When I think of sculpture I think of clay or marble and how reductive it is. You are carving away at a material and pulling the objects out of the mass through a kind of controlled chaos. The process of sanded charcoal is so similar. Laying down the charcoal material and then using sandpaper to, in a way, carve into it. Slowly reducing, pulling and manipulating the charcoal, I’m continually adding, subtracting, toning and refining the image until the level of detail is satisfactory. It’s like pulling the focal point out of the chaos. The finished piece, “Dahlia’s Rapt Gaze” is 32″ x 32″ and won a Drawing award at the Greenwich Art Society.
Here are two more sanded charcoal pieces, The figure is on hold as I decide how to set her. I’m not really a figurative artist. The day lilies was an experiment to see if I could apply cold wax medium to the surface and avoid glass. It worked!
I’ve started to incorporate color via chalk pastel to the charcoal. The first experiment was a cicada.
I’m working on a landscape now which is a commission. Instead of sanding charcoal I’m sanding Prussian Blue chalk pastel as the under drawing and adding colors of Chalk pastel over it. It’s rather ambitious and I’m still learning to control the medium but It’s coming together slowly.
Susan Sapanara 