This is a topic on Charcoal as a medium and any information, personal experience, resources, tips, are welcome as the site does not have a tutorial on Charcoal as far as I know.
Wronged by its reputation of being messy, charcoal is a wonderful medium, versatile and friendly, quick efficient for sketching and drawing alike. I simply love it and the taste for it was inspired by viewing gallery works here on drawspace, some wonderful portraits and still life.
I started in September 2008 by sketching my masks in a challenge in white and black charcoal on Canson pastel pad.

this is my beginner work



and here is my recent work January 13, 2009, in Charcoal black and white, also african masks




Bteween these two works of more than an hour i did 10-20 minutes sketches so my experience is limited.
Yet this week I started reading an e-book on Charcoal

Life Drawing in Charcoal By Douglas R. Graves

And i want to share with you things i am learning from this book.

Feel free to add your works and your experience with this medium here.
I also invite those masters in this medium to give us some light regarding this old medium.

Here is my first exercize or experiment with black charcoal on canvaskin paper pad 9x12 in.

I just sketched a vase from my desk with dried rose buds.
This was done by covering the canvas paper with a layer of charcoal then blending with a porous fabric and layering charcoal again no blending this time.
The contour of the vase was done by erasing with a kneaded eraser th charcoal. Then applying more charcoal for the color of the vase and blending. The shaping of the buds was obtained by erasing and blending. The stems and leaf are in unblended charcoal.

here it is.



I want to use this technique in drawing portraits in charcoal.

Hi Elena - excellent choice of topic, and good work here!

As I'm sure you'll know (but for others who might not), charcoal drawing is used as a "half-way house" in the training of classical oilpainters. I'm essentially self-taught as a painter, but find myself in the company, on other sites, of classically trained artists, and of students in the new ateliers. I've only really used charcoal for simple initial placement line-drawings previously, but I am intrigued by its use to teach value and modelling of form, and feel that my painting would greatly benefit from exploring this in more detail.

A few basic things I've picked up from others recently....

wiping the dust off the outside of sticks of charcoal with a paper towel makes them a lot less messy to handle.

You can sharpen charcoal by gently rubbing it on sandpaper. The resulting dust can also be used.

It is possible to draw fine lines with such sharpened charcoal, using a very light touch.

You may find it useful to push the charcoal, rather than pulling it.

Keep back from the point - that is, handle the stick from the far end, like a paintbrush for oilpainting, rather than a pen for writing with.

The very detailed "highly-finished" charcoal work seen from some of the classical realist ateliers use all manner of tools to manipulate the charcoal - brushes, rags, paper towels - both to rub the charcoal into the surface, and to lift it back out; and kneadable erasers, and bread, too, to lift it out.

At this time, most of these approaches are things I've heard of from others (but others producing high-quality work), rather than things where I have any significant personal experience - but I've noted these as being of interest myself, so thought I would share


Dave

Resources:

Juliette Aristedes "Classical Drawing Atelier" book
http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Drawing-At.../dp/0823006573/

Darren Rousar's "Cast Drawing Using the Sight-Size Approach"
http://www.amazon.com/Cast-Drawing-Using-S.../dp/0980045401/

See also:
http://www.sightsize.com/castdrawing.html

and my good friend Paul Foxton's description of starting a cast drawing, here:
http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/clytie-1

(Paul's blog is a wonderful resource altogether - well worth reading!)


Oh - and for those who enjoy the sensation of their jaw hitting the floor, check out Kate Sammons' charcoal work:

http://www.katesammons.com/pages/portfolio.htm

Dave

Right now I am using charcoal pencils hard, medium and soft black and white charcoal pencil or compressed sticks.
The fixative I used has a very toxic smell so I learned that is not even too advised to use for preserving your work.
I have to buy some vine charcoal as i haven't tried it yet.
The surfaces i used were strathmore sketch pad, canvas skin pad, canson mi teintes colored pad.All great for charcoal.

Thank you, Dave.
I know that Kay(Oliverandjazz) has many wonderful drawings in charcoal and even colored charcoal. Maybe she can tell us the brand of her colored charcoal pencils.I know she wrote a tutorial on how to draw a wolf and invite her to share more with us here.

Elena,

Yes this is a great topic. I would say most of my drawings are done in charcoal. I simply love the freedom one can archive with charcoal. It is very forgiving compared to pencil. The values one can achieve are very striking too. I really don't focus on lines, but shapes from dark to light. I prefer to work that way as opposed to light to dark. However, I can work either way.

Charcoal is a lead in to pastels too. They work great with each other.

I recently started a drawing in charcoal for some friends. I welcome any comments on it, and it's all in charcoal.


http://www.drawspace.com/forums/index.php?...i&img=36654

I start out with a vine to mold the shapes I'm trying to draw.

I use Strathmore drawing paper as well as Newsprint. Newsprint has good tooth to hold down the charcoal.

For blending my tools are chammies, stump, paper towel and my finger.

Erasing, I use a rubber eraser as well as kneading eraser. I also have the pencil type eraser. I also have a metal shield that drafters use to get into tight spaces.

Chammies works well as an eraser too.

I also use mostly soft to medium charcoal. The hard is less forgiving. It doesn't erase very easily.

The best sharpener pencil charcoal, I've found is the general brand. All others I seem to break the tip.

I also use compressed charcoal soft to cover large areas.

Lastly when I'm satisfied with the drawing, I use fixative spray to hold the charcoal down.

Thanks Elena for starting this discussion.

Nice topic, I just finished the reference line drawing for a charcoal portrait. It has been a while since I worked with charcoal, I seem to only do artwork in the winter months.
Anyway, there are lots of ways to use this ancient medium and what works for some does not work for others. They teach the loose kind of under painting style of drawing with charcoal at my local Community College in drawing 101 and I HATED IT!
About a year after taking that class I tried using charcoal like paint or I guess a pencil. Being exacting as to how I applied/removed and blended. In class we could not use tools, just kneaded erasers and fingers. Well being a tool guy, I LIKE TOOLS, and charcoal likes being tooled! I like detail and the finished drawing to look 3d and alive. You can get really detailed if you take the time and work at it. Just about anything can be used as a reductive/texture tool. I use qtips, toothpicks, erasers, microfiber cloth, stumps (my favorite), the dust from the charcoal shavings. Use a pencil sharpener with the plastic cup and sharpen the thin vine or willow sticks to a razor point, then use the shavings when doing fine shading with a qtip of stump. Nice thing is if you don't use the compressed or pencil type, you can erase back to white with a kneaded eraser. I have done 5 charcoal portraits and will be starting my 6th in the next day or so. I took progress photos during the third portrait, they can be found here Sean Conner Progress If you notice, when doing detail like this, you have to work from top to bottom and from non writing side to your writing side or you will smudge what you have already done. Unlike pencil, ink or paint, the charcoal is just laying on the surface of the paper one sneeze and you may have to start over
Look forward to reading tips from those more experienced with charcoal!

This thread is bringing out some great info!

.

A mahl stick, or a bridge, may be of help here - the idea of both of these is that they provide a firm support to rest your hand on, a couple of inches above the surface of the paper. It's best not to touch the paper with your skin at all, anyway, to avoid any possible effects from skin-oils on how the charcoal is laid down.

I always work from top left to down right in graphite, oil pastel, charcoal.But today i used the canvaskin pad and layered in charcoal, blended and layered again and it didn't smudge on my hands as the canvas paper holds the charcoal very well.

Taking into account the tip from Gilbert for using Strathmore drawing paper here it is my first drawing on this support an 11x14 in pad. This is an exercise in light and shade with some urns from my photo taken at Knossos, Crete.



This exercise was the fruit of my readings from another online book,
Light and Shade Chapter on Charcoal, Pencil

The only lifting of the charcoal was done to obtain the light effect by using the kneaded eraser and pencil cap eraser.This drawing has practically no blending.The exercise consists in rendering the mass of the urns and not using lines for contour or shaping.

Nice Job Elena! Don't forget to put the fixative spray to preserve your work. Otherwise, it will rub off.

Thank you, Gilbert.
I worked pretty well with the drawing pad the only thing that is different from canvas, is the lifting of the charcoal: it is far easier to obtain pure white by using the kneaded eraser with the canvas.But the canvas has a draw back compared to drawing paper: eats up more charcoal.

A note about fixative. The stuff I have used is the windsor re workable stuff.. and no matter how lightly I spray it changes the color of the charcoal, especially if you use vine or willow. I had to go over the areas of darkest dark to bring them back to the value I had prior to spraying. It is very subtle but it does change so be careful. Framing behind glass is the best way to preserve your finished drawing and if you use no-glare glass it really smooths the tones and makes the drawing pop.

Thanks, airscapes. I don't usually spray anymore and it stay fine on the paper.But if I do a portrait to offer to somebody I think needs some spraying or preserving under glass imediately.

That's the unfortunate drawback with charcoal. Your damed if you do and your damed if you don't. I spray fixative to protect what I've created, I've lost some of my art work because I forgot to spray.

Lastly, This is my experience. I use compressed charcoal to bring out my values after the using vine, if I just stay with the willow or vine all it would takes is someone to brush over it to change the value. The compressed holds better for me. I work with it to make it fit my work style. The thing is that one may have to play with it to suit their style as well.

Regards,
Gilbert

Guess what!? I used the fixative last night on all my recent work and this morning it looked just fine.
These charcoal exercises give me a real pleasure to work with this medium and only now after one year of drawing, i feel I am doing the right thing in terms of values, light and shade, atmosphere of a drawing.And something i noticed during this year is the fact that no matter in which medium I work, oil pastels, watercolor, colored pencils, charcoal, graphite, each medium helps me grow as an artist, it's not just that information is valid only for the respective medium, but i can draw better in oil pastels, after practice with the brush for instance, or do better valuation in charcoal after work in colored pencils.I like them all and switching mediums prevents moments of feeling like you are stuck in your creativity.
So I recommend to you all to try charcoal with confidence and without prejudice; I promise you will fall in love with it.

Elena, you do excellent work in charcoal! This seems to be your medium. I just love what you do with it.

Thanks, Christi. I strongly recommend it because I am sure you will experience like me a feeling that this medium strengthens your abilities to control your tools.

This is a study in the architecture of Maramures, a Unesco protected wooden church dating from 17c.
I used rubbing(the charcoal) for the church, blending with cotton balls for the sky and erasing with kneaded eraser for the clouds.
It was done in charcoal pencils, soft, medium and hard. Rather quick sketch, one hour, needs finishing to be a serious drawing.
Again i encounter the same problem with the Strahmore drawing pad, I wasn't able to lift properly the charcoal in order to obtain pure white. Next time i will try with bread.
The photo was taken at dusk with a regular lamp also, so i will have to photograph it again in daylight. Since the drawing pad is 11x14 in. it is larger than the scanner's glass, so I have to photograph it.

Elena,

What I've done to achieve the lightness, I've worked both ways light to dark or dark to light. Like graphite pencil, where one knows there will be highlights, there is the intention to avoid the area and keep it clean as possible. The end result, this area would be brighter.

If that doesn't work, go to white chalk, or white pastel. I do this when I work in reverse, dark to light. When I go this route, the little light that is brought in really shines through. My example is the sub way train I drew. In the end though I do admit it's what you become comfortable with.



I've also worked with Newsprint. Although it tears really easy, it's great for charcoal. The effect with newsprint are really amazing.

Example in Newsprint. Although not one of my better drawings, look at the definition of muscle. The newsprint seems to help with the effect.




Regards,
Gilbert

Thanks, Gilbert.I like both of your drawings very much. Lots of values in them.I must experiment more with all possibilities like chamois, bread, etc.

Gilbert, I guess i found the solution for obtaining pure white after layering charcoal. At least this time worked. I used some powder charcoal(broken pencil tips pulverized) applied to the drawing pad, then I rubbed charcoal, blended, erased as i needed for my subject.
Here it is the Egyptian goddess, Hathor from the Elephantine island at Aswan, Egypt.
2 hours with a lunch break.

This is wonderful! My daughter was just commenting that your drawing looks like a photo from a distance. It's really detailed.

Did you find some white charcoal and turned it into powder? How did you exactly solve the issue, I'm having a little trouble understanding what you did.

Anyway, what an excellent job.

Charcoal is fun! I can tell you are having a blast with it. I know when I discovered it, I went crazy too with drawing. I couldn't find enough objects or things to draw.

Regards,
Gilbert

Gilbert, I have white charcoal but I used only black charcoal pencils; and because they break easily when I sharpen them I saved the crumbs and crushed them with a stone and used the powder to do a background, i.e I covered the full page with the powder blended with some textile rag. The full page looked like the sky in my drawing. So that area is originally exactly how the page looked after applying the powder. After that I worked with the black charcoal pencils and for the white areas I simply erased with the kneaded eraser.

That's something I haven't tried is working with powder. I've seen people work with it, but I haven't.

Regarding the breakage on the charcoal pencils, I use general sharpeners or colored pencil sharpener. Changing to the general brand has reduced the tip breaking considerably. I think it has something to do with the angle of the bigger pencil. I've also used a plan knife too.

http://www.generalpencil.com/products/accessories.htm

Regards,
Gilbert

Thank you, Gilbert for the tips, link and comments on my work.
It is indeed a friendly medium that offers lots of fun to work with.
After one year of staggering in graphite, finally i found what i needed to learn drawing properly.

hello ElenaM

Im glad that i share you your experience its an amazing drawing, you have a top scence with this draw and i

look forward to be a day drawing a pretty thing simillar to your drawing.

im happy if you can answer me some questions

im new in draw space and im new in drawing too im learning some lessons and im enjoy it but i spent one

hour for every lesson and more are you seeing it is alot of time for every lesson? and if what im drawed not

happy with must i repeted to improve my drawing? thank you for your replying

Hi, fadia and welcome to drawspace.
Yes, most of us are learning to draw here and this is a topic on charcoal drawing.

With a good book or an e-book you can start learning to draw using charcoal as you can have an easy way of bringing values into play, faster too compared to graphite.

Brenda's lessons, if this is what you referred to, are for graphite pencils and if you spent one or more hours doing them this is not the point as long as you learn. But i suggest you make an album which you check for public view so other artists can visit your gallery and see you progress. You always have the option of asking about your exercises in the Critique section of the main forum page where you will get suggestions and help how to improve your work.
Hope to see you in the members gallery or in the forums. I forgot to mention the weekly challenges where you can sketch various subjects and interact with other members.See you there.

thank you very much for your reply and sorry for my language im not good enouph in english but i will try to do

what you tell me about thank you

THis is an one hour sketch of onions and garlic done in charcoal pencils on canvaskin paper pad 9x12 in. I don't think I was able to bring in all the values of this still life properly. Maybe is that i don't use at this time vine or willow charcoal to emphasize more texture or it's the canvas paper with its rough texture that needs a different approach when using charcoal.From all I understand canvas paper is highly recommended for charcoal.

wow..Elena, you have really been working hard at your art and it shows. I am impressed with the work i have seen you put out here, I have been cruising around here for a few minutes. I love the deer avatar. great work..

the pencils i use are the general too. i use the stick for background work and yes saving those broken pieces and crushing them up make for great dust to do your background work in..

I have really been struggling with trying to force myself back into drawing..what has happened?? i was doing so good for so long..then all manner of things started happening and i have been home now for awhile and STILL i cant seem to draw..

It is nice to see my friends are still hanging out and progressing and doing so well..i am really proud of how far you have come elena.. wow..

Big hugs
Kay

Thank you, Kay. I am thrilled to know you are back and we need your contributions to this topic.Just a couple of your best work in charcoal and a few words about it.

hmm...i dont know about my best work, but i chose this colored charcoal fox because you guys seem to have black and white charcoal pretty much covered here. the colors are limited, and seem to use up quickly, but all the same tips and techs apply as for b/w. keep a sharp point when doing fur, rotate the pencil as you would with graphite, use qtip, chamois, tissue (no aloes or scents) avoid greasy fingertips, use a brush to gently brush off excess, all the basics still apply.

Click to view attachment

THis is excellent, i love it. What brand are your charcoal crayons, as i couldn't find in the web colored charcoal description.

thanks elena,

i used the derwent colored charcoal..when i bought them i got them at dick blicks and there was only a set of 24 at the time..

Happy to see Kay and Elena. I was absent for a while. This is a quick sketch, with living model.
An

Glad to see you here, An. If you have more works in charcoal you want to talk about feel free to post them here.It's good to know how each of us works with this medium.

The same still life with onions and California giant garlic in medium and soft charcoal pencils, this time on Strathmore drawing pad 11x14 in; 2 hours.



I am more satisfied with this result that the one on canvaskin pad.
I used cotton rag for blending, pencil rubber cap eraser, kneaded eraser.

Wow that is really impressive, Elena! I believe you're getting the hang of this charcoal thing...

Hi all
I have to agree with Mindy, Elena you are doing very well with charcoal
I still haven't tried much with this medium, I only have one charcoal pencil and right now isn't a good time for me to go shopping.

Great work everybody, keep it up

Hi Kaly!
You had asked about the different types of charcoal last march.. thought this replay may be helpful to you before shopping or someone who didn't see it then..
Drawspace thread from last year

The picture in the replay shows a nice selection of supplies and tools.

Thank you Mindy and Clara. I am sure that you two would love this medium; it's so friendly and so much fun, so quick.

Elena, yes I'm sure I would, I may try it one of these days

Airscapes, yes I remember that thread, wow its been almost a year now, and still I haven't bought any , that piece you where working on at that time came out beautifully

THanks! I am working on a new one now, so will post it in the near future .. I hope!

This is a portrait of an Indian with which I am not fully satisfied from several points of view, likeness wise and execution.



Medium and soft charcoal pencils on Strahmore drawing pad 11x14 in; 2 hours.

This is something I am not satisfied with, the attempt of redering a Cp work in charcoal. Here are the initial Cp and the two versions not blended and blended of the charcoal piece.

Garden urn for my challenge. White and black charcoal vine, willow. One hour. On Strathmore drawing pad 11x14 in.

it absolutely is I must agree..great job elena

omg..that is absolutely gorgeous..you need to frame that one..