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Dave Kobrenski in Artwork
Apr 26 2016 …
At festivals in the village, which were almost always accompanied by much drumming and dancing, the women of the village were always singing and playing their karignon — a hollow tube of metal tied to their finger and stuck rhythmically with a striker. Dozens of these bells played together by many women, with their joyous singing and the exuberant sounds of the traditional djembe and dunun drums, forms quite a powerful musical ensemble.
This artwork is included in my book Drawing on Culture: An Artist’s West Africa Travelogue, which is available to purchase here.
Belle Femme Du Village
14x17” pencil on bristol by Dave Kobrenski
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Step 1
In this step, I’m focusing on the larger forms and shapes, trying to capture the general pose and thinking about how the major shapes form the composition as a whole. It’s pretty loose at this phase, but it’s really the most important part: if you don’t get it right here, little problems can plague you the rest of the drawing!
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Step 2
Now that I have the pose and major shapes blocked out and am happy with how it all sits on the paper, I start blocking out the edges between light and dark. It’s not so much about features or shading yet, but determining the main boundaries between light and dark. I’m refining some of the edges here too and making sure I have the “attitude” and expression right.
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Step 3
At this point, I’ve already mapped out the shapes of the main areas of light and dark, so it’s time to start getting a feel for the value ranges. Also, at this step, I’ve really got to start thinking about the composition, and where the focal point of the drawing will be. There’s a lot of details in this drawing (the hands and bell etc), but I need to make sure that all these little details don’t detract from the focal point. It’s kinda like determining who the main characters in the story will be, and making sure that the minor characters don’t try to steal the show!
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Step 4
In this step, I’ve really started to push the value ranges to their darkest, and working on rendering some of the finer details. Even though its tempting to just get hyper-focused and draw fingers and eyes and all those fun details, I’ve got to stay disciplined and keep working the drawing as a whole so those details don’t feel like disconnected little drawings. So, I’m always jumping around the drawing and making sure the whole drawing works together. At this point, I’m a little nervous about the background and how I can use it to create a focal point in the drawing…
Finished Drawing
A lot has happened between Step 4 and here, and it got pretty intense! There was a lot of pushing and pulling of values, especially in the background. The goal here was to make sure that the all the parts work together as a whole, and that the drawing maintained a good focal point. That meant not being afraid to push the values of certain areas (her headdress, for example) well into shadows so it didn’t compete with the rest of the drawing. Finally, lots of cleaning up of edges and pulling out highlights where needed. In this final stage, I use graphite powder with a paintbrush, and a kneaded eraser, to push and pull value ranges darker and lighter.
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Belle Femme du Village
14x17” pencil on bristol by Dave Kobrenski. At festivals in the village, which were almost always accompanied by much drumming and dancing, the women of the village were always singing and playing their karignon — a hollow tube of metal tied to their finger and stuck rhythmically with a striker. Dozens of these bells played together by many women, with their joyous singing and the exuberant sounds of the traditional djembe and dunun drums, forms quite a powerful musical ensemble.
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Drawing on Culture
An Artist’s West Africa Travelogue
In Drawing on Culture, artist and ethnomusicologist Dave Kobrenski takes readers on an artistic journey of cultural discovery into the heart of West Africa.
“Dave Kobrenski is a gifted artist and musician, and a better anthropologist than many of the PhDs I know. Here is a fine text that depicts people as they are, illustrates their essence, and demonstrates the importance of appreciating, without appropriating, their lives and ways of being.”
— Katherine Donahue, Ph.D, Professor Emerita, Anthropology
About the Author
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