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How Draw Charcoal Painting Art Books Tips Paint Oip Canvas Oil Arts Crafts

1. Setup your workspace. Charcoal can draw on almost any type of paper meant for drawing. But, coal is also very messy. It comes off your skin very easily, but to avoid your table becoming all black, put some newspapers or other papers under your workspace.
2. Take charcoal crayon and fill entire paper up with black. You don't need to draw anything yet. Just turn the white paper black. Don't leave any blank, white spots.
3. Find a good black-white photo. A portrait would be very recommended since you are a beginner. Put it in front of you and turn it upside down. If you do that, you do not have exact imagination of what you are drawing and your image will be unique. You just jot down some basic highlights of human face, but you do not completely copy the image.
4. Take a piece of eraser and erase out the outline of the head. That's right, you will be drawing with an eraser.
5. Start with the eyes, since they are the whitest spots on your face. Do not place them all the way on top of the image, cause that's where you will draw hair. Also, consider eyeballs and the shines: Once you have the basic eye outline, take eraser and slightly make a rounded line inside of the eyeball. Now, your eyes really look realistic.
6. Look at the photo and start finding the areas that are lightest. Now, take your eraser and erase those areas out. Apply less and less presure as you go out of the lighted area. Now, take your finger and rub those areas. That blends the gradient and makes it more realistic.
7. Start working on the details. You might want to take the charcoal again and make some outlines. Also, you can take eraser and erase other, additional areas out.
8. Try to shape the hair. Take eraser and make lines along the black area that'supposed to be hair. Now, take the coal and make the lines thinner. Be sure to follow patterns shown on photo.
9. Erase the black background. Take eraser and erase everything besides the portrait. Then take the charcoal and fill in the outline that used to be white. Make the outline thin.
10. Turn the portrait over and admire. But realize that that was just a startup exercise. Your image is probably not the best and looks nothing like the photo (but it looks like human!). If you want to, you can start all over again to get more practice. Once you think you've mastered making gray gradients, you can move on.
11. Draw a still life. Take some fruit, vase (maybe with flowers) and place them on a chair/table. Pay close attention to lighing and shading and use same techniques as you used in portrait to bring the image to your paper.
12. Move on to even harder stuff. Look out your window and draw what you see. Trees, streets, houses... Again, notice all the shadings and lightings. Try to learn new techniques.