Pros and cons of using charcoal on a canvas

spark_sara

I have a commission due this Christmas, it has to be on a 40 x 30 canvas, and the whole drawing has to be in charcoal, so I want to know if it'd be the same thing as if I was drawing on paper. Or should I change to paper instead of a canvas? What would work best?

Originally asked by Isaac750 on Stack Exchange (crafts) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

It depends on what you want to draw, and in what style. Working with charcoal on canvas will really emphasize the texture of the canvas, creating a rough impression. It will be hard to draw details - in relation to the size, that is: you can still draw details but they'll have to be larger or implied rather than drawn carefully. Coincidentally I've recently visited an Ilya Repin exhibition, and he made a few charcoal drawings on canvas as well (I'm not sure if they were preparatory sketches). Below is a detail of approximately 40 x 71 cm (more than twice the size of your canvas) from one of those works: Ilya Repin | Portrait of Vera Pushkareva (detail) | charcoal on canvas | 1899. The...

Full answer by Joachim: https://crafts.stackexchange.com/a/10706 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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