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ReNae
As far as I have ever detected or learnt, there is no problem in doing a drawing with graphite. The main issue with graphite is that it has some sort of waxen binder which may not be the greatest thing under your paint. In the old days (van Eyck era) when it was common to do a completely rendered under-drawing in ink, the artists always used a hatching techinge, even for dark areas. That was because the oil didn't adhere properly to the ink, so they wanted to leave space between the hatchings for the oil paint to mechanically bond with the ground. With graphite, you shouldn't even begin to have this problem unless you intend to do a fully-rendered drawing with it; which I doubt is your intention.
In order to fix the drawing, there are--as mentioned--a variety of methods. One of these is to put skim milk in an aspirator bottle and spray it on. This is similar to the ancient method of blowing casein solution (I believe that casein is a protein that is most often derived from milk by-products) on to drawings in order to fix them. Personally, I prefer just to go over the lines with thinned raw umber or some other fast-drying pigment. As Lon pointed out, this can muddy the pigment, but unless you are only doing one layer of paint, it isn't really much of an issue. Charcoal in particular is a very weak pigment and won't muddy your colours very much or for long.
Anyway, let us know how it turns out.
Juan
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