Discovering Charcoal

Today students learned about drawing with charcoal. Charcoal drawings remain an essential skill for budding artists. Working with charcoal serves the dual purpose of building artistic creation skills and developing art appreciation skills. Students worked with vine charcoal along with kneaded erasers and blending stumps to create a still life (bowl of fruit as subject matter). They practiced drawing shapes, overlapping, and shading. After a review of the historical context charcoal was used for, students learned about the properties of charcoal and how to work with this material. They discovered that erasing charcoal creates light areas; smudging charcoal creates value; and drawing lightly with charcoal creates contour lines. These initial drawings are a work-in-progress to be completed in the next couple week. Next week we'll introduce a new project using chalk pastels. Stay tuned to this blog for future developments!