How To Make Pencils From Charcoal

Drawing with charcoal pencils.

How to make pencils from charcoal. Add a cage around it. In order to understand how this stuff is made you just need. Every semester i teach my students how to make charcoal. Make sure to poke a hole on top.

Select prepare your wood. Observe the sticks until no more fllames and nearly no smoke is coming out of the foil. Wait a couple of minutes for it to cool then remove carefully the cooked sticks charcoal from the foil. The temperatures needed to make charcoal are in excess of 600 degrees fahrenheit up to 800 degrees so you want a fire with flames licking at the bottom of your pot of wood chunks.

To draw with charcoal hold it like a pencil to make sharp edges applying more pressure if you want a darker line. To make softer broader strokes hold the charcoal on its side and drag it across your paper. The paper will unravel to reveal the shaft of compressed charcoal inside. This is a great project for any art program that has limited funds for materials.

Gently and carefully remove the foil from the fire and place on any surface. Using the same process as the lump charcoal procedure described above you can create charcoal pencils from the twigs seedlings and saplings removed as part of your regular tending operations. The loose fitting lid will allow the smoke to escape but prevent the wood from catching fire. Simply rub the tip of the charcoal pencil over the sandpaper rotating it as go.

I hope you learn something from this tutorial. To sharpen the pencil to a nice sharp tip you can use a sandpaper sharpening pad. Feedback would be much appreciated. You can draw with charcoal pencils just like you would with a graphite drawing pencil.