playful portraits in charcoal

Doing a portrait in charcoal there is something called photocopy mode which is narrowing you eyes and picturing the picture as if it were black and white.Using this technique allows the artist to see the contrast between light and dark, black and white. While working on a charcoal portrait the artist also needs to be making notes, the way the artist makes notes is visualizing in his or her head the shades and contrasts to be able to differentiated the shades of dark to light and the hardness to press down the charcoal. Thirdly there is pushing as a technique that you must use for a charcoal painting that is pushing. Pushing is the amount of pressure that you put on the charcoal against the portrait to allow certain spots to be either a light gray or dark black. It's used when you modell and moddelling is creating shades with your eraser.