The charcoal drawing tools used by me for my charcoal art

Charcoal sketching tools

I have been wanting to this post since long as it is a common question asked to me by all those who love charcoal art. The participants who attend my art workshop too have requested me to post this information on the blog.

Being a self taught artist I have experimented with a whole lot of different pencils and blending tools in the past. However over a period of years I have zeroed in on a handful of them and they have been in my charcoal tool box since then. There are a few paper stumps which are almost sixteen years old and I dread misplacing them. The older they get the better they are at blending. 

Basically the charcoal kit consists of the pencils, blending tools and the erasers and a fixative.

The paper stumps ( Old collection, almost fifteen years old )

Rolled up paper

The blending tools  or Tortillons ( New ones as available in the market )

Old soft cloth for blending

Tissue paper  also can be used as an alternative, to blend the 
charcoal on paper ( I normally use only the cloth )

Camlin charcoal pencil
I almost use it for all my charcoal drawings and sketchings

Conte a Paris charcoal pencil

General charcoal pencil

A normal eraser ( Staedtler )

Kneaded eraser ( Faber Castell or Cretacolour )

Very helpful to create the highlights and can be moulded into any shape

Willow charcoal ( Chinese brand )
I have Daler Rowney willow charcoal too but I find this
particular one very soft and it covers the paper
very uniformly as a base value.

Charcoal powder
I use if for creating the darkest values in my charcoal sketching.

Cretacolour Chunky Charcoal
( Sparingly used )

General's Compressed charcoal sticks

This has been with me since last year and only very recently

I have started using it. I find it pretty good.

Masking Tape
Masking tape is required to fix the paper
on to some hard surface or an acid free board
before beginning the drawing begins

Blade Cutter
I normally a blade to sharpen the pencils instead of using a sharpener
 as the tips break off easily. It leads to a lot of frustation
especially if the pencil is very expensive.

Winsor and Newton Fixative

There are lot of different brands of fixative's in the market

but somehow I have always liked the one as above.

Apart from all the tools mentioned above, I also keep sand paper handy as it helps me to sharpen the pencil tips when I need to do the details. And I also forgot to mention a simple HB pencil ( Any brand ) which is required in the beginning to do the initial drawing on the paper.

I have also written a post about the PAPERS that I use for my charcoal works and you can CLICK HERE to browse through it. I hope this post is helpful to all those who are into charcoal drawing and sketching. 

If you are into charcoal art work and if you use any tool other than what I have mentioned above, then please do write and share with me. It will be a pleasure to be informed.

Thanks a lot for browsing through my works.