Easy Charcoal Pencil Drawing Step by Step

Sketching with charcoal is a lot of fun because it's so freeing to make big, sweeping movements across your paper whilst getting messy. In this tutorial I'll discuss the basics of sketching with charcoal, from choosing which type to use to showing you how to tone your paper. We'll cover the tricks of making your subject pop off the page and getting a nice range of value in your sketch.

Charcoal comes in three basic forms: pencil, vine, and stick. You'll want to play with all three to decide which you prefer to sketch with. Sometimes you will use more than one type in a sketch. Draw lines with each type and also do a bit of shading. Looking at how the charcoal behaves with these two drawing methods will help you make a better decision.

Pencil Charcoal
Pencil charcoal comes in a range from hard to soft, just like drawing pencils. The advantage of a charcoal pencil is that you can get a very fine point and apply quite a lot of pressure. You will also keep a bit cleaner. Charcoal pencils work perfectly for small pieces.

Vine Charcoal
Vine charcoal is literally burnt willow sticks. As such, it is quite soft and thus it will completely fill in the grooves of your paper, creating a very solid black. Vine charcoal is generally a bit silvery grey compared to the other types of charcoal and thus it doesn't make the darkest blacks.

Stick Charcoal
Stick charcoal comes in a range of hard and soft and also sometimes different colors. It can create quite dark blacks and is generally used to make the darkest darks on your sketch.