Realtime Gesture Video with Charcoal! (Patreon)

When I teach gesture drawing (or life drawing), I usually begin my classes with going over the material options that I feel are best for learning to draw the figure.

If you've watched my Materials video, you may be familiar with this.

Usually, I deter artists - especially new artists - to use soft messy materials like willow charcoal or soft pastels.

I do this because I want my students to build confidence with a pencil like tool, that can transfer easily over to drawing for animation, illustration, digital, etc.

However...

This year I took part in a wonderful charcoal drawing workshop by Nathan Aardvark. It was all about drawing with charcoal and he approached drawing the figure in a completely different way than I was used to. He focused more on shapes and design than anatomy and lines of action.

At first, my brain did not like it, cause it was something that I was not used to, at all! By the end fo the 3 day course, I was feeling more comfortable with the techniques (but still a complete noob!)

Now, several months later, I've started playing with charcoal again and although I mostly use it for the longer studies (10 minutes +) I want to show you how you could play with charcoal in your gesture practice, just to shake things up and experience some different choices that open up with a different material.

Check out the video for my full thoughts on charcoal and some fun techniques you can do with this material.

• What did you think of the video?
• Have you drawn with willow/vine charcoal for gestures?
• Is it something you would try?

- GG

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Model Reference: Dynamic Muse - Dria

Materials: Willow Charcoal - Medium / Newsprint / Chamois cloth.

Artists to check out: Rustam Hasanov / Baran Mong / Lauren Findlay /