Charcoal

This is made through lighting a fire under a heap of dried wood held within an earth mound. A charcoal mound can be around three or 4 m high and 6 to 8m long. It can take several men several days to prepare.

Fire is lit underneath and allowed to burn for a few days. The fire burns through the wood underneath. The smoke rises up through the higher layers, leaving it charred once all the wood has been completely burned.

Willow

This is the most common form of drawing charcoal. Willow charcoal is available in a range of sizes – different thicknesses. It is most often sold at a standard length of around 10 inches or 25 cm. If an artist uses a complete stick, it will most often break under the pressure of drawing. To avoid this, artists tend to prefer using a short length of 3 inches, which is around 7.5 cm.

Charcoal is light and dirty medium which is very unstable. It is easy to smudge and smear. The image can become blurred or muddy. often, this is due to overexposure and random mark-making by the hands of an artist.

Clean and dirty putty rubbers (soft rubbers)

Charcoal can be worked up with smearing and drawing in a repeated fashion. You can also work back into it, or have areas removed by the use of an eraser. You can use hard and soft erasers with charcoal to achieve different effects. Hard erasers give fine lines and strong whites (The original colour of the paper). You can use soft erasers, such as putty erasers, for blending, smudging and wiping away large areas of tone.

Others

As well as charcoal made from Willow, a range of other woods is also available. Often, these make specialist pieces which are crumbly, or dark. You can find more of these in specialist art shops. Suppliers produce these for a small market so they can be expensive.

Coloured

Recently, suppliers have made charcoal available in a range of “natural“ colours. These include blues, greens, reds, and a thin version of yellow. These are made by adding a die during the charcoal process.

Fixative

Charcoal is such a fragile and easily disturbed medium. Charcoal often requires a finishing spray to close the surface and to protect it. This is generally supplied through a medium called “fixative“. Fixative is an aerosol spray with a glue suspended in the spray. It is equal to hairspray but much more expensive. Hairspray has added perfume. Many artists will use cheap hairsprays from supermarkets. They do this to avoid paying the full prices of fixative sprays from specialist art shops.

Artists often fix charcoal drawings at the end of the session. This protects them and secures the image. It also to act as a finishing varnish which helps to unify the tones of the image.

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