shading only the negative space, we practiced the construction of a two-dimensional space from a three-dimensional object (which was the plant Hamzah left). More than anything, this drawing was a mental exercise where we learned to perceive the world in a different way. Very cool stuff.

State College Corner Room two-point perspective drawing

This was the only "big" pencil drawing we did. It actually had a bit of pen to emphasize some dark places. A lot of this drawing was measurement. To get the accurate shape of buildings, we had to learn some techniques which involved aligning the horizontal lines to meet at two points outside of opposite sides of the artwork. However, vertical lines in two-point perspective are purely vertical. I did this late at night right before the 8 AM class because I was being lazy that week. So, you can see the buildings on the right side sagging a bit, much like my eyelids.

Charcoal

Charcoal was the most difficult to work with, but has the most potential. We used two types: vine charcoal and hard charcoal. Vine charcoal was soft but marked easily. There was a clear limit to how dark the vine charcoal could go. Hard charcoal required a bit more pressure to mark the paper, but would lay down extremely dark marks. Between vine charcoal and hard charcoal, it's easy to tell the difference between them in an artwork. To work around this, the entire artwork would contain different amounts of both charcoal types.

Since it's messy, I always tried to delay the charcoal projects as long as possible, and then did them in hours-long stretches.

Charcoal value chart

This value chart was much harder than the pen and pencil ones, as putting too much charcoal on a paper can irreversibly stain it. Also, it was messy. But you can see with charcoal, it's not very hard to get an even texture.

Charcoal Cube

We did basic shapes for all of the media. You can see that with charcoal, I'm much more haphazard. However, the form still emerges since I was able to capture the reflection on the cube's dark side.

Still Life

With charcoal, we did mostly large projects like this still life. After trying out several other perspectives and object arrangements, I settled on this one since it had the most dramatic lighting. The workflow consisted of putting down a layer of vine charcoal, erasing the light spots, a layer of hard charcoal, and another round of erasing, and then repeating until the object emerges in the paper. It's difficult and requires a great deal of attention, but charcoal is really rewarding in that aspect. I remember doing this project at night since the lighting was best then (also I would procrastinate it until dark).

Carol Heft Charcoal Imitation

This is my favorite charcoal drawing. To improve our skills, our professor had us copy someone else's art. I imitated a stylized landscape by a professional charcoal artist (original work below). It was actually one of the faster drawings I did, but this artwork felt very expressive and I was very pleased with the results.

Reference Drawing by Carol Heft

We were supposed to pick between several pieces of gestural charcoal, but this one really caught my eye. I think the contrast between the clouds and whatever was on the ground was very pretty. Also, the simple ambiguity of what kind of landscape it is was quite fascinating. It could be a lake, marsh, or river. I saw a bridge with a city skyline in the background. It's so amazing how detailed the artwork is without actually telling us what it is.

Conclusion

Art class took many hours and a lot of work, but it really improved my skills. If you want to improve quickly, drawing real-world objects is extremely rewarding. Some media, like charcoal, may be difficult, but in some cases the results can transcend other works with simpler tools. However, in the end it doesn't matter what you draw with as long as you're enjoying yourself.

Thanks for reading!