How to Use Charcoal for Dramatic Black-and-White Drawings
How to Use Charcoal for Dramatic Black-and-White Drawings
A versatile medium and also highly expressive, charcoal helps take black-and-white drawings to another level. Deep rich tones and dramatic contrasts become favourites among many artists seeking to capture dramatic effects. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned artist, working with charcoal can take your drawing skills to the next level. Here's how to work effectively with charcoal to create dramatic black-and-white artworks.
Choosing the Best Charcoal
To begin with creating beautiful charcoal drawings, you would first need to select the right type of charcoal. There are two types: vine charcoal and compressed charcoal. Vine charcoal is lighter and easy to erase. It can be used ideally in sketching and initial outlines. Compressed charcoal offers deeper and darker tones and can be employed for detailing or adding depth in your work. Try out both kinds to ascertain which type suits best according to your style.
Setting Up the Workspace
Charcoal is a drawing medium that requires a clean, well-illuminated workspace to work properly. Use smooth-textured drawing paper that can accept much charcoal. A little 'tooth' in the paper will let you allow more blending and shading to occur. At times it is helpful to have some basics on hand, such as blending stumps, kneaded erasers, and fixatives for helping you achieve and maintain your desired effects.
Dramatic Effects Techniques
Layering: Suggest beginning with light layers of vine charcoal as an underdrawing. Gradate to more compressed charcoal, and that area will darken up. The layering helps the transition between the light and dark areas to be subtle and creates that illusion of depth in your drawing.
Blending: Using blending stumps or your fingers, smoke and smudge the charcoal to soften edges and create gradients that can add depth to your drawing. Be careful not to over-blend since over-smudging results in losing detail in the drawing.
Highlighting: Charcoal can be dark, but highlights are just as important. You can use a kneaded eraser to eliminate charcoal from areas you want to create highlights. This will give it contrast, and really draw the viewer's eye to parts of your artwork.
Texture: You use many tools when creating textures in your drawing. For instance, if you want broad strokes, you use the side of the charcoal stick, but if you have fine details, you use the tip. Then, you have different kinds of textures, which add interest and dimension to your work.
Final Touches of Your Drawing
At this stage, you should feel content with your drawing. Conserving your work may include using fixatives to prevent smudging and the destruction of your artwork within a period of time. Spray a light coat from a distance so as not to soak the paper.
Conclusion
You can use charcoal for black-and-white drawings to create various dramatic effects from deep shadows to brilliant highlights. You may master some techniques such as layering and blending, and you can even allow texture, which adds unique qualities that are wholly different from the corresponding artworks made with other drawing tools. Now, get your charcoal and start experimenting-your next masterpiece is just a stroke away!
How to Use Charcoal for Dramatic Black-and-White Drawings
