While in the museum I wanted to create exactly what I was seeing as I knew hat this would be the best way to translate the image with the media. I took very little time with the sketching process and worked in layers over the whole page to slowly build up what I was seeing. This process as rewarding as it is in the end is very frustrating as it feels like you never make progress, the imagine also doesn’t seem to reveal itself until the very end when you take your eyes off it. I found that willow charcoal allowed me to get most of the tone onto the paper and a rubber assisted the highlighting process. I used compressed charcoal and conte sticks for the finer details that wouldn’t have been achievable with the darkest tone of charcoal.
The first two sketches are of ancient sea floor, the first being an A3 sketch and the other an A2 study of the fossil. I think that this looks really interesting and the different textures translated really well onto the paper. The third drawing is of a dinosaur skull. This I really like, it wasn’t until now that I realised that it does closely resemble what I was looking at. I blocked in some background and suggested shapes to make the page look more filled and completed, I didn’t want there to be any negative space on the drawing at all.