Bringing a sketchpad when you go out for a walk can be a wonderful way to indulge a hobby while heightening your appreciation of the outdoors, and perhaps finding new pleasure from a well-known route.
Pausing occasionally to observe your surroundings opens up a new level of awareness, as your senses start to pick up on the details we usually miss. The absorbing act of sketching allows us to become immersed in the landscape and in the moment.
Artists have long found charcoal a rewarding medium for outdoor sketching, as it’s possible to cover large areas of tone and to capture fleeting moments with speed and sensitivity – an important consideration when working out of doors.
Charcoal is crumbly and can seem messy to handle, but with a little practise it becomes hugely versatile. Held on its side, it can cover the whole page with a few broad strokes; held like a pencil, it’s perfect for linear shapes and details. As it is a soft medium, it allows for blending and can be erased to let the light paper show through.
What do you need to sketch with charcoal
So what do you need? It’s best to start simple – don’t amass so much equipment that you’ll be tempted to leave it at home. I often just take an A3, A4 or even A5 sketchpad, a few sticks of charcoal in a resealable freezer bag or small tin, a kneadable eraser and a small aerosol of fixative to prevent smudging. This should fit into a lightweight rucksack or shoulder bag.
Paper I prefer to use a good quality white cartridge pad, spiral bound so that the pages can be folded back flat. This enables me to leave the white of the paper for my lightest areas. Lovely effects can be created using a tonal paper, often sold as pastel paper. This has the advantage of being able to use the tinted surface for your midtones; the charcoal can then be used to describe the darker or shadow areas. In this case I’d bring along a soft white pastel to create highlights.
Charcoal You can buy willow charcoal in packs. I like those offering various widths – slender sticks for details and chunky lengths for covering large areas. Charcoal is also sold in compressed form and in pencils, but these are not so versatile. Charcoal should be kept dry (working with wet charcoal is a subject in itself).
Kneadable Eraser or ‘putty rubber’ This isn’t really for corrections but for use as a drawing tool. By pulling and twisting the rubber, you can make a point to ‘draw’ into smudged charcoal – ideal for wispy grasses catching the light; or use the side of the eraser to lift off larger areas, such as the light along a soft line of cirrus cloud.
Fixative As charcoal is a powdery medium, it’s essential to ‘fix’ it the moment you have finished drawing to prevent smudging. Artists’ fixative is sold in art shops, but for sketches I use hairspray, which is much cheaper. Tap or blow on the sketch to dislodge loose powder, and then spray evenly from a couple of feet away to avoid pooling.
Optional items:
Folding stoolSketch in comfort, in the absence of a handy tree stump.
Cap or sunhat Keep the glare of the sun out of your eyes.
PencilUseful for making notes.
Rag or kitchen roll Allows you to rub the charcoal.
How to pick your subject
The first challenge is in trying to be selective among the wealth of visual material around you. Do you want to make an impression of the whole scene, or focus on one feature, such as a tree or rocky outcrop?
To create a satisfying composition, it’s best to place your main subject slightly off-centre. You can use lines such as walls, a line of bushes or slant of a hillside to help draw the eye into the picture.
How to sketch the landscape
Charcoal encourages you to work quickly without getting bogged down with fiddly details, so look for the biggest shapes and block them in before adding smaller marks. Blend soft layers of charcoal to suggest distant hills, sky or seascape and save the strongest contrasts of light and dark for the foreground, to give a sense of perspective.
Abigail Edgar’s paintings are exhibited across the UK. Versatile in most media, Abigail creates atmospheric works through her sensitive depiction of light and shade.