Charcoal Drawing

Working with charcoal, we have the oppurtunity to achieve rich velvety blacks and blends and get really messy at the same time!
Students love and hate charcoal for these reasons.
Todays hints for success with charcoal.
1. Work your drawing from the top down or from the background to the foreground.  Resist putting those fun details in the front right away.  It is difficult to shade around and behind those details without getting a "glow" effect, making the drawing look flat.
2. Blending.  I encourage the use of vine charcoal to sketch out the drawing first. It erases easier than the compressed or charoal pencil.  Also resist using white till the very end or last day.
3.  If the charoal is not blending easily, most of the time it is because there is not enough of the material/charcoal on the paper.  Don't be shy, add more charcoal, you can work back and forth with your eraser as a drawing tool.
4. Fingerprints are your menice.  To avoid fingerprints start your drawing with a 1'' boarder and always use a scrap sheet of paper to lean hands/arms/fingers on.  Use paper towel or other products to blend with instead of your fingers.  This is one of the hardest things for me to stick with.. I always want to use my fingers! The oils from fingers/hands get on the paper and they are near impossible to erase or draw over.

Here you can search Charcoal Drawings of my past Students.

Student Art Museum

Crayon Art - Different ways to use crayons as art

Carving into the Crayon directly, Carving on crayon after applying it to paper, melting, collaging, drawing the ideas are endless.  These are just a few I found on a google image search!  Be inspired!