Shattered Glass: Compressed Charcoal on Paper

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This is one of my first and still one of my favorite drawings done with compressed charcoal, a medium I have come to love. For the longest time I was afraid of using charcoal, wanting to stick to the safety of graphite for all my drawings, but when we were given the assignment to draw anything we wanted but spend at least 8 hours on it, I decided I’d use that time to introduce myself to charcoal and see what it could do. Since this drawing I’ve moved into using charcoal as my primary medium for large drawings, but still love graphite for smaller work.

To speak to the symbolism of this piece, there really isn’t any. I know it seems to scream a hidden story or message about the dangers of alcohol or perhaps depression, and all of those inferences are valid and add to the appeal of the image, but honestly, I really just wanted a good composition and interesting lighting and shadows. I thought about how the two would go together, but I didn’t necessarily intend to make any sort of point about alcohol or depression.

One fun fact about this project is that I ended up breaking three of my drinking glasses with a hammer before getting a shattered glass that looked just right for reference in the drawing.