Ways To Use White Charcoal

1. Highlights

White charcoal can be used to highlight areas on black charcoal drawings. Start by drawing a shape with black compressed charcoal. Shade in the dark areas. Using your white compressed charcoal, draw over areas with the lightest highlights, then begin to blend your white in with the black creating mid tones.

2. Draw On Coloured Paper

A good way to experiment with white charcoal is to draw on coloured or toned paper. For this technique you can invert the colours in your reference image by drawing the darkest parts of the image in with your white charcoal pencil and shading the lighter parts with a softer hand.

3. Blending To Create Colour

Shade a light layer of a coloured soft pastel. Then shade a layer over the top with your white compressed charcoal. Blend with your finger and see how the colour becomes less intense. Repeat until you achieve your desired shade.

4. Contrast Drawing

This technique creates high contrast. You will use your coloured paper as the darkest shadows and only use your white charcoal to draw in the lighter parts of the image. Make the lightest parts white and more opaque and once you reach shadows slowly reduce the opacity of your charcoal to create mid tones.