Welcome to this new class in The Charcoal Series!

As always, this series is all about learning how to have fun with charcoal pencils and using them to create beautiful drawings! In this class, we shall be focused on creating a charcoal drawing of one of The Big Five, an elephant.

Join me as I take you through my process of creating the sketch, laying down the values, blending the charcoal, and finally bringing it all together to a final, striking piece of work.

Don’t worry if you are a beginner as this class has been designed to be very easy to follow along! So, if you've ever been curious about using charcoal as a medium or would just like to try something different, join me in this class of The Charcoal Series!

The basic materials needed are:

• Charcoal pencils. Having 2-3 pencils of a variety of hardness is great. I mainly use my 6B, 4B, and 2B pencils, and sometimes add in my basic hard charcoal pencil.

• Graphite pencil.

• Kneaded eraser.

• Tombow mono zero eraser. If you can’t get this, you can use a razor to shape a hard eraser into a slim point to make the bright highlight details.

• Blending stumps. If you don't have this, you can use q-tips.

• Sharpener.

• Any soft-bristled brush you have available. Anything between a size 4 and size 8 is enough.

• Heavier, rough paper to draw on.

• A piece of spare paper to prevent smudging.