I love both sanguine portraits and charcoal portraits, I think there is something very expressive drawing a face in charcoal, maybe because of the simplicity of the black and white. Then there is the poetry of sanguine that creates a beautiful soft effect, with the loveliest earthy reds against the cream paper.
Here below is a charcoal portrait of Polly who is 20 years old.
These are four sanguine portraits on heavyweight Arches cream paper (30cm x 40cm (A4) just a little bigger) of four siblings commissioned for a special present. All with lovely faces to draw. When I use sanguine I like to also combine the red with graphite pencil, this gives the colour some depth as I find the colour can become too saturated. I have also brush-washed over large areas with water and sanguine. It is a lovely generous medium and great fun to work with.
The sanguine comes from the art shop Zecchi in Florence, Italy. It has a selection of quality art materials to feast your eyes upon and the sanguine is bought in rock form. No fancy pencils here just a big prehistoric rock of iron ore! At the end of this post I have made a short video of the process from my cave-man sanguine rock to ready to use bespoke pointy pencil for these detailed portrait drawings.
Below are the drawings side by side.
Thankyou for looking. If you are interested in any drawing portrait commissions please contact me on:
I made this video starting from the block of red oxide which I ground on a heavy piece of glass using a glass muller, once it was ground into a powder which took about five minutes, I gradually added water until it resembled a thick paste that could be easily rolled into pencil thick sticks that fit inside my charcoal holder.
I made my sticks a little too thin dor my charcoal holder so I had to wrap a piece of paper towel around the stick so it would hold well in the holder.
I sharpened the sanguine sticks firstly using a sharp knife to get the pencil shape, and then perfected the point with sandpaper. The sanguine is quite brittle so I had to treat it carefully but I liked its colour and softness as a result.
Anna Dennis | Oil Painter 