What's on my easel? Charcoal birds!

To be honest, I rarely use an easel but this past week I dusted it off to do some birds in charcoal. The easel provides a better angle to draw, otherwise the bird can look skewed on a flat surface.

I was inspired by a friend to pull out my charcoal vine, pencils and a new product …charcoal powder! I use charcoal all the time but in an abstract kind of way. If you didn’t know, I spent 2 years taking portrait lessons and that’s when I fell in love with it.

The first few layers using soft vine charcoal is such a forgiving experience! Why? Because it smudges and erases so easily. If I make a mistake on that crisp white paper, it’s no problem.

After laying down some lines to create the shape of the bird, then I completely smudge and wipe it away with my hand! On white paper, it leaves behind a faint ghostlike image that I can build upon. Rinse and repeat 😊 I repeat this process emphasizing the dark values until I’m happy with it.

But as the layers build up erasing becomes more difficult. And, once the pencils come out, then going backwards is not an option! Especially with a hard charcoal pencil.

Why not use a regular graphite pencil? The bottom line…graphite leaves a shiny surface that doesn’t appeal to me. Light layers of graphite are okay, but if I push firmly to get a dark layer then everything gets shiny. It’s like the graphite acts like a sheet of glass, nothing will stick to it, and adding more won’t make it blacker.

This is why I love charcoal! It’s much blacker than graphite. Similar to the graphite, you can build up layers but at some point, the paper becomes so saturated that you can’t add more. It can behave like that sheet of glass, but at least it’s not shiny!

Back to the easel.

I’ve no idea where this bird obsession of mine is going but they seem to be calling me!