Walking through the garden I stumbled on a piece of an old chair destined for the bonfire; nothing special (or useful) but with a moderately attractive patina. So I figured that it would make a good study in charcoal and pencil:
To kick things off I very lightly outlined the shape to make sure that the dimensions were roughly accurate; I didn't spend too much time on this beyond drafting out the locations of the various key features. My real work began with laying down a background tone in charcoal, without losing sight of the edges, before working out where I needed to ease in highlights. This involved a fair amount of discrete, focused erasing and smoothing of edges where the contrast felt too great:
Pleasingly I think that, for once, the medium and the subject are in accord: both display graininess, a rather rough look which is surprisingly smooth to the touch, and this comes across in my picture. Also the range between high and low-lights is in line with the actual piece of wood and quite believable. That said my favourite bit is the screw poking out at the end; this was all done in charcoal and by sheer good fortune the thread of the screw has just the right balance of rust and reflected light. I guess that sometimes a drawing can surpass the subject as, for sure, this is as good as it is going to get for this piece of wood!