Charcoal Drawing Lessons: Learn How to Draw Charcoal Art and Improve Your Charcoal Drawings

One of the biggest challenges of charcoal drawing is capturing how light travels across forms and figures. So many artists take charcoal lessons in order to hone just this ability to observe and execute the play of light and shadow. There are many strategies to meet this challenge, but they all have one underlying tie, which is that the charcoal drawing art shows a strong gradation of light from the lightest lights to the darkest darks through a deft sense of value. From here a charcoal artist can confidently create small charcoal portraits, or even a full-length charcoal figure drawing.

To get to this level of confidence when mastering how to draw charcoal pieces, it is often helpful to see how a charcoal artist takes a charcoal drawing and refines it so that the movement of light is well captured. Watch our newest free video tutorial and you’ll see artist Chris Wynter give a charcoal drawing lesson that is all about drawing forms that show the movement of light from light to dark and dark to light.

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Learn How the Effect of Pressure in Your Mark Making Can Lead to a Successful Charcoal Portrait

In Artist Daily's free charcoal drawing video, Wynter mentions the difference between hard charcoal and soft charcoal, clarifying that soft charcoal is the one he recommends learning how to draw charcoal gradation with because it can be easily lightened or darkened—an asset when you are first learning charcoal painting and charcoal drawing.

Charcoal Drawing Lessons: Learn How to Draw Charcoal Art and Improve Your Charcoal Drawings

In our free charcoal lessons video tutorial, you'll actually see how the artist creates gradation. Wynter shows this part of charcoal drawing in a variety of ways. He shows you how a change in pressure while drawing with the stick of charcoal changes value in the charcoal painting. He also shows how to use erasers, cloths, and even fingers on charcoal drawings when you observe that your darkest darks are too dark or if you want to soften the edges of the forms in a charcoal drawing. Plus, along with this video, you'll also receive a free membership to our Artist Daily community. This membership provides you with access to our free techniques, blogs, and newsletter; plus you'll gain the help and support of thousands of artists of all abilities. What are you waiting for? Download this free video to get started!

Mastering Gradations for a Complicated Charcoal Portrait

A charcoal drawing lesson should foremost be a lesson in value and gradation—this is the most distinctive characteristic of charcoal and it is this that separates works of the highest order from those that still need to be refined. Charcoal drawing lessons that tend to be most successful at this are the ones that allow the artistic demonstrator to take the viewers through the light and dark “map” in a composition, showing how to pull light out and push darks darker, as Wynter does in Charcoal Drawing Lessons. Charcoal lessons that are rooted in this kind of instruction are sure to bolster students’ confidence so that they can create a charcoal figure drawing or a more complicated charcoal portrait in no time.

Using Paper Texture to Enhance Your Charcoal Art

Wynter also discusses how charcoal drawings can vary depending on whether or not the charcoal artist wants the texture of the paper that the charcoal drawing is on to show through or if the artist wants the materiality of the work to be less detectable. In a charcoal portrait, the texture of the paper may enhance the work—giving a sense of the model’s skin texture. But on the other hand smoothing out the lines and blending the stark areas of black and white, shadow and light, in order to reinforce the realism of the drawing, could better serve the charcoal portrait drawing.

Draw a Charcoal Portrait with a Visual Sense of Movement and Light

Artistic ability in charcoal drawing starts with seeing and executing gradation throughout a composition. That means from a charcoal drawing of a cup or vase in which the mapping of light and dark values is correct, you can create charcoal figure drawing art that really gives a visual sense of the figure’s skin texture and the subtle movement of light on the body. You can also create a dynamic charcoal portrait drawing, or even a sequence of charcoal portraits, with dramatic light or more delicate gradations of value. It’s all there for you to decide how to draw charcoal works by interpreting tone and deciding how you want the finer details of the works to appear.

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Charcoal Drawing Lessons: Learn How to Draw Charcoal Art and Improve Your Charcoal Drawings