Dry Drawing Techniques: Graphite, Charcoal, Pastel, Coloured Pencil
Dry media deposit pigment with no liquid vehicle, so the result depends on hardness, pressure and the tooth of the support. The exam tests the hardness scales, mark-making vocabulary and the correct working order for each material.
Hardness and deposition
- Graphite runs 9H (hardest, thin pale line, for construction and technical drawing) through F, HB, to 9B (softest, dense and slightly shiny). Hard grades indent and groove the paper; soft grades exhaust quickly and smudge.
- Charcoal: natural willow/vine (irregular, dusty, easily lifted, weak binder) versus compressed bar (denser, blacker, hard to erase) versus carbon pencil (sharp, dark, more permanent).
- Pastel: soft sticks (high pigment load, fragile, for masses), hard pastels (underpainting, detail), pastel pencils, and oil pastels, which are waxy and must not be fixed with water-based fixative.
- Coloured pencil: wax-based cores blend by burnishing or solvent; oil-based cores hold a sharp point for detail and bloom less.
Order of work
- Pastel and coloured pencil go light to dark, because a soft light stick cannot be laid cleanly over dark pigment.
- Charcoal works from a mid-tone ground: lay the side of the stick, lift with a kneaded eraser (goma de miga) and a paper stump, reserve the paper for highlights.
- Vary the tool: point for line, edge for thin accents, side for planes, stump for transitions.
Worked example
Build a five-step value scale with 2B, 4B and 6B on the same paper. Keep pressure constant and change only hardness: 2B gives the light grey, 4B the middle, 6B the darkest, while the untouched paper supplies white. Then cross-hatch at 45° for the second grey so the strokes do not align with the first layer and create banding. The reasoning is that value comes from two variables, grade and pressure, and only one should change at a time.
Marks-losing traps
- Fixative sprayed too close or too heavily darkens and dissolves pastel; use light passes at 30-40 cm.
- Erasing compressed charcoal leaves a grey haze; plan darks instead of lifting them.
- Drawing only with the point, producing no tonal range or texture.
- Burnishing coloured pencil too early, which seals the tooth and blocks further layers.
- Sharpening charcoal in a rotary sharpener, which jams it; use sandpaper or a blade.