4 Tips to Follow While Making a Charcoal Pencil Drawing
Basic drawing classes familiarize students with the use of several tools, including soft charcoal sticks. Perfect for those looking to hone their sketching abilities, these are both easy and difficult to use.
Charcoal sticks are made with varying densities to produce different results in a charcoal pencil drawing. For example, vine charcoal gives quick, light marks, whereas compressed charcoal provides dark and thick strokes.
Charcoal Pencil Drawing: 4 Tips to Make Learning Easier
With such variety in results, beginners may find it difficult to make the best use of this material at first. In this post, we’ll share four great tips to make things easier.
Tip #1: Go Easy on the Pressure
Try not to apply too much pressure when you’re using charcoal on paper. It’s what happens at first: those who are new to charcoal aren’t aware of the strokes and end up applying excessive amounts of pressure to the paper. As a result, there are too many unintentional marks that are too dark to be erased.
Use vine charcoal if you find it hard to gauge the amount of pressure you need to use. This way, your sketches will remain light and erasable, so you can make desirable details darker as you go.
Tip #2: Practice with Different Tools to Find What Suits You
Consider using a bit of every charcoal variety you can find - vine, pencil, compressed - as well as the tools designed to manipulate their effects. These include paper towels, chamois cloth pieces, blending stumps, and special erasers called kneaded erasers that are soft and pliable, just like gum.
Each of these - along with your own fingers, of course - help in different ways. For example, they collect charcoal particles, design highlights, make changes to the detailing, create gradations, and smoothen blending when you’re making a new charcoal pencil drawing.
Tip #3: Take a Few Steps Back (Literally)
Forming a bit of distance between yourself and your work from time to time is important. That’s because the material’s crumbly texture may compel you to keep your face close to the page in order to concentrate on the details.
Therefore, stepping away to get the big picture is an essential step in ensuring the cohesive blending of those finer details. It may feel inconvenient in the beginning but soon enough, you’ll find yourself getting better at identifying flaws fairly quickly, allowing you to make changes earlier.
Tip #4: Maintain Neatness
Charcoal has an excellent diffuse consistency, meaning it smudges all over the place. From your fingers and wrists to your paper and workspace - it seems to have a mind of its own, adding spots and smears everywhere.
To reduce the mess, try to be careful about the placement of your hands and materials as you make the charcoal pencil drawing. However, if placing your pinky against the paper to keep your hand and arm from touching it gets tiresome, try placing extra paper under your arms to prevent smudging what’s on the paper.
Also, wash your hands several times during the course of your work. That’s because the paper can get stained by the oils from your hands while you work with charcoal for long periods of time.
