Charcoal
One of the oldest drawing materials, charcoal has great versatility and is often used for making spontaneous, large and bold drawings or for drawing out an image before painting. It is usually made from charred willow twigs and is also sold compressed into solid sticks. Charcoal is soft and fragile and can be used to give either a soft or strong quality of line, or alternatively smudged and dragged over the paper for textured effects and shading.
Robert West; Matthew William Peters
by Matthew William Peters
7 November 1758
NPG 2169
Giuseppe Naldi
by François Hüet-Villiers
1803
NPG 2782
Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram
by Bernard Partridge
published in Punch 21 November 1928
NPG 4970
David Bomberg
by David Bomberg
1931
NPG 4821
Boris Karloff
by Nicolai Fechin
circa 1934-1938
NPG 5837
John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon
by Frank Salisbury
1944
NPG 5833
Eileen Joyce
by John Randall Bratby
1959
NPG 5975
Tom Stoppard
by Howard Morgan
1980
NPG 6559
Arnold Abraham Goodman, Baron Goodman
by Lucian Freud
1985
NPG 5849
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich
by R.B. Kitaj
1986
NPG 5892
Willy Russell
by Peter Edwards
1989
NPG 6093
J.K. Rowling
by Stuart Pearson Wright
2005
NPG 6745(12)