Life Drawing in Charcoal (Dover Art Instruction) [Paperback]

Douglas R. Graves (Author), Art Instruction (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dover Art Instruction | Publication Date: November 4, 1994

Rather than building up a drawing from lines, this innovative method encourages students to begin with tonal masses. Suitable for experts as well as beginners, its step-by-step demonstrations feature over 200 illustrations. Topics include foreshortening, use of modeling to achieve added dimension, facial features, and other aspects of life drawing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications; 1st Dover ed. edition (November 4, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486282686
• ISBN-13: 978-0486282688
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #82 in Books > Arts & Photography > Drawing > Figure Drawing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing Charcoal to Life, January 29, 2002

By 

Peter Mackay "surgeonsmate" (Campbell, ACT Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Life Drawing in Charcoal (Dover Art Instruction) (Paperback)

I recently reviewed a book on life drawing where the author used a painstaking process to make gorgeous pencil drawings. He focussed on building up tone through meticulous hatching and shading. (And outlining and measuring - very obsessive but rewarding.)

This book also focuses on tone rather than line, this time in charcoal and without the rather anal measuring and outlining.

In fact it is far more accessible to the average life student, because the methods Graves uses can likewise be used in a life class. You don't need days and days of posing. Nor do you need the foundation drawing skills required by the other book. This is a book which can be put to immediate use.

And very valuable it is, too. Expect an improvement in your results the first time you put the lessons taught by Graves to use. You will find yourself looking at your model as a collection of tonal areas, rather than lines, and consequently your drawings will have more shape to them. They will be brought to life.

The essence of Graves' method is to work with two tools - charcoal and a chamois. Tones are built up with the charcoal, and the chamois is used to lighten them. One early exercise uses a "wash" of charcoal to create a background and then shapes are picked out with the chamois to make the drawing. Darker values such as shadows are added with more charcoal.

The book starts with the basics. Tools, media and techniques. All illustrated and described, along with exercises illustrated for the student.

Chapters are presented as exercises, each focused on a different topic. Lines and shadows, proportions, alignments, composition and so on, each building on the last. Step by step the final image is built up from broad tonal masses to detailed shapes. Construction lines are shown and at each step Graves tells us precisely what he is doing and why.

I particularly liked the illustrated explanation of the difference between lines and outlines. The body has lines, such as the creases formed when folding the elbow, and outlines, being the imaginary line where the body finishes and the background begins. Drawing body lines reflects reality, but drawing outlines imposes something that isn't there - we don't see bodies surrounded by lines - if the background and the body are the same colour they blend into each other, they don't form a line. Graves uses negative shapes to help define the outline, a much more natural and satisfactory method.

Graves shows and tells in a pleasant, consistent manner how to improve our techniques. There is something here for all levels, but this book is perhaps best used by an intermediate artist rather than a beginner or an expert. A few basic skills help to get right into it, and if you are already achieving good results you may not feel happy about changing your ways.

Having said that, Graves provides plenty of flexibility and new ideas to add to an existing skill base. This book *will* help you improve your style.

Highly recommended to anybody with an interest in drawing the nude. Especially valuable to students attending life class for the first time.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Tonal Approach, December 11, 2001

By 

Lee Gordon Seebach (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life Drawing in Charcoal (Dover Art Instruction) (Paperback)

Mr. Graves was one of my art school instructors and a friend for thirty years (he recently passed away), and this book first came out way back in 1969 or 1970 while I was still in his class. Naturally, I recommend this book highly because I learned his approach first hand and know it to be excellent. I distinctly remember him working on the head of one of my figure drawings in class and I was blown away with the beautiful results he produced. I feel lucky to have studied with him, to have known him as a friend and to have studied this book.
The approach is one of "tone," instead of "line," i.e., working on charcoal paper with a middle tone dusting of charoal all over the paper, the lights are removed with a chamois and darker values are added using vine charcoal. The modeling of form proceeds from there, perhaps using additional tools: kneaded erasers, paper stomps, bristle brushes, sponge puffs, etc., depending upon what effects you are after.
We used to work and rework these drawings from life for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, under Mr. Graves' supervision and helpful guidance.
You cannot go wrong with this book.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Different Approach, February 28, 2008

By 

Phil Morin "Visual Artist" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life Drawing in Charcoal (Dover Art Instruction) (Paperback)

This book's main strength is that Graves teaches how to draw the figure using tonal masses instead of a more linear approach .This book teaches the student to draw using vine charcoal with a few exceptions in the gallery at the end. The theory and methods presented do work and are an interesting and useful way of drawing .The author explains his method of drawing is more amenable to those who wish to paint , as painting is less concerned with lines and more with masses of color and or value.A valid point in my opinion. Most of the drawings are nice but a few are iffy and some are crude .The chapter on "keeping the figure from looking stiff" may be correct from what he writes but it is laughable from the standpoint that some of the drawings in this book are exactly that: STIFF LOOKING . How one can contradict oneself like this and not notice is strange. Also sometimes the limbs look pasted on the figures instead of looking like they belong there .Then there is the drawing of the guy pulling on a rope; it suffers from the look of someone that has been in the same pose for hours and winds up looking like he is tired of holding the rope. It really lacks the action and movement that is really required for such a drawing. Now despite my complaints of a few cruddy drawings I think you should look more to this book for the interesting method it presents and not just the quality of every single drawing . The author is capable and in more than one example it shows .
The ones I didn't like are maybe "hurry up" drawings he did to get the book finished quickly . If you want to draw figures in charcoal and want to use a tonal mass approach, then this is worth checking out .