Playing around with the old computer and dashed off a quick self portrait using  the “charcoal” brush in Corel Painter.

Since I don’t really know the software, it didn’t end up looking like it was drawn with charcoal. More like petroleum jelly on wax paper.
That is one of the disadvantages of digital media; normally there aren’t that many settings and options on a chunk of charcoal.

Self-Portrait 4-12-12 preliminary sketch

First ten minutes. Preliminary sketch where I roughed out the facial features and blocked in the background.

Twenty minutes into the sketch.

After twenty minutes of sketching I was starting to get some values on the face. You can get some nice soft shading gradations with charcoal but I wasn’t interested in that.

darren brant Self-Portrait 4-12-12 After Thirty Minutes

This is how my self-portrait looked after thirty minutes. I was trying to darken up the shadows on my face without loosing the nervous feel to the lines.

Self-Portrait 4-12-12 final

After forty minutes of work I decided I was done. I’m happy with the results, especially since my Corel Painter knowledge is negligible. (Listen to the artist blame his tools)

Title: Self Portrait 4/12/12
Media: Corel Painter 12 (charcoal)
Size: 11″ x 17″