Dual wielding! Black charcoal in left hand, white charcoal in right hand!

TheZeke

Just started doing this the other day. I'm right handed, left hand is useless to draw with .. till now. Never really tried to draw lefty, time for a challenge.

Oh snap, double trouble.

If I can get lefty working, I'll draw twice as fast! So far the flow is pretty good, but lefty's a bit of a drunk driver. Gonna sober him up with some Betty Edwards exercises over the next week, hopefully get three more practices in by Sunday night if I'm lucky

This was a two hour short pose session, 3 min-5min poses

ZacD

awesome idea, i like these a lot more than your other drawings, a lot more personality.

[Deleted User]

These turned out nice. I had a few teachers who used to have us draw lefty as an exercise, to force us to be deliberate with our marks rather than defaulting to muscle memory or old habits. It really makes you feel much more aware of the whole process while you're doing it. I've never seen anyone double-fist their charcoal before though. It looks like fun!

r_fletch_r

Good ol Betty, "drawing on the right side of the brain" was like a bible when i was in college.

You've got some nice movement in those poses, i love the way you've pushed the feminine curves. only crit would be your feet need better positioning.

Where the hell did you get white charcoal? Do you mean Chalk or are they compressing Ash for drawing (sounds kinda nice actually)

GarageBay9

One of my art teachers honestly said white chalk was cheating. I thought he was nuts... this proves it.

Looks fantastic, man. Most figure studies rely on just shadows and implied light to describe form. I really like that you've got brighter lights in there as well. These poses feel much more alive and there's a great warmth to them.

hijak

Cool, ive done so many figure drawings i cant stand to do my own any more, but i can appreciate what you've done here, pretty neat. Nice combo of massed forms and the ones where you've left your lines more visible are imo stronger. And cheating, please, the only cheating in art is stealing someone else work, well in figure drawing maybe tracing ( but painters do it all the time). If you seriously get good at drawing with both hands you should post a video, that would be pretty sick.

TheZeke

Thanks all!

the white charcoal is General's White Compressed Charcoal, extra smooth Crayon fusain blanc (whatever that means)

Honestly it's not that good. The white charcoal smears differently than the black, it's tougher to get the color onto the paper, you have to press twice as hard to get the same value, and the tip of the charcoal winds up feeling plasticy when you pull it across the paper. The effect is jarring, as the black charcoal in the other hand is much more chalky and smears pleasantly. I'm going to try a few other brands of material, see if that helps.

Once I get a good flow going I'll make a video. Gotta keep both hands moving though, so far I have trouble moving more than one hand at a time .... so far

TheZeke

Mezz

Wow!! Really fun stuff you have going there with your 'double-wielding' Lots of life and personality in these sketches!! Sometimes, there's nothing like using a new material to infuse new life into your work

Keep at it, would love to see more of this!!

TheZeke