How to Draw with Charcoal

How to draw with charcoal:

Well..... were working with black again. And that's just fine.

Do you think it's so different to draw with charcoal than with drawing pencils.

If we think about charcoal for drawing, we need to think about where it comes from.

It's one of the earliest forms of pigment known to man. Coming from burnt wood, (it's a basic form). The grains of it's pigment rubs off onto a surface without much work from you.

In fact it can get everywhere...

Because it is a natural form, charcoal has not had any additives put with it, no wax to help keep it together for instance....

In this way we are working with a dry, grainy substance.

This opens up the ability of how to draw with charcoal to your best ability and it lends itself to being able to be spread across a surface easily and the pressure that you apply to it, gives different intensities of shades.

In fact, drawing with charcoal is a rich medium.

Charcoal comes in many forms, from a pencil, to thin sticks. You can even make it yourself if you burn some wood till it turns to black to charcoal, which can be handy if you want rather big pieces of charcoal to use for broad spaces.

"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let's have a look at some different ways you can use in how to draw with charcoal.

Drawing is not just drawing, you can find different styles in drawing with charcoal everywhere.

Just bare in mind though, as charcoal does not have any added fixatives, it's going to get messy if you don't take care.

I know you will get carried away with your drawing, but you also need to keep at the back of your mind that charcoal is going to get on your hands.

Specially if your going to use charcoal sticks, where the bare stick gives your hand no protection to the charcoal surface that will inevitably get on your hand and transfer itself to your art paper.

So keep some paper towel near to you so you can wipe your hands to keep them clean. Have a paper towel under your lower part of your hand that has contact with your paper.

And above all... when you are moving back over your different areas of your drawing,

your lower part of your hand is going to make contact with part of your drawing some time or the other, and this is where you are going to smudge your drawing when you least know it. As you will be so immersed in concentrating on your drawing at the time.

Photo Courtesy: Marc Stroucken's
Pick up your paper towel that is under your hand and gently lay in on the area you are going to move your lower part of you hand to at the time.

Don't just shift in while on the paper or you will end up with a big smudge mark across part of your drawing, and then you will be hopping MAD!

OK.... let's have a look at the Pug dog here. In how to draw with charcoal you can see that the drawing is crisp in it's outlines, I would say that this drawing has been done with a charcoal pencil and the use of charcoal sticks to add in the shading.

It's a wonderful interpretation of this dog. You can see how the artist has really brought out this particular breeds character.

Photo Courtesy: jimmy.shroff
Does drawing with charcoal have it's limitations?

I can only see that it could be with color, apart from that, charcoals ability to lend itself to sharpness and texture is only as broad as your own abilities.

If someone asked you.... "how to draw with charcoal?

What if they asked you " what to draw with charcoal?

" Are there any limits to this from this most basic of drawing materials, I don't think there is anything that charcoal cant draw.

This drawing of a horse is sketchy... and that's exactly what I mean. There are no precise edges and the use of crosshatching almost lends itself to the horses shadows.

The interpretation of the horses features have been sketched in and others, smudged onto the paper.

You can even see how in the background, very light smudges have been applied to make the background blend in with the horse.

This effect is best done by not applying the charcoal to the papers surface directly, you can put some onto your side piece of paper what you will experiment on.

And then use your finger or other material, by smudging the particles onto it. Lets say we are using your finger here....

Put you finger into the line of charcoal that you have applied your scrap piece of paper, then rub in circular motions to spread the charcoal thinly onto the paper.

Which will also apply to your finger as well. Try smoothing some of the charcoal left on your finger onto your pictures background. If you are not sure how if it will be light enough, try it out on your spare piece of paper first.

Once you get this right, you can take it a bit further in how to draw with charcoal, by then applying a piece of cloth or paper towel on your drawing to smooth it out the charcoal marks even more.

And this will also lighten the color up to a greater extent.

Photo Courtesy: snowwhite0620
OK.... getting down to our dog and cat drawing.

In how to draw with charcoal, how would you describe this sort of style?

It's not crisp and it's not sketchy........

It's a form of negative drawing.

By using it's dark tones to bring out the cat and dog, to shades that almost make you think that there are other colures coming in to the drawing here.

How much of the white background of the paper is left..... not much.

Application of charcoal is used to almost it's fullest extent here. Much of the drawing is smudged in, and no precise lines depict a clear scene. It's as though we are looking at a scene in a dark room, or at night.

Impressionism.... would could say?  well, near enough.

The texture is almost muddy looking in a way, yet, in turn, it has given us different shades.

We have looked at some quite different styles here, and they all have shown that charcoal in more than right for the job.

I want you to scroll back up, and then scroll down slowly, looking at each different drawing style. And you will just see how different they are, and how different effects have brought out the play of light and intensity.

Not really, until seeing these drawings, and just how different they are, can we see there is a whole spectrum of diversity in how to draw with charcoal.

So I want to see you thinking..... when you draw, which sort of style of drawing you are going to choose when you, think of charcoal.

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