Charcoal

In this post, I will describe the process of making drawing charcoal and charcoal ink from willow branches gathered at Stampwell Farm.

When purchasing charcoal at an art supply store, the two most common options are “vine charcoal” and “willow charcoal.” Given the amount of willow present at the farm, I felt attempting to make charcoal from willow was necessary. Several of the resources on natural inks I have found in the past few months describe similar processes for making charcoal: put the wood in an airtight metal container with a few small holes in it, place the container in the fire, and allow the water and natural gases to burn off. After removing the container from the fire and allowing it to cool, you will have ready to use charcoal. This seemed straightforward enough, and easier than the more historic process involving burying and burning the wood. (A much more involved process I intend to return to at some point)

cut sticks of willow

prepping fire

coffee tin filled with willow sticks

success!

willow with bark removed

second round

Making the charcoal

I read that removing the bark from the willow branches was necessary for making good charcoal. Removing willow bark is much easier to do when it is fresh; however the stems I had were already dried out, meaning that removing the bark was a more involved process of scraping it off with a blade. Because of this, I only removed the bark from about half of the branches I was using.

After collecting the willow and cutting it down to size, I found an old coffee tin in which I placed the branches. I only put a few in because I was very skeptical this experiment wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, the lid of the tin I had on hand was plastic, so I improvised and used aluminium foil as a lid, poking a few holes in the top to allow the steam and gasses to escape as the heat burned them off.

I made a fire in the fire pit in the back garden, and once the fire was burning nicely, I added the tin to the pit. There was a point at which steam began to come out of the tin, and a bit later, I was worried the foil had caught fire but realised this must have been the gasses burning off. I removed the tin from the fire and allowed it to cool off before removing the aluminium foil and discovering the charcoal inside. I was delighted and surprised by the success- I immediately tested the charcoal out on a scrap of paper and found the sticks I had removed the bark from were perfect- the quality I would expect from charcoal purchased in an art store. The sticks that I had left the bark on were too brittle and did not work as well. I saved them for experimenting with grinding them up to make ink.

Overall I enjoyed the process: how well it worked and how easy it was. The most laborious part of the process was scraping the bark off of the willow branches.

Using the charcoal as drawing charcoal

Once I made up the charcoal, I decided to use it in two different ways: firstly, as regular drawing charcoal and secondly, by making ink.

 So far, I have only made one large-scale drawing with the drawing charcoal. (see above). I chose a particular glade of trees on the farm that reminds me of the feeling of being in the apse of a great cathedral, yet one where the pillars are alive and interacting with each other- dancing and speaking. I wanted to capture this fluidity in my drawing. 

The process of working with the charcoal was the same as working with what I would have bought in the store. Messy and dusty, I was covered in grey dust by the time I finished the drawing. The tactile nature of working with charcoal and rubbing it into and off of the paper, and having to spray fixative at various intervals is all part of what I love about the process of drawing with charcoal.

Using the charcoal ink

I made the charcoal ink by grinding the sticks of charcoal that I had left the bark on with a mortar and pestle. Then I slowly added gum arabic and water until I had an ink-like substance. I should have ground the charcoal more finely and possibly have filtered it as well. However, the effect of the grainy nature of the ink caused by the poorly ground charcoal gave the drawings a beautiful texture that may not have been possible with a more finely prepared ink.

Taking the ink to the studio, I first just dropped it onto paper to see how it moved, what it looked like, how thick I could get it, and what it looked like watered down. Then, after playing around with it for a bit, I decided to attempt drawing with it- though what resulted was somewhere between drawing and painting. I used a brush and found that the thicker I lay the ink down, the more clumps of charcoal gathered together, such that I was almost sculpting rather than painting or drawing.

I chose to draw more of the beech trees, depicting them on their own and focusing more on the specific characteristics each holds. In addition, the texture of the ink allowed me to recreate the texture of the trees in a unique way I wouldn’t have been able to get with a different material.