Thanks everyone for your kind feedback. It really makes a difference and is very encouraging.
Jimmie, here's a detail. You know, I'm sure you'll have success with this medium. You have the
eye and that's the essential thing. I don't think it's all that different from working with graphite, except for maybe the toned paper/white highlight thing ( some of your graphite drawings use white highlights, don't they?). The texture of the paper you choose is important. And I use a hard charcoal pencil (HB) for control. A softer charcoal I find harder to control the lighter tones especially. And I don't ever smudge the charcoal. I'm not philosophically against smudging, I've known some great smudgers in my time (I was even once a smudger, I freely admit it) - it's one way of doing it - it's just not useful for what I'm currently after. The only reason I opt for charcoal instead of graphite is I love the deep rich matte blacks that you can get. And when you succeed wildly with this way of working, I expect at least part of the "blame!"
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Originally Posted by Mike Dodson
Are the lights in this drawing charcoal also?
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That's a great question, Mike. I don't know what it is!
It comes with these little charcoal sets (2 or 3 charcoal pencils and the white one) and it says "charcoal white" but I always thought charcoal had to be made of something burnt (?) (Someone help me if I'm way off on this.) It's a little like a white colored pencil, but it's not waxy like colored pencils. Is it white conte? Precisely what it's made of, I don't have a clue. I guess I need to do some research. Pardon my ignorance.
Working the whites on this one was the trickiest part. I'm not used to using
so much white, I thought I was really overdoing it. If I was to do it again, I'd try to see if I could get away with less white.