Saturday
Apr252009
Winged Victory
Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 12:14AM 
Winged Victory(after a cast of the Hellenistic Greek Statue Victoire De Samothrace)
18 x 24 inches, cropped detail
white chalk and vine charcoal on blue laid Ingres paper
In 2003 I was amazed to find for sale a high quality 1/2 scale cast of the Winged Victory. She is my prized possession but somehow I rarely find time to sit and draw her. I finally got a chance and spent several days over the last couple weeks experimenting with chalk on toned paper.
I started with a pencil line drawing on white paper and transferred the major lines once I felt confident with the drawing. It was difficult to control details and values on the textured laid paper and I found it worked best to sharpen white chalk pencil and hard/medium vine charcoal to a very fine point with sandpaper.
I'll be teaching this Sunday and then Monday I'll be out of town for 10 days, so the blog will be quiet a while till I get home and get my studio work going again. I've been chipping away at the big still life, hoping to post another finished detail soon!
Reader Comments (5)
This is gorgeous! Wow!!!
Really beautiful!
Good luck and see you then...
a work of art on art, beautifully executed r.
Thank you everyone for your comments!
Somehow white and dark chalk/charcoal on toned paper looks like a finished artwork, and also more emotive, than just pencil on paper... but pencil is in a way more challenging, because it requires so much more detail, and a higher level of "finish" But I really enjoyed this and will do more.
Gorgeous! Simply gorgeous. Actually, maybe the lack of detail worked out better, because it became more evocative and romantic, more about the spirit of the statue than its finish. LOVE IT.