David's Ear
Charcoal on Strathmore 300 series, 17"x 11", August 2019. Drawn from life.
This is a drawing of a plaster cast of the ear of Michelangelo's David. It is my first exercise in "hyper-real" drawing.
This cast was very interesting and fun to draw -- while most of it is composed of general uniform shadows, the cracks and chips throughout the cast added an element of uniqueness that was particularly challenging to capture.
I tried the technique of erasing the top outline of the ear where there was no shadow falling on the actual cast itself. While there is no differentiation of where the paper ends and the cast starts, the human eye is able to infer the shape of the ear. It also makes it look far more like it is popping out of the page.
This cast was very interesting and fun to draw -- while most of it is composed of general uniform shadows, the cracks and chips throughout the cast added an element of uniqueness that was particularly challenging to capture.
I tried the technique of erasing the top outline of the ear where there was no shadow falling on the actual cast itself. While there is no differentiation of where the paper ends and the cast starts, the human eye is able to infer the shape of the ear. It also makes it look far more like it is popping out of the page.