I don’t have a lot of experience working in charcoal, but after playing with it this weekend while hanging out with my family, I think I’m going to have to remedy that.

I had fun experimenting with it, and found it quite satisfying to work with. Also, it sparked some ideas of trying to print these images on gel plates, which I’ll try to play with in the new year.

I had a bunch of different kinds of charcoal sitting around in a range of densities: vine, willow, compressed, large ones and flimsy thin sticks, soft and hard, some pencils even, and some white charcoal, which would be especially good on toned paper. I either inherited them or had gotten them off some class materials list, and they have languished in a drawer.

Here is how I approached this quick little project, which ended up sparking other ideas. I list what I did here, because I thought you might want to give it a try too:

• try a bunch of different kinds in a range of thicknesses and densities, and see what they can do in as many ways as possible to make the largest range of marks. Like pastels, use not only the tips, but the sides too. Be creative and spontaneous. Go off the page, use both hands, make big marks and small marks, being mindful to have a fill value range represented.
• take a shop towel and smudge out all or part of what you’ve done to create a midtone.
• try using an eraser to carve whites back into that midtone. Add in more darks over your mid tones and lights.
• do lots of these pages, being quick and not precious about them, but rather experimental. Try the whole range between representational to abstract subjects, merely seeing how many different kinds of marks you can make.
• when finished spray them with fixative so they don’t smudge in your sketchbook.

I found I particularly liked the really soft kind that makes the darkest mark. I can see traveling with this stuff, although fixative couldn’t travel by air. I love how immediate it is and how much more quickly a gesture of mine can record a mark, than say with a pen. Charcoal is inexpensive and easily portable, which is not something every art material can claim!

I encourage you to give it a try!