Charcoal Drawing Supplies

Let me start out by saying THANK YOU to all of you who are following this blog. I appreciate it because it encourages me to continue posting.

Ok, let’s get in to it. I am going to shift gears a little and show you some of the stuff I personally use for charcoal drawing. Many pencil artist turn to experimenting with charcoal drawing at some point. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it becomes frustrating and they choose not to go very far with it. Often the complaint is that it is too messy. Either way, I think that it is something every artist should try once. It doesn’t cost much to start out so I recommend it.

Paper simple enough, I choose to use news print because it is cheap and you can find it in very large pads. I would never do a finished drawing on newsprint because it doesn’t take long for the acids in the paper to react to the air causing it to yellow and degrade. However, newsprint has a few things going for it. One, charcoal is not  easy to work with on a small scale so in order to achieve detail a large format is needed. Also, charcoal needs something to hold on to, so paper used to draw on needs to have a bit of a tooth. If you have ever seen professional quality charcoal paper it has a lot of texture to it. To sum it up the paper you choose should be like an angry biker, big and rough.

Pencils are my favorite form of charcoal but they don’t cover large areas quickly, so I keep a small reserve of compressed charcoal sticks on hand. Vine charcoal is also nice to have around but it is hard to find at a good price. I can go through a whole package in just a couple drawings so I choose not to use it. You will notice that I do not include a pencil sharpener. I use a knife instead. Pencil sharpeners are a waste in general if you ask me but I’ll talk more about that at a later time perhaps.

I think that the rest of these supplies are self explanatory but, if you have any specific questions let me know.