More and more I realized that I like charcoal a lot. I’m attracted by the irregularity of the marks, which I find inspiring. I did use eraser in some squares to make some highlights, but did not like the idea to take bread instead of putty rubber, not wanting to waste food.
Page 1: Thick charcoal stick
I liked this exercise. Again, I felt inspired by the marks that charcoal makes and despite I was drawing inside some squares, there was some sort of flow in what I did – new ideas generated out of what I was observing when making marks.
The first square was filled quickly with simply trying out the flat tip – the resulting lines were so fat that I just wanted to leave the square at that. I really like the quality of charcoal lines, their impredictable shadings of dark shape with white stains.
For the second square, I wanted to try out smooth shadings of varying darkness. The charcoal stick turned out to be so soft, that even slightest touching of the surface led to rather dark tones, and increasing pressure over some areas creates truly black marks. For the effect of this medium, I wouldn’t use it to draw a sunny summer afternoon with blue sky and no clouds, rather it lends itself to dramatic atmospheres like thunderstorm.
In the third square, I drew lines of varying thickness by using the edge of the tip as well as some of its flat by twisting the stick a bit. The resulting lines are rather dramatic and their deep black creates strong contrasts to the white of the paper. The drawing in this square reminds me of a seaside landscape with a very high horizon. This type of marks might be used to draw far-away structures, omitting any detail and just bringing out their size and shape inside the perspective of the scenery.
In the fourth square, I combined smudging and loosely hatched lines. I reworked some areas to create tones of varying darkness, and the lines are the darkest marks in this square. I was tempted to use the eraser to bring out some lighter areas and increase contrast, but didn’t because I didn’t want to mix up too many techniques.
In the fifth square, I created broad marks with the flat side of the stick. These vary all by themselves in darkness over the area they cover, again showing the uniqueness of each mark drawn with charcoal with I like so much.
Square six was filled with some simple marks to create patterns. I varied the density of dashes and lines to create a depth effect, but I feel I would have drawn better if I observed nature, rather than constructing something from imagination.
Square seven was a smudging exploration, I used the pigments from my grubby fingers as a first layer, worked out some highlights with putty rubber, went over this by pressing some of the charcoal bits that were scattered all over the sheet to create quite sharp and dark marks, smudged again, erasered again and so on until I liked the overall pattern. I didn’t have any lump bread at home to try out its eraser effect, maybe I’ll do that at some other time in the future.
Square eight was filled with line strokes – with the tip of the charcoal stick at an angle, then smudged a bit with my fingers, more lines with a sharp edge of the charcoal’s tip. Then a repetition of these steps and I like the resulting pattern, it reminds me of grass in an African Savannah.
In the last square, I drew fine (well relatively) horizontal lines with an edge of the charcoal stick. I tried to create a very even pattern of marks, only varying the pressure a bit to have some lines darker than others. The pattern reminds me of the surface of quiet water.
Overall, I enjoyed this exercise a lot, probably due to charcoal as a medium, and will have another go with a differently sized charcoal stick or maybe combining different charcoal types into the same square. Can’t wait to leave those squares, though!
Page 2: Four more squares
Again I got carried away by the beauty of the medium. I did four larger squares on another A2 sketchbook page. The first was done with pressed charcoal stick grade 1, trying different marking techniques: Lines of varied thickness and darkness, graded shading of an area by drawing lines with the flat tip of the stick, a pattern of small dark dashes, and a patern of marks made with the side of the stick, creating different tones of darkness by varying the pressure.
The second was done with the same medium, but by making different types of marks in layers one over the other, which created a depth effect. The first layer were fat stripes from drawing lines with the flat side of the stick, the second was a pattern of curvy lines drawn with a hard edge of the stick – producing lighter, thin lines. The third layer was another pattern of curvy lines, but drawn with a different edge of the tip where the charcoal was softer, thus creating thicker, darker lines.
The third square was done with a thick, soft charcoal stick, creating areas of different darkness with the tip at an angle. Then I used a thin soft charcoal stick and drew along the shapes and contrast contours. I used smudging to create areas of softer shadings and gradings of dark tones, and the putty eraser to work out some highlights.
The fourth square was done with pressed charcoal grade 3 and the thick charcoal stick. I made areas of different patterns and then reworked them, some with smudging, others by making layers of marks.
I liked this exercise a lot and can’t wait to draw with charcoal. But I won’t use bread instead of putty rubber, because I have strong objections against using food for other things than eating.