This session of Drawing with… is dedicated to the draped figure, but not just any figure. For this session, I searched in Heaven and Earth, or better, Heaven and Hell.

The reference images I picked to choose from for this session, are two beautiful drawings of angels in charcoal and chalk on toned paper, one by Carracci and one by Pontormo, and a detail from a Luca Signorelli fresco that can be found in Orvieto’s Cathedral, and depicts the Devil and the Antichrist, quite a couple!

I was always fascinated by the clever compositional device that Signorelli employed to unify these two entities of evil: whose arm is that? The devil’s? the Antichrist? Do they share that arm? This work is a fresco painting but we will be using graphite to create a monochromatic study or colored pencils to recreate this powerful detail in color.

Materials:

• Graphite pencils in HB- B gradation
• Colored pencils in red, brown,black, yellow ochre, white
• A couple of sheets of Gray or tan toned paper,
• charcoal in sticks (Nitram is an excellent product) and pencils, in medium and soft gradations,
• white chalk in pencil or sticks,
• kneaded eraser,
• sand paper to sharpen the charcoal, that’s it!