Portrait – Sketch with Charcoal

Portrait drawing with charcoal look very attractive as they are done using pitch black charcoal that produces a contrast picture with good depth

Here is one of my first few portraits done completely with a charcoal pencil.

Before starting the sketch make sure you have the following items handy:

• Different grades of charcoal pencil – hard, medium and soft. Camlin pencils are commonly available ones
• Charcoal eraser is different from a normal eraser that are used for graphite pencils
• Fixative to avoid smudging after the sketch is complete

I sketched an outline before getting into the details of the portrait. Its important to sketch the outline of the eyes as they are most important part of a portrait. The spacing between the eyes is very important. After sketching the outline of the eye, I normally take a 2-3 minutes break and come back and take a re-look, make some adjustments in the position and size. Make sure they are propionate and spaced appropriately. Then proceed with sketching eyebrows which are the supporting feature of the eyes.

Mark the highlights so you can revisit while working on the details of the picture.
Start working on the details of the sketch. After adding the strokes, I started to blend the shading with a help of facial tissue. In some places, I used an ear bud to blend and get a smoother finish.

Some of the other tools that can be used for blending are felt pen, blending stump and papers.

I took around one hour to complete this sketch. After completing it, I took a break for 10-15 minutes. Take a re-look to make some finer adjustments before calling it complete.

Remember to spray the fixative after completing to avoid smudging!

If you are interested in trying out some serious charcoal and pencil drawing, try this book - Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil by - J. D. Hillberry

A mini tutorial on Charcoal and Pencil drawings is available here by J. D. Hillberry