Sonna and Drake
 

Here is a charcoal commission that I just completed. It is 24" x 18" on a panel.

And some details:

Hands...always tough.

Beautiful job, Michael!

Could you comment a bit on the materials that comprise your panel and ground? Do you tend to work in a positive fashion, do you "lift" areas of charcoal or both?

How did you handle fixing, framing and/or mattting?

Charcoal is such a wonderful medium, I wish I had more client interest in it.


Congratultions.

Hello Chris,

Thanks for your post.

My panel is 1/4 inch masonite.

I create a "Windberg" style panel - i.e., a panel that has a very fine sandpaper-like texture. I start by sanding the masonite and rolling on 4 coats of professional gesso with marble dust added to it. I then sand the whole thing so it is smooth as ivory with no grain or real texture visible. My last coat is the same gesso, but thinned about 1/3 with polymer medium. I roll it out very evenly and once the surface is covered, I keep rolling it with a soft slightly damp foam roller till the texture is like fine sandpaper. I then use good professional gesso to seal the back and sides.

This makes an excellent surface for charcoal. You can scratch, carve, erase, pull out. I blend with bristle brushes and it just eats them up, but I have not found anything that does a better job, so I keep buying them.

I sometimes tone my ground and work in from the middle, and other times, I work directly on the white and work inward. Both styles create differing looks - the toned ground tends to look more soft and I usually have to use white pastel in those to really pull highlights. This portrait is done straight on white.

I don't fix my charcoals as they are pretty durable once applied to that surface and I find that fixatives can sometimes change the values. I do recommend framing them under glass. This particular piece I will frame for the client, so the actual panel is 3 inches larger all around to accomodate the matts. We are going to give it a double matt of a light cream inside and a dark sage suede matt outside with a fairly rustic natural wood frame.

I find that charcoal is a good entry into portraiture for many people as the cost is in the hundreds instead of the thousands for a portrait. I do a lot of them. And they are great to do at shows as it really draws people in.

Hi Michael!

I totally agree with Chris...wonderful! I'm grateful for the info about your panel preparation, but I still have a few questions. When you mention sanding the panel...how so? Manually or with a sander?

I imagine that larger pieces (such as the size Sharon Knettell uses) would be tiresome to sand by hand. Also, is all of the rolling done with foam rollers?

Finally, where is the best place to get masonite? I tried at our local Home Depot and the guy didn't know what I was talking about. Should I refer to it by another name? Thanks in advance for your reply and time! ...where does the term "Windberg" come from?

Gratefully...

Hello Meredith:

Thanks for your post! :)

Windberg panels are commercially available panels for artists. Windberg panels are known for their "surface tooth". They are getting harder and harder to find and I believe they are no longer making them. So I make my own.

Masonite is at your local Home Depot or Lowes - I prefer Lowes as they seem to have a better selection, and you can sometimes find an actual human to help you.

If you find yourself in the incapable hands of another salesperson who does not know what you are talking about, tell them to take you to the pegboard. Pegboard is Masonite with holes. In that area, there should be sheets of Masonite without the holes and that is what you want. I find mine in bins that also contain birch plywood, regular plywood, and particle board. I buy pieces that are 2' x 4' and the occasional 4' x 4'sheet. They have a saw there and they will be able to cut it for you while you wait.

I sand the surface of the Masonite by hand with very rough sand paper on a block. The idea is to rough up the surface to help create a mechanical bond for the first coat of gesso to cling to, and a finishing sander will make it too smooth for my liking. I really scrub into it.

I sand the gesso with a wet block first and then a finishing sander with 100 grit paper on it to get it smooth. All of the gesso is applied with a foam roller, but I have two - one to apply the gesso and the other to roll out the last coat.

Hope that helps! :)

Hi Michael,

Nice work! Have you ever tried Peggy's sauce? I bet you would be great at it.

Michael, this is wonderful, I love your rendering of the hands.

I hope this was a well-behaved dog! :thumbsup:

Values
 

Michael, you have such a wide range of values in this drawing. Are you able to do that because of the ground or the bristle brushes? Or simply excellent technique? It's very impressive.

Jean

Enzie: I have not tried Sauce, but I am interested. I will get round to it eventually.

Beth: He is a very well behaved dog! His whole body wags when he sees you. :)

Jean: I have heard that charcoal has a limited value range - something like six values. I have always been able to coax more value distinction out of my charcoal than that, so I am not sure how accurate it is. This is just straight charcoal, no pastel white added. The brushes certainly do help to express the values as you lay in the charcoal and then brush it/scrub it to blend and establish the value - too light and I add more charcoal, too dark and I hit the area with my kneeded eraser and brush/scrub again.

All three
 

Michael, skill, ground, and bristles, this must add up to talent.

Jean

Well Jean that is a lovely compliment and I thank you. :)

I have always believed that talent is simply the spark that gets you started down a path and talent is what keeps you on the path when things get hard. The rest is just hard work and dedication.

I'm curious. Is the marble dust necessary in the first step? You end up sanding it smooth anyway, so why not just use the dust in the final stages?

Since my primary interest is in drawing (for now), this has gotten my attention. I haven't been happy drawing on sketch pad paper.

More questions:

What ratio of marble dust to gesso do you use?

Where can I buy marble dust? I've located it online,but I'd like to pick it up locally. Is it a hardware store item, or strictly an art supply? We have no art supply stores in my town, and I want to avoid driving 30 miles to look for it.

Is there a suitable substitute?

Jeff:

Marble dust (Calcuim Carbonate) is only one of several additives you can add to give the board texture - things like silica sand (ashtray sand) are good too and give the board quite a bit of tooth.

You can find marble dust online at Pearl, Daniel Smith and other places.

I use it throughout because the addition of marble dust to acrylic gesso makes a kind of hydra-stone - it is very hard. I like to scratch and carve into my board sometimes for things like highlights and hair so I use it throughout because plain gesso in the underlayers would not hold up as well and I would be afraid of scratching through to the board surface.

As to formula, I go by the golden mean - 1 part marble dust to 1.6 parts gesso. It can be a bit of a pain to mix, so do it in a largish bucket and get a paint mixing hook for your electric drill. Mix up a big batch and put it into a bucket. Always use professional grade gesso.

Also, I don't like the Fredericks dust - it is too fine for my taste.

Michael,

What a wonderful portrait, very strong and sensitive. Congratulations on an excellent piece.

I'm printing out your instructions and stealing, er, borrowing your technique. I've been doing lots of work in charcoal lately and I want to explore non-paper grounds. Thanks for sharing your methods with us.

My advice for using sauce is to wear a biohazard suit before you begin. (I must be a lot messier than Peggy Baumgaertner.)

Linda:

Thanks for your post. I too understand that sauce can be quite messy. I really must try it sometime. :)

I really enjoy this surface for doing charcoal on. It really allows you a lot of room to dance and with the ability to scrape, sand, and erase, you can really hone in and get some good detail. I hope it works well for you too.

Very nice drawing, Michael. I enjoy it when the pros post work in various mediums.... as I'm sure the clients appreciate the different price points in this art of portraiture.

I think the reason everyone keeps getting back to sauce is that it seems to be what charcoal aspires to be, at least in terms of rich, dense darks, and in variety of application. In other words, it's so versatile and painterly: you can apply it dry with a ponce pad, or work wet with bristle brushes, or lift off with an ink eraser, or even use the sticks like pastels.

On another forum, another artist pointed out that various mediums can be utilized in a sauce-like manner. For example, Scott Burdick grinds conte crayon, sometimes charcoal, and sometimes perhaps other mediums, I don't recall, and the powdered form gives him a very "sauce-like" variety of application. Here's a link for anyone interested in his "sauce-like" application.

Here's another, where it looks like conte was ground up and applied in various ways.

Mari:

Well, I will indeed have to try sauce out sometime. Thanks for the link - very interesting stuff. :)

Charcoal Painting
 

This is so fine I would call it a charcoal painting!

Thank you Jeanine! :)