Beginning Drawing Class Week Three

For my third drawing class at Barnsdall Art Park (technically week four as I missed the first one), we used charcoal to draw a birch forest.  Our instructor had a display board that laid out the steps, as well as his classroom demonstration.

We first smudged the paper with charcoal dust, giving a darkly valued surface to work with.  We were provided an example to copy, but encouraged not to hold strictly to that image.  Once we had an idea of placement, we lightly sketched the foreground and background trunks, then used an eraser to remove the charcoal where light fell in the image.  Detail was added with charcoal pencil 6B.  Then lastly highlights were added with white charcoal pencil.  A commercial fixative or hairspray is used to set the drawing once complete.