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Liquid Charcoal
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Message
Posted
I've just started playing with this - I have a number of drawings that I want to put on the Forum or Gallery, but the light out here (and in my flat) has been awful: I might scan a few rather than ask my camera to do the impossible.
Anyway, yes, liquid charcoal - encouraged by several of you, including George Cutter, I bought the Schminke liquid charcoals, and am having great fun with it; I've just scratched the surface so far; incidentally, I also treated myself to a Stillman and Birn Delta series sketchbook - lovely paper. I've often used water with charcoal, and carbon and conté pencils and crayons, often in conjunction with ink: I call these my dirty pictures (no, not the ones that got me into trouble with the police...), because I like a lot of dark subjects. In a way then, the liquid charcoal isn't new to me, but in another respect - it is; it behaves differently to wetted charcoal pencils; and I'm using it with carbon and Indian ink, and with Nitram charcoal. So that's why I've been quiet lately - it wasn't that I'm too stuffed with turkey and sozzled with brandy - well; um; perhaps a bit - but because I've been playing with my new toys.
Have you all discovered Andrew Barrowman - an artist from the south-west (translator's note: I've forgotten if he's from Cornwall or Devon: I think Cornwall): he has quite a few YouTube videos, showing his work in oil, watercolour, oil pastel, AND - liquid charcoal? Recently, he's also taken to Silverpoint (which I want to start doing again); and he's a fan of Casein: I did find a supplier, but went a bit lightheaded over the price. Anyway, sticking to the subject for once, I do suggest you look him up if you haven't used liquid charcoal yet (or indeed if you have) because he's a really good artist - and he has a nice old dog who comes out to supervise his artistic trips to the coasts of (yes) Cornwall.
Posted
Thought you’d like the Stillman & Birn sketchbook range Robert, you won’t find anything better in my opinion…
I’ve got the Nitram liquid charcoal in a tube, expensive stuff! Used with either willow sticks or the more popular and harder Nitram batons, (round or square) and you can achieve some fabulous monotone drawings, like the example Jenny has shown above. Try adding charcoal powder into the mix as well, it’s useful stuff…
Actually, having tried the batons, I still prefer my traditional willow sticks!
I’ve not tried those pencils either, in fact I didn’t know of their existence until now! Interesting and I’ll check them out!
Posted
I introduced him? Gordon Bennet .... and similar exclamations: I'd forgotten that entirely - absolutely blank where I thought I'd left my brain.... Are we (whisper it!) getting old?
Anyway, as I also lost my bp monitor this morning (I'd put it away safely - no idea where, but discovered it by accident, nestling among my socks and smalls) this is all slightly perturbing; it must just be that I have so much going on.... so many things to keep track of ..... not senility: oh no, not that! Tush, how could anyone think it.........?
Anyway (again) Andrew is good and still sufficiently curious about art products to try the lot (and be proficient in all).
I also prefer willow or vine charcoal to Nitram batons, but that's not to disparage the latter. Have I used powdered charcoal - I think I must have, looking at some of my older sketchbooks - probably powdered it myself rather than using a bought product. All useful, anyway: when I've wanted dense black drawing instruments, I've used conté crayons or carbon pencils for many years, but am rediscovering the delights of charcoal.
I sometimes wish I could start again - go back in time, and rediscover all of these materials and more; completely silly of course: I'm just going to have to stay alive for longer than Nature may have intended: still 20 years younger than your mother was, I tell myself, when she toddled off into the next world ... I don't like this forgetting things, though.
On the description front: charcoal is charcoal, whether in baton, pencil, powder, or tube; whereas I do expect a pencil to be - well, basically pencil. So I did find that a little confusing, but then, as you will have observed, I find many things confusing......
Edited
by Robert Jones, Napa
Posted
Thanks for the reply Carole, I suppose I was more surprised to find it was a tube!
Yes, the range of subtle colours is excellent I certainly agree, and after mulling it over, I’ll probably give them a try!
We’ll have to agree to disagree however, on the description - encompassing the word ‘pencil’ when it’s in a tube is for me, at least, somewhat misleading…
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
The colours mentioned are a Schmincke product they are also called liquid earth. They look a subtle product and pleasing to the eye.
We have so many products at our disposal, these days, and variations of them, some, are viewed with what I'd like to think of as an artistic curiosity when discovered.
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