9_6: Looks nice. I don't think the lack of volume has anything to do with rubber erasers or gestural drawing; the problem here is specifically the subject matter. It's extremely hard to convey volume with something like patterned fur without a really strong form lighting situation. try some simple still life objects with one light source and see how that goes.
Oh actually it did have a lot to do with lack of tools.
The rubber eraser is a vital tool for touchups. Without it, you can't paint additively which isn't a small deal. I couldn't give that tiger its white whiskers because of that and all substitutes I tried would only smear rather than take away.
I had trouble getting values other than sort-of-50%-gray, black and white right due to the lack of tools and me not knowing what I'm doing and I still feel that subtle values are something that just happens randomly rather than a thing I can control.
Specifically, I wanted to convey the orange as a smooth transition of darker gray into the white and was unable to do so.
By "gestural" I meant the fact that you just can not get right down to details with charcoal like you can with a pencil or even digitally.
That is not to say it isn't possible to work detailed, you just have to think of new ways to achieve it.
In some ways, it forces you to start off rough and think in terms of value rather than lines which, I feel, is what I've been lacking.
Does that make any sense?
Anyway I tried doing still lifes but those are just depressing to look at because I can't seem to get proportions right.
I have definitely been constructing way too much and never really learned to look.
Some "effort pieces", studies of northern gannets:
I like to think that I
somewhat improved on the technical level but I'm still mostly getting the hang of the tools.
I have trouble getting large areas of black to stay black. Using willow charcoal. Can you believe that?
It is kind of an "immersion breaker" to see stripes of dark gray shine through where pure black is supposed to be.
I actually had to cheat a bit and photoshop the second one to darken the background and it's still not consistently black.
Also proportions. Always the proportions.
Here are the
refs.