ONLINE DRAWING COURSE – FINAL LANDSCAPE IN CHARCOAL

To my relief, today I completed the final landscape of three in the Charcoal module. There is a further bonus landscape to draw if we wish, but this is optional; having decided that charcoal really isn’t my medium of choice, I shan’t be tackling that one. Thinking about it further, though, I may attempt it in graphite if time allows – it might be an interesting exercise, and it would be good to keep up the momentum in that medium. Also, I have not yet attempted a landscape in graphite.

Here is today’s effort, this time a seascape.

This was an interesting one, because firstly, it involved quite a bit of paper being left white with no charcoal. Then we were encouraged to add a lot more fine detail than previously. For the first time we were to use a fine pencil eraser – I have the Tombow Mono Zero eraser which is like a propelling pencil but with an eraser rather than a lead. This is great for adding very fine line detail on a drawing, by removing the medium to expose the white paper underneath. I have also recently purchased a new electric eraser as my old one fell apart, and this new one has two different sizes of eraser tip, one of which is very fine. I forgot to try it in this drawing, and it would be interesting to compare it with the Tombow. My normal Pentel propelling pencils which I use all the time for everyday writing, have a small eraser under the cap on the end. I think the Tombow one is probably better than this as it is somewhat harder. Anyway, in this drawing, we used this fine-tipped eraser to remove charcoal in order to add finer detail. Also, the use of the charcoal pencil at the end was minimal, mostly to pick out the details in the rocks, and to add darker and more intense shadows to their bases.

The other tool which was new in this project was a silicone or plastic eraser. These produce less dust than a normal indiarubber eraser; removing the dust from a charcoal drawing can be risky as it can smudge the drawing. I have an ancient typewriting eraser in the shape of a sharpenable pencil which is very hard (very useful as an ink eraser if used very gently so as not to damage the paper), and it has a brush on the end which is very handy for this – it causes considerably less smudging than one’s hand. The plastic eraser I have is a Staedtler one and it feels quite hard, and the edges are still quite sharp as it is new. It removes the charcoal more efficiently than a standard eraser, but it does make some dust. We used the kneaded eraser less in this drawing. This eraser leaves no dust at all.

It’s very interesting trying out these various tools. Eventually one probably settles down with a favourite but it’s nice to have the choice of several. The kneaded eraser is different from any other kind of eraser, though, and is an essential part of the drawing kit.

I don’t think I’ve done too badly with this drawing! Things are definitely improving with practice. I should quite like to redo this one in graphite as well, and compare the results. It’s a beautiful seascape with the crashing wave in the background, but in charcoal I am not keen on the sky which again looks dirty to me!