[Freddio]

What materials can I use to achieve photo realism. Preferably b+w eg Charcoal.

Ive been using charcoal a bit but I can't achieve the affect I want,

photorealism with pencils is much easier however I like the strong darkness of charcoal.

Pastel? hmm Id like fine detail.

do you have tips for apllication for charcoal etc?

Id much aprreciate your help..

Thanks very much...

[Pat]

You could always try black and white conte. I always prefered it's control to charcoal.

-Pat

[kebab de mars]

lead pencil.
I don't know if it's call the same in english... In french we say : "mine de plomb".
Awesome "photorealistic" render with that stuff... (of course if u have the technique...).

[Lunatique]

Conte is a good choice.

I sometimes use charcoal to add darker blacks to graphite. You have to lay the charcoal down first, or else the surface becomes too slick with graphite build-up.

[ceenda]

What is conte? Sorry, I've never heard of it before.

[Freddio]

like a hard chalky sort of pastel..

[Blind]

Freddio... if you haven't already heard of this fellow, he's definitely worth checking out. His work is astounding when it comes to b&w photorealism. I believe he's got a fair amount of information up on his site about the materials he uses along with some tutorials as well. Good luck...

J.D. Hillberry

[strata]

whoa... that is... whoa... I had no idea that was even possible... that stucco skull is absolutely a-m-a-z-i-n-g

[eyewoo]

Freddio... also take a look at Steven Assael's photo realistic pencil work... www.stevenassael.com/assael_drawings.html

[jr]

phil, here's a better view of steve's work
http://www.annnathangallery.com/pages/steven_assael.htm

[Freddio]

Thank you very much..

this stuff is very helpful.. thanks

[Light]

Photorealism with pencils eh.. well you could try mixing pencils with charcoal. Get a pack of say 12 pencils in varying opacities and apply them to one of those 9x12 boards or so.

Perphaps finish up by applying charcoal to dark areas.

I've never really been able to get good pencil work by burnishing.

A lot of pencil artist try to leave some of the feel for the pencil in the work..

I've never tried conte but seem some excellent work made in it. Might try grinding some conte up and applying with with a tissue paper(?).

but yeah photorealism with pencil is hard. A lot of even professional artist who use the burnishing end up with a gray mess.

And then there is always fact that pencil tends to want to reflect the light back..

eh.. sorry I couldnt help more. But with your drawing skills rendering should come easy =).

.. nice galleries.. maybe some good stuff there.

[Blind]

Strata: yeah, JD's pretty darn talented, I'd say. I bought his book, even though I'm not into pencil/charcoal drawing myself, and found it incredibly interesting. He goes into detail about his techniques. Defintely worth it. He even signed the inside cover.

Phil: whoa, that guy Steven is fantastic! His technique is obviously great, but the subject material is pretty cool, too. Very dark. I like it.

[ May 04, 2002: Message edited by: Blind ]

[bearsclover]

I'd try J.D. Hillberry's technique, since he is fabulous. And that other pencil artist that was linked to on this page is also fabulous - and he does just straight pencil, right?

I have done some semi-"realistic" pencil drawings, and I never had a problem getting the pencil to work for me. One of my teachers in school was L.A. Times Illustrator Richard Milholland, who did these great "tight" (realistic) pencil illustrations for the Times' Opinion section. He told all of us students to just keep our pencils sharp, keep the smooth illustration board (or Bristol Board) clean, and look really hard at the photo reference, to get all the details. (We always used photo reference - it seemed appropriate!) It worked well enough for most of us in the class.

I don't have any really good examples of my "photo realist" pencil work (and I never would pretend to be as good as some of the other artists mentioned here). But I do have an example of a "semi" (and I do mean SEMI) realistic pencil portrait.

Straight pencil has always worked fine for me. Milholland didn't smear or blend his pencil strokes, and neither do I. I just cross-hatch or whatever. Blending is best for cont� or charcoal - it doesn't look good (IMO) with pencil.

[Torstein Nordstrand]

One problem with using charcoal, or cont� especially, is that you can't undo like you can with pencils. I'd suggest using a hard pencil first, then using a hb pencil to add the darker areas. No matter how soft you go down to (6B, 9B), it will in my experience not be darker than HB, just softer.

Though if you're planning something huge, I'd go for charcoal anyway. Pencil will be too finicky. Oh, and cont� is simply compressed charcoal, by the way.

Good luck

[gekitsu]

adi granov uses a combination of black watercolor and pencil.

maybe you could try that out, i didn't myself as i hate watercolor
what adi achieves with this technique is amazing!
hard little detail with 6h pencil and deep black of watercolor. that i consider combining advantages of two different meia

[-HoodZ-]

bearclover you did a good job on that picture...i recognize him as well its the guy from farscape criton (sp?)