Charcoal + Ink with Cats

Today sharing here a trilogy of drawings I created whilst following Juliette Crane’s Whimsical Animals on-line classes. This unit was Charcoal + Ink Drawing, a short exercise in which, quoting Juliette, we focus on a limited color palette of black and white and play with fluid lines. And what fun that was! So much fun that I even produced three different drawings, all cats. By doing so, I got to practice more with spontaneity, experiment with a combination of dry and wet media and come up with a variety of moods.

Mediums Used

I’ll start first with what I painted with. Whilst Juliette uses India Ink, I went for Sumie ink, which is black calligraphy ink derived from charcoal and widely used in the Far East. Since we are indeed drawing alongside charcoal sticks, why not? A combination of vine (Selennier) and compressed (Koh I Noor) charcoal as well as white pastel stick were used for this project on Canson’s Visual Journal for Mixed Media.

Drawing 1: Neko

My first attempt was a cute full-body anime style. And she’s wearing a dress! First paint the outline with the ink, then fill in with charcoal. Turned out cute, but I felt i could do better with a bit more practice. By the way, Neko is the Japanese word for cat!

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Drawing 2: Greetings

And my second try. Thought I’d just do a portrait this time and go for a tuxedo cat. As you can see, I now created two different tones with the same compressed charcoal and made some use of the vine charcoal for the thin but bold limes. Now we’re talking! I quite like how this one turned out.

Drawing 3: Pretty Cat

After the success of the second attempt, I wanted to continue creating more! How about filling in the background with charcoal this time? Put the compressed charcoal on its side and glide it across the paper for that streaky appearance. Then vine charcoal for the lashes, whiskers and nose. Looks a bit like Hello Kitty but without her ribbon!

And now, which is your favorite? Like all of Juliette’s classes, I thoroughly enjoyed this session. A great way to loosen up and discovering new methods like combining charcoal and ink. I’d definitely try this wet and dry media combo again but with different characters like Little One and/or with colors. And of course, how about a digital Procreate version too?