Project #26 Drawing with Charcoal

 

In general, drawings with charcoal are looser with fewer sharp details than graphite drawings.  Some artists are very good at sharpening their charcoal and creating tiny delicate details.  Scottish artist Douglas McDougal drew the very detailed charcoal drawing above with help from scalpel blades, sharpend erasures and coarse sandpaper. Find out more about him here. 

The advantages to drawing with charcoal are that it allows you to make a dark black as opposed to a charcoal grey and it does not have a sheen on it, like graphite, that can interfere with viewing the drawing after it is complete.  The disadvantages to charcoal are that it is easy to smudge, creates a lot of charcoal dust which can get on everything around you and the drawing surface and it needs to be fixed (sprayed with a fixer) after being completed.  Graphite drawings do not necessarily need to be fixed but should be fixed to protect them. 

Using compressed white charcoal will allow you to get a clean white on your drawing.  Using charcoal pencils with compressed black charcoal allows you to sharpen them more easily and get finer details and also to keep your hands, paper and work surface cleaner.  The compressed charcoal has a binder in it and will give you a darker mark than vine charcoal. 

Vine charcoal, or uncompressed charcoal, is very soft and smudges well making it easy to move around the paper or drawing substrate.  You can use your hand, a cloth, blending implement or tissue to blend charcoal with.  A kneaded erasure works well for both blending and erasing.

Below is a Damien Goidich drawing which shows a looser, smudgier style.  You can view more of his drawings at damien-goidich-art on instagram. 

Charcoal works well on colored papers, a range of grey papers or other colors work well because you can easily create contrast with black and white charcoal.  Papers with a tooth or texture work better for charcoal than smooth papers.  Some people use sandpaper as a drawing surface.  The sandpaper surface holds the soft charcoal in place better than regular paper.   

Charcoal paper, pastel paper and watercolor paper work well as does cold press paper (as opposed to hot press paper).  Cold press paper has texture.  Hot press paper is smooth. You can also use encaustic boards which have a nice tooth.  

Each artist will have their own preferences.  If you have access to different surfaces, try them and see what works best for you.  

This site has good information about charcoal and step by step instructions on how to draw with charcoal.

The illustration below is an image of the different forms of charcoal (from thevirtualinstructor.com).