Composing your Influences on Paper

APR 5/ by The Wanderlust Collective /Art, Art Class, Brazil, Charcoal, Inspiration, Travel

This week, we are going to start fresh pivoting off the Back To Basics series we just finished up. I’ve gotten so much incredible feedback on all of the Wanderlust Art & Travel segments that we’ve done together. But...I’ve had a few people who said they just didn’t have the confidence to jump into those projects.

So, I decided to solve that problem for you guys. Remember in Star Wars where they did a bunch of movies then they went back in time to when Luke’s father was a boy? They called it the Prequel Trilogy. Well, I realized that we needed to do the same thing so that everyone could experience ALL of the segments of Wanderlust Art & Travel.

Enter…

Wanderlust Art & Travel

Beginner’s Edition

We just started recording this course and I see two major goals that we want to achieve. The first one is to show you how important inspiration is for us as artists. In this course I’ll be taking you to five different locations. Rio de Janeiro, New York City, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and London.

The second goal is to learn foundational art skills that you will have to implement into future projects. By the time you finish this course, you’ll have all the confidence and skills you need to tackle any project.

So this week, we’ll start out once again with drawing, particularly charcoals.

As you know, drawing is the basis and foundation for painting, so I strive to emphasize it for my students. All of these courses get better with your input, so drop me a note at Margie@WanderlustCollective.art and let me know what you want to learn about drawing and charcoals. As always, you’ll get a special gift from me for your ideas!

I love to travel, and I pull much of my inspiration from those experiences. One of the most recent inspirations was Brazil. I did so much exploring in the rainforest, and discovered the artist Jorge Selaron, who built the famous Selaron Steps in Lapa. As I write this blog today, Jorge is still collecting tiles from all over the world.

Making friends with monkeys was one of my favorite experiences. I wanted to take one home with me. I took so many notes, videos, and photographs of them to use later in my compositions.

While traveling can be inspirational, it can also be overwhelming when it comes down to putting a painting together. There are so many fresh ideas floating around in your mind, where do you start? Having experienced this feeling many times, I’ve developed a method that has helped my students to gather their ideas from their experiences and thoughts, and get them down on paper.

Journaling is such an important part of the creation process. It helps us put everything into perspective and pinpoint exactly what impacted us the most in any given situation or experience. I love starting the journaling process by first answering questions such as:

What were your takeaways from the experience?
Specifically what caught your attention?

After honestly answering these questions I like to do a braindump. I take everything that impacted me from my trip, or inspiration and jot it down on paper. Then I pull from my brain dump and create a story. This enables me to come up with the composition that I will later put on paper or canvas.

"A colourist makes his presence known, even in a simple charcoal drawing."

Henri Matisse

Charcoals

Now when it comes to what medium I will use, I usually think of what medium will make my art piece flow the best. For my inspiration from Brazil, I chose charcoal on green tinted paper. Choosing green as my base color helps bring the atmosphere of the jungle together. It gives it a more painterly effect, without using paints. It’s a flexible medium, unlike working with graphite, because you can blend it into varying shades of gray. You can create strong solid lines, or blur the lines to create a more atmospheric effect. Working in charcoal helps the artist focus on the soul of the subject, and you can ignore other things that would normally detract from the true nature of the composition. Vine (Willow) charcoal is an uncompressed charcoal. You can use this for lighter tones. Compressed Charcoal sticks are great to use in larger areas and to get those dark tones. White charcoal are wonderful to use on tinted papers, because they make the image pop.

Erasers

Erasers are wonderful for effects too. Kneaded erasers are wonderful to mold into shapes and are great for subtle changes. Gum erasers are harder, and are great for pulling those highlights.

Blending

Blending Stumps are also called tortillons. They’re great for blending small details. I also love to apply lighter tones using what is left of the charcoal to blend. Many artists also use toilet paper to blend out their charcoal. This is my go to for larger areas.

Paper

The best choice of paper for charcoal is white, thick paper with a bit of texture. White is great when you really want to show off your values (lights and darks). But, as I said before you can use tinted papers to give it a more painterly effect. Pastel papers are great, and they also have charcoal papers. Strathmore has a great charcoal paper brand I love to use for this.

Happy Creating! 😘