Today I’m talking about the charcoal technique with a basic tutorial on how to draw with charcoal.

Charcoal is the simplest way to highlight the basic principles of drawing, it enables to go straight to the essential. With charcoal you have to start by placing your shape on paper, then by placing the construction of your subject.

Once the construction is made, you can start by drawing, and by marking the punctuation with dark areas and light areas. You have to envision your paper as a sort of map in which you place yourself in space, in time and in shadows and lights. Charcoal enables to place dark areas and the eraser enables to place light areas. Slowly you end up by smudging your drawing and the more the drawing is smudged, the more you can reveal white tones by using the eraser.

Charcoal is a powder and depending on its reaction with paper, you’re going to use different tools : dry tools and greasy tools. Dry tools are a clean paintbrush or a cloth and greasy tools are the finger, which enables to fix better the charcoal. The last step is to finish by fixing the charcoal drawing, which can be a step in itself. You can choose to draw on top of that.