Charcoal Elegance

This art piece is technically NOT a doodle... this is a miniature study of a 7ft colored pencil drawing I was working on my senior year in college. That's right, I said a 7 FOOT TALL COLORED PENCIL DRAWING.

When I was getting ready to graduate, I was taking an Advanced Drawing class and my professor wanted me to take my work to a different... height? haha I had FINALLY fallen into a subject matter I could focus on without getting bored. Before that, I went through an abstracted object phase, an african phase, an animal phase, an oriental phase, a flower phase, and a "I don't want to do this anymore" phase. All of which lasted a semester. Picking a subject matter and sticking to it was difficult. I mean, you're trying to build a body of work around something you're interested in long enough to spend months working on. It's quite difficult. Then, one day over Summer break, it hit me: CLOTHING. I've been obsessed with clothes since... forever? So naturally I started doodling outfits, and for once I managed to use an ENTIRE SKETCHBOOK. That is something I've always felt extremely guilty about not doing. Pfft... and I called myself an "artist". I've never been able to sketch on the daily. If I sit down to work on something, I want it to be on a more permanent platform, i.e. canvas, wood, really expensive paper and I wanted it ready to showcase. You know, SELL-ABLE. I'm just not a big doodler. With THIS idea? I literally couldn't stop the ideas from flowing, and the only place to get them out quick enough was my sketchbook. Huzzah! I pulled inspiration from magazines, runway fashion shows, movies and peeps on da streets. GENIUS.

So after all of the aforementioned happened, I started drawing things on a larger scale as encouraged by my professor, and I absolutely loved it. It's fun to work big. I managed to do three 7ft drawings that combined charcoal and colored pencil. I was only able to finish 2 of them, the last one (the one the sketch below goes to) is still in progress. It has the most detail/color on it and is about 3/4 of the way finished. I just don't have a surface big enough to work on it anymore... plus it wasn't top a priority. I'll get back to it in due time. Hopefully. I mean, who has wall space large enough to display a 7ft drawing? Pfft.

Either way, I had come across these BEAUTIFUL dresses somewhere several years ago. Loved them the minute I saw them. My colored drawing is done in these soft pinks, bright magentas, and some deep eggplant purples. Very pretty. One of these days I'll photograph it and post it up... hopefully sooner rather than... never? Yeep.

So here it is. One of my favorite sketches. EVER. It's a tad dirty, as most charcoal drawings are... doy.

Enjoi.

Cheerio!