Ethan Culleton

Which Materials Do You Want to Use?

Ethan Culleton
Duration:   13  mins

Description

Are you exploring the world of dry drawing mediums and curious about how each one can enhance your sketching skills? Join Ethan Culleton as he delves into the nuanced differences between graphite, charcoal, and Conté in his latest video tutorial.

Ethan begins by highlighting the versatility of graphite pencils, demonstrating the range from a hard 4H to a soft 4B. He explains how these pencils can vary in hardness and darkness, providing options for both delicate shading and deep, bold lines. Graphite’s ability to produce clean, long-lasting marks makes it ideal for detailed work that doesn’t require frequent corrections.

Moving on to charcoal, Ethan showcases its ability to achieve the richest blacks and dynamic contrasts. He demonstrates how vine charcoal can create both light and airy effects as well as intense, dark lines. However, he notes charcoal’s smudgy nature, which, while perfect for expressive strokes, requires careful handling to maintain clarity.

Conté crayons come next, with Ethan pointing out their firmness compared to charcoal, which allows for more controlled lines and less smudging. He appreciates Conté’s color variety, which adds a vibrant dimension to sketches. Whether creating quick gestures or more developed pieces, Conté offers both the blendability of charcoal and the precision of graphite.

Throughout the tutorial, Ethan uses each medium to sketch simple geometric shapes, showing how light and shadow can be manipulated with different tools. He also provides tips on maintaining the materials, like sharpening charcoal pencils and using stumps to blend for uniform value.

This video is perfect for artists who want to understand the specific applications of each medium and how to integrate them into their artistic process. Whether you’re a beginner looking to make informed choices about your materials or an experienced artist considering new techniques, Ethan’s insights will surely enhance your sketching prowess. Tune in to see these dry mediums in action and elevate your artistic expression!

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Hi, my name is Ethan Culleton. And in today's lesson, I want to talk to you about uh which materials you would like to use when you're sketching. I do a lot of sketching. Um If I'm sitting out somewhere relaxing, I always have either something like a pencil, charcoal or Conte, especially when I'm outside. And I want to talk to you a little bit about how each of these work, the different uh techniques that you can use for graphite, charcoal and content.

So first I'm gonna talk to you about my, my favorite uh which are pencils or graphite. Uh I have two here. Um The reason why I have two is because I want to show you the range that you can get with uh with different types of pencils. This right here is a 4h and this one right here is a four B pencil. So it basically refers to how hard the H or how black for the B the pencils go.

So if I wanted to draw something very lightly or if I just wanted to have a little dusting of value, uh generally, I'm going to use a higher H pencil and I know that that may be difficult to see, but that's kind of the point. It's, it's just a little accent. If I press too hard on here, I'm going to indent the paper and I just don't want to do that. It's almost impossible to erase an indented paper. Um, but pencils, depending on the, uh, the grade of the pencil.

Again, this one is a four B, this one was 4h. We can go much, much darker. There's a, there's a big variety of values that we can achieve with pencils. I also love the fact that a pencil can create um just very long, nice fluid lines. They hold their place.

I can generally wipe my hand over the top and nothing will move. It's very clean drawing material. Um That being said, we can move on to our next one which is charcoal. So this is just a, a little charcoal stick. This is usually how you will see them.

Charcoal is Essen essentially just burnt wood. That's all it is. There are different types of wood that they, that they used to burn. And there are also um different uh different temperatures that they burn it to, to make a charcoal either harder to make uh better, stronger lines or they might burn it to be a little bit softer. So it might crumble, but it will make a much darker mark.

So I can get mm light ish with charcoal. This is just a vine charcoal. Um but really charcoal is used for its, for its blacks for its dark capability, right? So you'll see here a four B pencil versus uh charcoal. I think this is just a medium grade charcoal and there is quite a big difference, this used to look quite dark.

Um But now it just sort of looks like a mid tone gray whereas this charcoal here is uh it's much closer to black. So if you want um very bold uh values, um very dark lines, I definitely recommend charcoal. So charcoal however, does have some limitations. Sometimes if I were to make a, you know, some lines over here, those are fun and attractive lines. I actually really like them.

They can go from, uh from dark to light, thick to thin. But if you brush your hand over it, you may have noticed that it's lightened up a little bit. I'm even getting some smearing that's happening over here. So, uh although it's dark, it is very fragile. So you do need to be, um, a bit more careful.

Now before we move on to Conte, I do want to show you uh two more things. Um, there are charcoal pencils as well. So if you wanna kind of marry the two, if you want more control with your charcoal and not to get so messy on your hands, you can absolutely use a charcoal pencil. Uh Generally, uh they are, they're going to hold their hold their shape a lot longer and they will still give you, uh, the darkness that, that you want, that you expect with charcoal. So I may actually use this one.

This is sort of a medium. It's an HB, so it's a, what's called a hard black for a charcoal pencil. That's fine. That's about as light as I can go. That's why it looks a little bit, a little shaky.

But another great thing about charcoal is that you can smudge it. You can use something like this, which is called a stump and you can just move the charcoal around until it becomes a uniform value that you want. So that's one of the great things you can do it with, with graphite as well. But charcoal is really made to move. All right.

And then as far as darkness is concerned, you can see with a charcoal pencil again, you can still get very, very dark. Um It is still quite soft. I've not completely blunted the tip of the pencil, but it, there is a noticeable flat spot on here. So I do need to keep this sharpened very often. Oh, and give me an idea.

Yep. Still creates nice lines, has a little bit of a texture to it. Um Again, the graphite very smooth continuous line, but you will get this uh little bit of a chalky um or granular feel, I guess to uh some of the, the charcoal pencils just because they are so soft and then last, but not least, uh, Conte is very similar to charcoal. Uh, but it, it keeps its place, um, a little bit better than, than charcoal does. I also like that cone comes in a variety of colors as well.

So, let's say if I were to use a, uh, a cone crayon, here's sort of a sanguine reddish brown color. I can't go too light with it. Um, Let's see what happens if we try to smooth it out, smooths out pretty nicely. It lightens up a little bit. Um Yeah, I don't think that would be a problem.

Um It does keep or it does stay on the paper longer uh or better than the charcoal does. Let's see how dark we can get. I'm going to use a different color. Still a conti crayon. We do get a little bit of the shavings coming off just like we would with the charcoal, there's a little bit of charcoal dust that's left on here when you really push down and the cone gets that as well.

So I love to use cone and charcoal for gesture drawing if you're trying to create long, smooth expressive lines, uh those, those would be the ones that I would, I would go with. Um But if you want something that's gonna be a little more precise, I definitely would recommend looking at the graphite and I'm just gonna show you a little bit right here on this side about um what a uh what maybe different sketches look like we're going to use just a very simple cube shape, right? So we've got a top plane, two side planes, let's say we have our light coming from up here. This will be our lightest spot. This would be my midtown sort of a medium gray.

And then over here, I mean, my darkest. So there we go. Nice little sketch of a box. Then let's say we want to use our charcoal. Same thing you can already tell it's a much darker line.

Um You can even hear a difference. There is a smoother quality uh to the sound of a pencil making a mark than, than a charcoal pencil. I just think that's very interesting. All right. So we still have the white.

Which one am I using here? The HB jump to the two B I can fill spaces so much quicker with charcoal. Wow, that's fun. So once again, charcoal likes to move and also likes to smudge a little bit. So that's why we have our erasers.

We can always clean that up. Sure. I'm gonna use a slightly more powerful eraser here. Charcoal is not clean but it's fun. All right.

And then for cone, I really enjoy not just using the tip for cone. I like to use the entire edge if I can. So I will very quickly and draw out my box again, that's my lightest area. On top, I'm gonna just hold this, um, right here at the edge and I'm gonna use this, this bladed area right here. Just gonna rub that up and down very gently.

And it creates a very nice textured look. I just love it. It's, it's, it's a great sketching material. And over here I go a little bit darker, push down a little bit harder and we don't want to make a mess like we did with the charcoal. So I'm not gonna blow on it.

You could always use a little brush kind of brush things away or you could use a paper towel to dab up um, any of the mess that you've, that you've made. Um But that is that those are the three main sketching materials that I like to use. And thank you for joining me uh for this lesson.

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