Continuing on my roundup theme I’ve been on this past week, I made a YouTube video spotlighting all my current charcoal drawings and uploaded it this morning. Keep in mind this is my first YT video, and I can see a couple things to improve, but everyone has to start somewhere, right? I think it is was a good first effort, and does spotlight my charcoal artwork to date. Here it is:

I used the format and layout for a short (too short?) video I made for Facebook, which my brother really liked although he said I desperately need some music for it (the FB one) and sent me some of his work. Yeah, my brother is very much the musician in the family, and while I didn’t use any of the mixes he shared with me, we did chat a little this morning about him writing something that fits my art better. If I worked in a more modern art style, I’d have used his demos he sent because they have a definite 21st century vibe to them, while my art tends to have a more classical aesthetic.

Prior to the Facebook short, I had made an animated Pin for Pinterest … and just the other day discovered you can embed a Pin! There’s no stopping this crazy train now …! Oops, too much? I know I can get carried away some times, but the art-geek in me is very excited by this.

This one quickly eclipsed my first attempt in views, and even got me some new followers over on that platform, so it certainly got tabulated in the Win column. I’m playing around with idea for more, but while those percolate on the back burner of my brain, I thought I’d make up another roundup post to go with all these short videos I’ve made. It would be a little silly to make these videos and not have a matching blog post!

Links to my current charcoal artwork

Here are the links to my individual posts on my charcoal artwork:

• not in the video because I don’t consider it a finished work is the charcoal value sketch for Cherry Blossoms of Spring
• from about the middle of my sketchbook is the first serious charcoal piece I did after getting back into art, my monarch butterfly on a coneflower in charcoal
• part of a fun art challenge the other month is cougar in charcoal. That’s my very unimaginative name for it too.
• fruit themed still life and charcoal go together like the proverbial peas and carrots, and my Apples 3 in black charcoal shows why
• the piece I call Bridled, of the horse head with the really dark background, was one of two drawings I had missed on the blog previously
• then I rolled up a month’s worth of drawing in two parts where I was all about the fruit-themed still life in charcoal (and what will likely be my last work in graphite) plus a few exercises from an online drawing course that I am still working on (at my own pace, and my muse’s pace for that matter). Lots of drawings in those two posts, because I was slacking off on blogging over the dark time of the year.
• technically also a fruit-themed still life is my Quarter Wedge Squash, which I did either right before or right after Bridled in a previous and shorter charcoal kick last year

That brings me up-to-date on charcoal artwork for now. I have an acrylic painting on the easel just for the joy of playing with color and with a medium that isn’t as dusty, but I expect I will be back at the charcoal idea after this painting because I have some new toys to play with: Derwent brand tinted charcoal. I’ve seen it on the art websites I like to frequent (Jerry’s Artarama and Dick Blick, if family members want to send me gift cards) and was intrigued by the idea, so last month I went ahead and ordered the small set of six. I now have the big set of 24 as well! That ought to say it all when it comes to writing a review without providing pictures (yet!). Tinted charcoal to go with all my black charcoal and even white charcoal (which I also now have to play with on my black paper).

Oh, tomorrow I go get a new goat, the younger full sister of my Cocoa Puff – and she is due to kid “soon,” which means I get to do the whole bottle feeding of baby goats things again “soon.” Which will mean a continuation of the charcoal kick, which was probably going to happen anyway … but this time I have tinted charcoal to experiment with.