Drawing with charcoal powder

An illustrator I know recently asked me about what drawing with charcoal powder is like. I tried my best to explain it but I'm not sure I did it justice. So here are some pictures I took of my set up in class. I feel like they do a better job of explaining it than I would verbally. Anyway, it’s a far more tone based approach than drawing with a stick of charcoal or a charcoal pencil.


Comparing the two ways of applying charcoal to cast drawing that we've learned I think I kind of like this one better. Both methods have their strength (and I've kind of tried to use a hybrid of the two as you can see in the tops two pictures), but the brush and powder really helps you think in terms of tonal arrangements.

I spy with my little eye...

Something white.

Here's another picture from my cast drawing class.

Cartoony sketch.

So I did something really cathartic this weekend. I sketched a cartoony character, from a story I came up with years ago, on a sheet of ugly, wrinkled, old paper. This may not seem like much of a big deal but to me it was. You see most of my creative energy is being poured into school work and the upcoming show our class is putting on. Sadly I have very little time for things like this. It was so cool to sketch something that was just for fun with no strings attached. It wasn't for school, or a big project or anything just a way to kill time.It's also great to be able to sketch something cartoony again. It's what I want to do in life (as a career.) I have a natural inclination towards cartooning, and though I've been trying to fight it for the better part of a year I love being able to explore that side of my art again.