The 2b pencil and see how much softer so there’s carbon and you can see it smudges there are 6 bands there’s the to be I don’t know if I talked about erasers yet but I like to use both the kneaded eraser and this black eraser by FACTUS, it works well. What happens when I do the same thing with the 6b charcoal pencil it has the same amount of darkness but it smudges a little bit more meaning you get that dark smudge but with the carbon pencil, you have a little bit more control of the softness of the smudge. However, you want it to be it doesn’t have to be smooth and perfect that’s what I love about charcoal it’s so expressive.Īnother pencil that’s fun to use is the carbon sketch pencil it’s kind of like in-between a graphite pencil and a super dark charcoal pencil it’s so it’s a little bit smoother like graphite but it is so dark.

Remember that charcoal is not pencil it can be expressive it can be rough it can be. In terms of your color or your charcoal pencils make sure to use the sharpener that came with them and colored pencils for that matter don’t use an electric sharpener and try not to drop themīecause they can break into little pieces inside and then you know how frustrating it is to try to sharpen a pencil and have it continuously breaking on you so be careful with your pencils. You can pull the charcoal out, you can use it for things like animal fur or creating texture or just to round something out.Īnd how you keep your smudge stick nice and clean and nice and sharp is use this little paddle with the sandpaper on it.Īnd you rub that to make the point and clean it off and when you’re done you can just tear off the top layer of sandpaper and find a new one underneath. If you use your smudge stick you can draw. These are great I like these, I never use these as much when I first started using charcoal I just used to use my hands to blend which I still do,īut I do use these to get a little bit more control with the blending of your hands gets messy. Charcoal Drawing Ideas For Beginners Tips It is made with rolled-up paper and this one is by generals. Next, we have the white charcoal pencil, this smudges a little bit better than the white charcoal stick and I love that for adding details this is called a Tourtilian.Ī lot of people just call it a smudge stick. It gets pretty dark it doesn’t smudge as much as the 6b this is the 6b you can see it’s quite a bit darker. I’m so gonna start with the to just show you the difference a 2b. We have charcoal pencils I have a 2b and a 6b. White charcoal pencils as well you can use. White chalk as it is chalk or calcium carbonate mixed with a binder it doesn’t blend it and black charcoal.īut you can use it to add highlights and little details into your charcoal drawing easy and is great to love using it. Next, we have white charcoal which is often called white charcoal but it’s not charcoal, charcoal cannot be made white. While the compressed charcoal is a little bit tougher to erase using your eraser as a drawing tool is also a really good idea you can get back in there and add highlights with that. I like to use black erasers to erase my charcoal you can see how easily willow and bind charcoal can be erased.

So if you’re not sure what you’re gonna do use that willow or vine charcoal I use willow or vine charcoal to lay out my composition on canvases when I’m gonna paint and it can easily be erased with a rag. So, it’s just a burnt piece of stick it allows it to be erased easily it’s soft you could not get a lot of dark tones with your charcoal. We have vine charcoal willow or vine charcoal is made with sticks from grapevines or willow it’s soft and it’s made without a binding agent. This is all-around charcoal you can use it for anything you can lay stuff out you can use it to create a shaded object like a sphere. First of all, you have compressed charcoal, compressed charcoal is dark you can make controlled lines you can press hard.Īnd it is pretty hard to erase it blends out well but you can get in large areas coverage notice that does make a lot of dust.

Charcoal simple pencil rose drawing