Friday, September 26, 2008

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.

2 comments:

Thewalrus906 said...

Did you use Water to wet the brushes?? How was your method to painting it??

Stephen James. said...

We didn't wet the charcoal, it was more or less right out of the container. We did sort of "rub out" the lights with a rubber eraser though.