Create Soft & Expressive Charcoal Portraits With a Blending Stump

1. Pop Up Inspiration: Soft, Loose & Expressive Portrait: [No Speech] 2. Welcome to Class, Here's What's Up: Hi, everyone. I'm Journey Marisha, and I just wanted to let you know that in addition to my more in depth classes here on Skillshare, from now on, I will also post some shorter pop up inspiration for you to snack on. And yeah, this is the first one. I hope you'll enjoy it. Let's take our charcoal, and I will show you a great way to create a loose portrait with it. Let's go. 3. Create Looseness With Your Blending Stump: For this exercise, you really only need some charcoal powder and a blending stump. And later on, we will throw in a needed eraser, as well. But for now, let's focus on these art supplies. When you've dipped your blending stump in your charcoal powder, just try to observe the shadows as best as you can. Don't obsess over likeness or getting the angles perfect. You know, Just practice with the softness of this technique and focus on expression rather than creating the perfect drawing. In fact, let's create some dynamic and random marks every now and then. It helps to get some energy in there. Just keep observing the shapes and the shadows as best as you can. While we are doing this, we are creating form in face whenever you do a portrait in charcoal, remember that you really want to create the form first before you add any details. That way you can gently explore the features and, you know, the lights and the darks without committing to any harsh lines and limiting yourself to just a blending stump. Or if you don't have one, you can even use your finger, you know? You just need something to prevent you to go into too much detail. If you are getting a bit impatient like I am right here, you can scoop up some of the charcoal powder and put it on the page if you want to get some darker values without having to dip and draw, dip and draw for the next 5 minutes. And another advantage to having a heap of charcoal on your paper is that you can drag your blending stump through it pretty easily and draw with the tip. Like I'm doing right now, you can get some nice soft and loose lines that way. Now that you know the process, I think I will let you watch for a little while. I think that is a good way to really observe without needing to focus on what's being said, you know? Oh while you're drawing, try to look at your portrait way more than at your reference photo. I seem to have forgotten that right right now, and you can see that I have placed the back underneath his eye on the right there, way higher than the one on the left, and a little while it's going to look rather weird. But don't stress out if things like that happen because the charcoal is really forgiving, especially when you are using it in a very soft way like we are doing now with a blending stump. Whenever you're bothered by the excess charcoal powder on your paper, just tap your sketching pad a couple of times on your desk and you'll get rid of that. Now, let's bring in a kneaded eraser. I really love these, but you need to warm them up a bit. Just stretch it out and knead it. And that way will just work better. Just fixing something that bothered me. Okay, there we go. Warming it up. And then we're going to erase some highlights and be quick about it, see? Don't overthink it. Just make some quick marks. You can always get your blending stump and cover some of that up. Try to be as sloppy as you can, you know. Being sloppy is good way better than being too controlled. At some point, our reference photo can kind of work against us. You know, we get lost in details, and we will lose that looseness. And when that happens, just get rid of it and just try to tweak your portraits, you know, in a way that feels good to you. Because we're not really measuring or working with grids, you know, I really don't like that. Sucks the fun out of it for me personally. Uh, but focusing too much on the reference photo will get you some weird proportions, you know. So try to look at your portrait as a new person. And the reference photo is just there for us to observe some shadows and some shapes, and that's it. You know, nobody needs to recognize this person. It's not relevant. And when you get stuck and you don't really know what to do anymore, you can always take a peek at that reference photo and see what you might need to adjust to make it work, and then put it away again. You enjoy this exercise, you will probably also like my class on loosening up with charcoal with seven different exercises. And as your class project, just follow along with me creating this portrait with a blending stump or something else that you have lying around. And if you don't really like this particular reference photo, then find one that you do enjoy because the most important thing is that you connect to your inspiration. Otherwise, you're not going to have fun, and that's not what I want for you. So I hope you join in. And when you're done, please upload your project to the classroom so that I can give you some love and some feedback and that we can all inspire each other because everyone is going to have their own style, their own signature, their own little variations. You know, if you want to bring in different media or, you know, want to switch it up in some way, I encourage you to do that and, you know, just have some fun with it. Happy creating.