This is a charcoal drawing of a 1967 Austin Healey 3000 Mk III it was my first attempt at drawing a car using charcoal, in fact it was my first attempt at using charcoal pencil, most of my work up until this point when using charcoal was much bigger drawings and mostly life drawings. Charcoal drawings are good to draw because you can get very good tonal definition, although the charcoal does not give you the same subtle tonal variation you can get with a graphite pencil mainly because it is usually very black or dark brown almost black, where as graphite is grey but never quite reaches a black.

The other issue with graphite is the darker the tones and thicker layers of graphite are reflective making them seem lighter than the they actually are at different angles because of the reflected light, where as charcoal does not present this issue, as it is courser producing no reflective qualities. Another issue with charcoal is it is difficult to make very fine precise lines partly because the material it’s self is quite soft and powdery, this issue can be improved considerably with compressed harder charcoal pencils but when I was doing this drawing I did not have any at that time. The wheel spokes and some of the fine chrome details would have benefited greatly from having some hard compressed charcoal pencils when doing this drawing. The car was drawn onto A3, 300gsm watercolor paper using the smooth side of the paper, the quality of the paper was not a problem but the size was and would have been better if it was draw on A2 sized paper giving me a bigger drawing area, so that the fine detail would not have needed to be so small reducing the need for very fine detailed lines.

A 1967 Austin Healey 3000 Mk III, charcoal drawing with charcoal pencil above was drawn onto A3 water color paper also with a little photo editing in this image using PC software, which amounts to the darker faded area around the car giving the impression of being in the spot light.

The Austin Healey 3000 Mk III drawing below is not a charcoal drawing or graphite pencil drawing but it has been created with various grey marker pens, slightly larger in size at A2 on 180gsm cartridge paper, it looks better because of it, with no reflections of light from the marker pens but having very nice tonal variation with nice fine details. The issue with marker pens is that they tend to bleed through the paper making the lines thicker than intended but because this was drawn on A2 paper it compensated for the issue and produced a nice drawing that I was pleased with at the time, there are a few minor issues with it now after reflecting on it but over all it is a nice drawing that I am still pleased with.

The grid drawing below is of a Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500 in graphite pencil that was used as a construction drawing, it wast later was filled in using marker pens and shows how neat and more precise lines can be using a graphite pencil as compared to using the charcoal presented in the first charcoal drawing on this page,  this final drawing also turned out well when finished.

The  point to remember when when drawing is size, it is much easier to draw a very fine detailed drawing  when doing it on a large drawing area than it is when drawing in a small area, so size dose matter and large drawings will also look very impressive the onlooker.  If you are going to draw a charcoal drawing of a 1967 Austin Healey or any car with fine detail then you will be best remembering that bigger is better, size matters.