Charcoal drawing demonstrations and this is the photo that I am drawing from which is of an old Asian woman. What we need to do here is to translate the colour of the face into tone on our
 paper. The best way to do this is to half close our eyes and look at the tones from the darkest darks in her hair to the lightest lights on her cheeks and nose.
 Here I am not going to do any basic drawing in with the pencil I am going straight into it with charcoal. There are no guidelines to help us here so if you need basic pencil lines before using charcoal please see our other demonstration links on the right to learn how to put in these basic lines first.
 Sometimes I think it is good idea to start straight off with a medium without any initial basic drawing in because I think it gives you confidence and helps you to be a bit more bolder in your approach. Here I am finding the distance from the top of the head to where her hair meets her forehead and I compared this distance from where her hair meets her forehead to where the top of her eyebrows come.
 The measurement that we took above can now be compared to the one in this example, is the distance in the first measurement we took larger than this one! This is a good way to get proportions right in your portrait and you can compare these measurements with say the width of the eyes.
 Here you can see the marks I have put in to indicate the eyebrows and the eyes and I have started to block in the hair with tone, the dark diagonal line is the shadow under her shawl.
 Here I have blocked in her forehead with tone, half close your eyes and you will be able to see tone better in both the photo and in your drawing. Darker tone has been put in for the eyebrows and for the bridge of the nose. Be careful of the distance from the outer left hand side of the face to the outer left side of the nose, don't make it too wide or this side of the face will look squashed in.
 Here I am blending the charcoal in a circular motion with my finger to get a nice smooth texture on her forehead, if you look at the forehead in the photograph you will see that it has a fairly smooth texture discounting her wrinkles.
 Here I blocked in both eye sockets with tone and I am not bothered about the actual eye shapes and little nuances of tone at the moment because these areas will be lifted out with a putty rubber and other tones will be put in. The bottom of the nose and the start of the mouth have both been suggested at this point.
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paper. The best way to do this is to half close our eyes and look at the tones from the darkest darks in her hair to the lightest lights on her cheeks and nose.
