CHARCOAL

Charcoal is one of the most versatile drawing media available, capable of rich, velvety darks, easily achieved midtones, and subtle shading differences. It is an easy medium to learn, albeit messy—and there are ways to control that characteristic. A full range of tonal values can be developed much faster and easier with charcoal than with graphite. Unlike graphite, charcoal also lends itself very well to blending with a cloth, stump, or even a finger.

TYPES

Charcoal is available in three basic forms, which feel and look very different from one another. It’s important to experiment and find the one that suits your personal preferences.

Vine & Willow Charcoal

These lightweight, irregularly-shaped rods of charcoal are made of burnt grapevine and willow tree. Vine produces a gray line, whereas willow produces black. Both types can be easily brushed away from paper, making them a common choice for preliminary sketches on a canvas before oil painting.

Vine & Willow Charcoal

Compressed Charcoal Sticks

Compressed charcoal is mixed with a binder, such as gum, which makes it adhere more readily to paper and produces creamier strokes than vine or willow charcoal. Compressed charcoal sticks come in a range of hardnesses, including soft, medium, and hard—or they are listed by number and letter, similar to pencil hardness.

Compressed Charcoal Sticks

Charcoal Pencils

These compressed charcoal tools in a pencil format offer maximum control, allowing you to create fine, precise strokes. Some are wood-encased, so you can sharpen them as you do graphite pencils. However, some charcoal pencils have tips wrapped in paper. To expose more charcoal, simply pull the string to unwrap the paper. Hone the tips with a sandpaper pad or knife. Charcoal pencil sets usually come with a white “charcoal” pencil (which is usually made of chalk and a binder—not charcoal). You can use this pencil with your black charcoal pencils to create dramatic images on toned paper.

Charcoal Pencil

RECOMMENDED SUPPORTS

• Newsprint

• Rough drawing paper

• Fine-toothed drawing paper

• Cold-pressed paper

• Laid drawing paper

• Toned paper (with tooth)

Note: Some manufacturers offer “charcoal paper.” This surface generally has a laid finish or fine tooth.

CHARCOAL TECHNIQUES

Preliminary Sketches

Artists often use vine or willow charcoal to create preliminary sketches before painting in oil, delineating outlines and areas of value. You can remove this type of charcoal easily with a kneaded eraser or dust it away with a bristle brush.

Negative Drawing

Because charcoal lifts easily from the paper, some artists choose to draw in the negative. This refers to first applying charcoal tone and then “drawing” with erasers, most often dabbing up tone with a kneaded eraser to model your forms.

Shading & Stroke Direction

Because the dark, rough strokes of charcoal are especially visible in shading, you might choose to shade using strokes (or hatch lines) that follow the same direction—especially if you plan to leave your strokes unblended.

Blending

Blending charcoal is similar to blending graphite. Above is compressed charcoal over laid-finish paper, blended with a chamois (on left) and a blending stump (on right).

Charcoal pencil tips break easily, especially when using a handheld or electric sharpener. You may find it easiest to sharpen them with a knife and then hone the tip with a sandpaper pad.

CHARCOAL EXAMPLES

Charcoal produces bold, expressive strokes and is easy to blend, making it ideal for quick life drawing sketches and gesture drawings.

Many artists opt to draw on toned paper. The value of the paper acts as a middle value to which you can add shadows and highlights. Because a middle value is already in place, you can develop forms quickly and boldly.

CAST DRAWING

A tonal drawing from cast sculpture is a great introduction to using charcoal to indicate the tonal range across a fully lit form. Cast sculptures can be found and purchased online, as well as from local statuary stores.

Remembering that all good drawings start with an overall gesture sketch, begin by considering composition, placement on the page, size, etc. Small thumbnail sketches at the outset are a very valuable tool for composing and cropping the subject (A).

Once the gesture drawing is lightly sketched in, refine the drawing for accuracy, checking the proportion, understanding perspective angles, and lining up structures horizontally and vertically. This initial sketch can be developed with vine or willow charcoal and then strengthened and refined with charcoal pencil. You may find it helpful to work on tracing paper as well, as you develop your skills, so that you can experiment with changes before committing them to your final piece.

Once the sketch is refined on tracing paper, it can be transferred to a suitable drawing surface by rubbing charcoal over the back of the sketch and tracing the contour lines to transfer the line drawing to the drawing paper (B). After transferring a clean sketch to drawing paper, it is ready for tonal development (C).

Final charcoal drawing by student Huy Huynh.

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro depends on an understanding of direct light, transitional light to shade, core shadow, reflected light, and cast shadow. This is the lighting phenomenon that you see on the subject. Next let’s discuss the actual application of charcoal to create this lighting situation accurately.

Tonal Contrast

How we perceive the actual values of a subject depends on the contrasting relationship of values that are adjacent to it. The dark background for this cast statue creates more contrast between the subject and the background, as well as a low-key and dramatic lighting situation. Tonality is a relative situation, based on the effects of lighting and adjacent values. When you compare the statues to the right, you can see the relative differences in the appearance of the values, especially in the shaded areas—particularly the core shadows, which appear darker in the statue with the lighter background.

This is the same lighting situation as above, with the exception of a dark background. This arrangement is more dramatic, and dark-value backgrounds are fairly easy to develop with charcoal, compared to most other drawing media.

Use a variety of charcoal to create this scale from very light to rich, velvety black. From left to right: vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, and charcoal pencil, all blended with a chamois or tissue.

Tonal Techniques with Charcoal

Start with a value scale like the one above, using all the charcoal materials you plan to use in your drawing. It’s important to remember that using lighter to darker tools—and generalized techniques before details—is a key to success.

The best way to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each material is to experiment. Most people work best when they have all these tools at their disposal, along with a logical progression in which to use them.

STEP 1 Tone the surface of white charcoal paper with vine or willow charcoal, stroking across the paper with the side of the charcoal. Then rub softly with a chamois or tissue. After sketching a small thumbnail in the upper corner, create an overall gesture sketch with a stick of vine charcoal, which is light, soft, and easily changeable. When you’re satisfied with the sketch, go over it lightly with a hard or medium charcoal pencil.

STEP 2 Next begin to pull out the generalized lighting on the form with a kneaded eraser. Don’t attempt to achieve too much detail at this stage; it will likely disappear and need to be redone toward the end of the tonal process.

STEP 3 After pulling out the generalized lights, add in the overall shadows—the third value—with vine or willow charcoal.

STEP 4 About midway through the tonal application process, it’s a good idea to block in the background value, especially if it is a dark background. This makes it easier to judge the values within the subject.

STEP 5 Use a chamois to rub the charcoal into the paper for soft and even tone. Compressed charcoal provides a velvety, rich black. At this point, apply a light spray of workable fixative over the entire surface to help adhere the compressed charcoal to the paper.

STEP 6 Apply the finishing touches. Clean up and refine the edges with a kneaded eraser. Then use charcoal pencils (soft grade), to create dark core shadows and cast shadows on the form. You can use a stump or tortillon to smooth the darker surfaces. Finally, use a white charcoal pencil sparingly to accent the lights and create highlights. It is best not to blend whites, as it tends to muddy them; use the whites conservatively, and leave them alone.

FIGURE DRAWING AND CHARCOAL

The speed at which the artist can attain a full value range makes charcoal a natural medium to use for figure drawing. Charcoal can be used for 1- to 2-minute gesture drawings, as well as intermediate poses of 20 to 40 minutes and, of course, for tonal drawings of longer duration. When used on toned paper, the addition of white charcoal for lights and highlights can be expedient as well as dramatic.

This is a 1-minute student gesture drawing in vine charcoal.

Here is a quick study in black and white charcoal pencil on toned paper. On this middle-value paper, the paper tone becomes the middle value for the softer shadows and reflected light on the figure. The use of white pencil is limited, as it can too easily dominate the value structure.

Charcoal has been used for centuries by artists wishing to portray the human body with dramatic form, mass, volume, and effective tonality. Student charcoal drawing by De Tran.