When you start to strengthen the details of the features, you also have to deepen the surrounding tones to balance the overall shading of the head. This stage requires the use of a soft charcoal stick or crayon, a sharp charcoal pencil, a blending stump and a fixative spray. You will also find that you have to sharpen your pencil more often to capture any intricate details.Īt the end of this stage you should spray what you have drawn with fixative to prevent smudges when you work over it in the later stages. The main difference is the darkness of the charcoal pigment which makes it easy to overwork your drawing and therefore requires a more restrained approach. Here you are trying to establish a few key features that you can use as a foundation on which to build the tonal structure of the face.īuilding up the tones and details of the face requires a cautious step by step approach, gradually feeling your way rather than trying to get there fast.ĭrawing details with a charcoal pencil is much the same as using an ordinary pencil. This stage of the drawing involves looking closely to discern some of the darker tones of the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hair. A fixative spray will also prove useful to protect your work from smudges. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1948 (48.10.Now you should return to using a sharp charcoal pencil to pick out the main features of the face. Charcoal and conté crayon, 20 x 14 1/2 in. Odilon Redon used the latter technique in Armor, seen below. Artists further enhanced the medium with touches of pastel or gouache (opaque watercolor), or by applying toned fixative to the paper to darken the support. By the end of the eighteenth century, the introduction of fabricated charcoal (powdered and recompressed to different degrees of hardness) provided the artist with an even greater expanded range of dark grays and blacks. The medium is prized for its ability to produce an interplay between light and shadow known as chiaroscuro. ![]() The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Gift of Mrs. Charcoal and black chalk over printed plate tone, 21 5/8 x 38 1/4 in. A Pond with a Fisherman along the River Ain, 1868–70. Such works often feature textural effects, scraping, the mixing of water or other liquids with charcoal powder, stumping, and various reductive techniques such as erasing.Īdolphe Appian (French, 1818–1898). In the nineteenth century, artists used charcoal to make highly finished drawings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace and Leon D. Charcoal, highlighted with white chalk, on blue paper outlines heavily stylus-incised, 20 7/16 x 9 5/8 in. Saint John the Evangelist (recto Cartoon for a Fresco) (detail), 1548–49. ![]() At that time, it was used for preparatory purposes: to develop initial ideas, preliminary outlines, areas of shadow, or for squaring grids used to transfer a design to another surface.įrancesco Salviati (Francesco de' Rossi) (Italian, 1510–1563). ![]() The large particle size and absence of a binder allow charcoal to be lifted easily from paper, enabling an artist to make corrections or create highlights using, for example, a kneaded eraser, as seen below.Ĭharcoal has remained a popular medium for drawing since the Renaissance. Varying the angle at which the stick is applied, as well as the pressure of the hand, achieves either narrow or broad lines.īroader, more painterly masses can be made by using the side of the charcoal stick, or by stumping (spreading the particles) with a finger, chamois cloth, cork, or other soft material. Stroking charcoal across a surface produces linear effects. To hold the medium in place, charcoal requires paper with some texture, and to prevent smudging many artists apply a fixative to finished drawings.Ĭharcoal is invariably dark gray to black. Because charcoal particles are relatively large and the sticks do not contain a binding agent, the medium is easily manipulated with either a finger, paper, or pieces of leather. The minute, splinter-like particles of charcoal readily crumble when spread onto these supports, producing great diversity of marks and varied richness of tone. This process yields a solid drawing stick that produces a black line when stroked across a sheet of paper, a prepared canvas, or a wall primed for fresco. ![]() Clockwise from lower left: powdered charcoal, chamois cloth, erasers, stumps, willow twigs, charcoal sticks, charcoal crayonĬharcoal is made from twigs of willow or vine that have been heated at a high temperature in an enclosed vessel without oxygen.
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