New Experience with charcoal painting

If you live in the Orange County area, you have a chance to take part in lots of activities especially for seniors. Two weeks ago, we took a still-life course. Here are my second week drawings. Painting with charcoal is fascinating, you got charcoal everywhere on your body, and on your clothes, even on your face if you are not careful. But the most fascinating part is shading and perspective. My first drawing "Bananas for ever" is inspired from an existing drawing on the internet. The second one is live drawing : the magnolia flowers came from the tree of my neighbor who decided that he no longer wanted magnolia tree near his house, so he cut it down. We took the branches with the flowers still on but not blooming yet. We put the branches in a vase, filled it up with water and put a pill of "aspirine"in the water. The next day, the flowers started to bloom. They are fragrant flowers, so the house was perfumed with the fragrance  and the flowers are really huge. So I also show the pictures of the flowers together with my painting.

Magnolia in bloom	My Painting " Bananas for ever"  painted with charcoal
The Magnolia flowers turned orange when getting old	My Painting with charcoal " Magnolia for ever"