The Kentucky Mine - Charcoal Sketch

I recently had a chance to revisit my oldest hobby. To draw with pencil on paper. As a child, I would sketch on my notebooks using HB pencils. Over the years, like for most people, this hobby diminished or lets say gave way to other creative outlets. Coming back to pencil drawing seemed very natural to me especially because this time I was well equipped with the inspiration, information, and the tools. Steve Allrich mentioned in his book to practice the drawing on an everyday basis and I finally took the advice last week on.

I used the picture below as the reference photo for the desired sketch



It's been taken from this book. Here is my rough draft where you can see the basic composition is drawn, negative spaces are marked, object of focus is shaded and the background is laid. The tree in the foreground is sketched to a basic silhouette.


This is the final drawing that I think is complete.

The Kentucky Mine north of Sierra City
9" x 12"
Charcoal pencils on paper

Supplies:
General brand HB pencils #2, #4, and #6
Canson brand Premium Cream Medium Tooth paper
Prismacolor brand Fixative


Side by side comparison


Overall I am happy with the output. The composition is right, however, the sketch has varied from the original picture. The mine structure has shrunk considerably. The tree has further moved to the foreground with obvious shade. The dry grass under the tree pushes the mine back into the center. But the idea is, if you hide the photo, and look at the work alone, you can see the mood of very sunny and warm afternoon is well conveyed. And that's all matters.

This was an experiment to judge the contrasts of light and dark and I think, I got that right!