Drawing experiments

Because I'm working on paper to create 'Gehenna', I want to make sure I'm continuing to draw with colouring pencils to ensure I'm fine tuning my drawing skills, enabling me to work flexibly with a plethora of mediums at play. This is important for me to keep practising as I'd love to use a variety of different mediums all within the same piece, creating a multi dimensional, visually diverse result.

As I have been learning a lot about Artemisia Gentileschi's work, the baroque period and the nuances of the styles of that period, I decided to try drawing a portrait over an incredibly dark paint pour experiment that I carried out weeks prior, to try and emulate the effects of Tenebrism, a popular style of painting seen through out the baroque period that harbours chiaroscuro features. Chiaroscuro is an Italian term meaning 'light-dark', in paintings the term refers to clear tonal contrasts of light and dark, often the darker tones dominating the majority of the image, allowing the sparse areas of light to really pop, creating a very dramatic and cinematic effect. 

I enjoyed the effect that was created by working over an incredibly dark background and adding minimal light linear drawings to overlay the paint pour. I'll definitely like to employ this technique in 'Gehenna' to enhance the dramatic atmosphere in the image. 

To achieve the best results, the brand and quality of pencil should definitely be taken into account. I noticed some of the cheaper pencils I used didn't show up over the dark background, yet when I used artist quality water colour pencils and chalk pencils the results were much more vibrant.