Charcoal Drawing

Value Drawing of a "Fairytale" Pumpkin

In my Fundamentals of Drawing class, we are doing value drawings with charcoal...a very new medium to me. I like it alot. For last week's assignment, we had to draw a still life of something organic in nature. Well, I'm learning that my successful completion of these assignments, i.e., without a high level of frustration, is highly dependent upon my choice of subject matter.  So, for this assignment, I chose a pumpkin. When I went to the store I saw the typical Jack-O-Lantern style pumpkins in bright orange and in a variety of shapes and sizes. As I looked at each, I thought, "How am I going to draw that? I see too much texture." After looking them over and rejecting all of them, I came across what were labeled as a "doll house" pumpkin or something like that. These beauties had such shiny, smooth exteriors in a deep rust color with some chalky looking white areas around the creases. And the creases, well, I couldn't ask for a more defined crease. I was definitely going to be able to find highlights and shadows to draw with these babies. So I bought one, took it home, set it up on a sheet in the corner of the kitchen with a photography light as my only light source...I wanted singular shadowing, I'm not up to more yet :) I did one sketch and was hooked.  The charcoal is so forgiving and workable.  I loved putting it on and wiping it off, putting more on and wiping more off, blending, erasing...oh, erasing...I love subtraction as a means of adding definition.

The drawing above is my finished drawing on 18 x 24 drawing paper (which started out as white. I was able to do this assignment much easier than the others. I'm not sure if it was the subject matter or the charcoal. I'll find out soon. I have another assignment in charcoal due next week. We'll see how it goes...BTW, the pumpkin, I found, is also called a "Fairytale Pumpkin". It comes from France where it is called  "Musque de Provence".