Shadows and reflected light

This has been one of my favourite pieces to work on so far not only because its in black and white and i have done a lot of personal work in grey scale but also it is the largest piece i have ever done at A1 size (it literally filled my desk).

I was told to chose 2 reflective objects and in charcoal on A1 or A2 fill the paper with the imagine paying attention to the shapes and reflections the light makes on each object.

I chose a glass tumbler and a small metal bucket i use to store pencils in. At first i was going to just use natural light but in my studio it was getting dull so used one of my photography daylight lamps to cast a light on them from the side. I found using compressed charcoal in different shades worked best for this as the softer willow charcoal just didn't keep the dark shadows as dark as i wanted and working so large i was smudging it about too much as i worked. I also found that Winsor and Newton workable fixative really helped with stopping the smudging so will defiantly be using that again on larger charcoal pieces ( i have used it before but just to fix a piece when finished, never worked back over it before)