How to use charcoal for drawing: techniques for beginners
Charcoal is one of the oldest drawing materials in existence — it has been used by artists for thousands of years, and for good reason. It is immediate, expressive, and capable of an extraordinary tonal range from the lightest, most delicate grey to the deepest, most velvety black. It is also uniquely forgiving: marks can be moved, blended, lifted, and adjusted in ways that pencil and pen simply cannot match.
For beginners, charcoal is one of the best possible introductions to tonal drawing. It forces you to think in terms of light and dark rather than line, which is how most accomplished artists think about drawing, and it rewards a loose, confident approach rather than the tentative, detail-first technique that beginners often fall into with pencil.
This guide covers the types of charcoal available, the tools you need alongside it, the core techniques to learn first, and how to work up a drawing from first marks to finished piece.
The types of charcoal
Understanding the differences between charcoal types is the most important thing to get right before you begin, because each type behaves very differently on paper.
Willow charcoal is made from burnt willow wood — thin sticks of naturally carbonised wood that produce a soft, light mark. It is the most forgiving type of charcoal available. Marks made with willow are easily blended with a finger, lifted almost entirely with a putty rubber, or removed with a clean rag. It does not produce the deepest blacks — the darkest it goes is a rich, mid-toned grey — but this is an advantage for beginners because it makes recovery from mistakes nearly effortless. Willow charcoal is ideal for initial sketching, mapping out compositions, establishing large areas of mid-tone, and any stage of a drawing where you want to remain loose and adjustable.
We stock willow charcoals at Craft and Canvas from £2.50.
Compressed charcoal is powdered charcoal bound with a gum binder and pressed into sticks. It is significantly darker and denser than willow, producing rich, deep blacks that willow cannot approach. The trade-off is that compressed charcoal is considerably harder to erase — once it is on the paper it wants to stay there. This makes it best suited to the later stages of a drawing, when you are confident in the structure and want to push the darkest darks. Compressed charcoal also comes in pencil form, which allows for much finer, more controlled marks than stick charcoal of either type.
Charcoal pencils give you the precision of a pencil with the tonal richness of charcoal. They can be sharpened to a fine point, held and used exactly like a drawing pencil, and are excellent for detail work, fine lines, and precise highlights. We stock charcoal pencils including a white charcoal pencil — invaluable for adding bright, precise highlights to drawings on toned paper — at Craft and Canvas.
The most practical approach for beginners is to start with willow charcoal for the bulk of the work and introduce compressed charcoal or charcoal pencil for the darkest accents and finest details once the drawing is established.
What you need alongside the charcoal
Paper. Charcoal needs a surface with texture — tooth — to grip onto. Smooth paper does not hold charcoal well and produces flat, unsatisfying results. Cartridge paper at 90gsm or above works well for practice. Dedicated charcoal or pastel paper, which has a more pronounced tooth, produces richer, more layered results. Toned paper — grey, buff, or brown — is particularly useful for charcoal work because it gives you a mid-tone to work from, allowing you to push darks down with charcoal and pull lights up with a white charcoal pencil or putty rubber simultaneously.
A putty rubber (kneaded eraser). In charcoal drawing, an eraser is not just a correction tool — it is a drawing tool in its own right. A putty rubber can be moulded to any shape and used to lift charcoal cleanly from the paper surface, pulling out precise highlights, lightening mid-tones, creating soft edges, and recovering areas that have become too dark. Many experienced charcoal artists spend as much time working with the eraser as with the charcoal itself.
Blending tools. Your fingers are the most immediate and intuitive blending tools — dragging a fingertip through charcoal on paper produces soft, atmospheric transitions that are very difficult to achieve any other way. Paper stumps (tortillons) give more precision for blending in smaller areas. A clean piece of tissue or kitchen roll is useful for lightening large areas quickly and for creating soft, even mid-tones across broad passages.
Fixative. Charcoal is not stable on its own — it will smudge indefinitely unless fixed. A light coat of fixative spray holds the charcoal in place and allows you to build further layers on top. Workable fixative is the most useful type as it allows continued work after application; permanent fixative should only be used on a completely finished drawing.
The core techniques
Massing in tones. Rather than starting with an outline and filling it in — the instinct most beginners have — experienced charcoal artists often begin by covering the entire paper with a light layer of charcoal (willow is ideal for this), rubbing it evenly across the surface with a finger or clean rag to create a mid-tone ground, and then working from that tone both darker and lighter. This approach immediately eliminates the intimidating white paper and gives you a range of tones to work from rather than having to build from nothing.
Side-stroke shading. Holding a stick of willow charcoal on its side rather than at its tip and drawing across the paper produces broad, soft areas of tone very quickly. This is the most efficient way to establish large dark or mid-tone areas in the early stages of a drawing and produces a characteristic quality of mark — slightly uneven, with the texture of the paper showing through — that is one of charcoal's most distinctive qualities.
Blending. Moving charcoal already deposited on the paper with a finger, stump, or rag softens edges, merges adjacent tones, and creates smooth gradations. The key is not to over-blend — drawings that are blended uniformly throughout tend to look flat and lifeless. Selective blending, where some edges are soft and others remain sharp, creates a more dynamic and interesting result.
Lifting out highlights. Using a putty rubber to remove charcoal from the lightest areas of a drawing is one of the most powerful techniques available in the medium. The rubber can be shaped to a fine point for precise highlights — a glint of light on an eye, the edge of a lit surface — or used more broadly to lift large areas of tone back toward the white of the paper. Working in this way, pushing darks in with charcoal and pulling lights out with an eraser, is how the most accomplished charcoal drawings achieve their dramatic tonal contrast.
Hatching and mark-making with charcoal pencil. Once the broad tones of a drawing are established with stick charcoal, a charcoal pencil can be used to introduce fine lines, hatching, precise edges, and textural detail that stick charcoal cannot produce. The transition from broad willow sticks to a sharp charcoal pencil as a drawing progresses — from loose to specific, from gestural to precise — is one of the defining rhythms of working in this medium.
White charcoal for highlights. On toned paper, a white charcoal pencil used to draw the brightest lights of a subject produces a luminous, striking effect that is impossible to achieve on white paper. The combination of black compressed charcoal for the deepest darks, mid-tone paper for the middle values, and white charcoal for the highlights gives you the full tonal range of the subject with relatively minimal effort.
How to approach a drawing
The most effective approach for a beginner is to work from general to specific — establishing the overall tonal structure of the drawing before committing to any detail.
Begin by lightly mapping the composition with willow charcoal — not an outline, but a loose indication of where the main masses of light and dark fall. Then mass in the darker areas broadly using the side of the charcoal, blend lightly to unify the tone, and use a putty rubber to begin recovering the lightest areas. Step back frequently — charcoal drawings reveal their problems most clearly from a distance, and a mark that looks wrong up close often reads correctly from further away.
As the tonal structure becomes clear and you are satisfied with the general distribution of light and dark, begin to use a charcoal pencil or the tip of a compressed charcoal stick to sharpen edges, deepen the darkest areas, and add specific detail. Leave the finest, most precise work until last — white charcoal highlights, the sharpest edges, the darkest accents.
Throughout the process, use fixative sparingly between stages if you want to preserve the work done so far while building further layers on top.
Frequently asked questions about charcoal drawing
What is the difference between willow and vine charcoal? They are made from different woods — willow from burnt willow sticks, vine from burnt grape vine — but behave very similarly. Both are soft, light, and easily erasable. Willow charcoal is the most widely available and is what we stock at Craft and Canvas. The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Can I use charcoal on ordinary cartridge paper? Yes, though paper with more tooth — more surface texture — gives better results and holds more layers of charcoal. Heavy cartridge paper at 90gsm or above works well for practice and initial exploration. Pastel or charcoal paper is worth trying once you are comfortable with the medium.
How do I stop a finished charcoal drawing from smudging? Spray with fixative. Hold the can at least 30cm from the surface and apply in light, even passes rather than a single heavy coat. Allow each coat to dry fully before adding another. For drawings you want to preserve long-term, two light coats of workable fixative followed by a final coat of permanent fixative gives good protection.
Do I need a blending stump or can I use my fingers? Fingers work extremely well for most blending in charcoal — they are warm, sensitive, and immediately responsive. A paper stump gives more precision in smaller areas and keeps your fingers cleaner. Both are useful. Most charcoal artists use their fingers for the majority of blending and a stump for more controlled or detailed work.
Can charcoal be used with other drawing materials? Yes. Charcoal combines well with white charcoal pencil on toned paper, with graphite pencil for fine detail (though the two do not blend together cleanly), and with pastel for colour work. Many artists use charcoal for the tonal underpainting of pastel drawings, working over it once fixed.
What size willow charcoal should I buy? Willow charcoal comes in different diameters — thin (around 3mm), medium (5–6mm), and thick (8–10mm). Thin sticks are useful for line work and initial sketching; medium sticks are the most versatile all-round size; thick sticks are good for covering large areas quickly. For a beginner, a medium grade is the best starting point.
Is charcoal suitable for portrait drawing? Very much so — portrait drawing is one of charcoal's great traditional applications. The medium's ability to produce smooth skin tones through blending, rich shadows in hair and clothing, and precise highlights in the eyes makes it exceptionally well suited to the human face. Many art schools teach portrait drawing in charcoal before any other medium for this reason.
Shop charcoal drawing materials at Craft and Canvas
We stock willow charcoals from £4.80, charcoal pencils, and white charcoal pencils at Craft and Canvas in Hebden Bridge and online at craftandcanvas.co.uk. Come in and speak to us if you would like advice on where to start.
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