An honest reference for charcoal portrait drawing materials. Specific brand recommendations, the reasoning behind each one, and a starter kit for beginners. No affiliate links, no commercial relationships — just the supplies I’ve used in my own work.
Walk into any well-stocked art store and the charcoal aisle alone has fifty options. Three brands of vine charcoal, two kinds of willow, six grades of compressed, white charcoal in pencil and stick form, a wall of papers in different weights and tones. For a beginner, this is paralyzing. For a working artist, half the choices are noise.
Below is what I actually keep on my drawing table. I'll name brands and explain why — not because these are the only good options, but because specific recommendations are more useful than generalities. If you can buy these things and stop deliberating, you can spend that energy drawing instead.
No affiliate links on this page. I’m not paid to recommend any brand listed here, and there are no tracked links to anywhere selling these products. This page exists to be useful, not to extract value. If a recommendation is bad, the only cost to me is your trust — which is exactly the cost it should be.
The single most useful thing I learned about charcoal: it’s not one material. There are three distinct kinds, each with a different physical hardness and a different job. You need all three.
Soft, gray, easily lifted. Vine charcoal is made from charred grape vines, and it behaves more like a suggestion than a commitment. The mark is light, slightly powdery, and lifts almost completely with a kneaded eraser. This is the charcoal you reach for first — for placing the anchor points, blocking in shadow shapes, and laying down a soft underpainting before any final marks.
I use General’s vine charcoal in the standard medium grade. Coates is excellent if you want longer, more elegant sticks (UK manufacture). Winsor & Newton makes a fine version too. Avoid the cheapest store-brand vine — it tends to break constantly and the mark quality is uneven.
When to use it. Anchor placement (Step 1 of the guided flow), blocking in the largest shadow (Step 2), connecting the shadow family (Step 3), and any time you want a mark you can easily revise. Vine is a planning material.
Slightly harder, holds an edge. Willow charcoal is made from charred willow branches and produces a darker, denser mark than vine. It still lifts with an eraser but resists smudging more, which makes it the right tool for refining shadow boundaries and laying down marks you intend to keep.
Coates makes the best willow charcoal I’ve used. Their soft and medium grades are reliable; the sticks are long enough to break naturally to the size you need. General’s willow is also good and easier to find in U.S. stores.
When to use it. The shadow blocking steps (Steps 2 and 3 once shapes are placed), refining edges and contour with variable weight (Step 5), and any mid-development work where you want the mark to commit a little harder than vine allows.
Dense, dark, semi-permanent. Compressed charcoal is powdered carbon mixed with binder and pressed into sticks. It produces the deepest, blackest marks available in any drawing medium — significantly darker than vine or willow, and significantly harder to erase.
I use General’s compressed charcoal in 6B grade for accents and final darks. Conté à Paris also makes excellent compressed charcoal in their pressed-stick format, with a slightly different feel that some artists prefer. Do not buy 9B unless you specifically want a sloppy black-out tool — it’s nearly impossible to control.
When to use it. The finishing phase (Step 6 of the guided flow) for accents — the deepest shadow under the jaw and inside the nostrils, the pupils, the corner of the mouth. Use it sparingly — a few small marks of compressed charcoal do more than a hundred willow strokes.
If you’re working on white paper, skip this section. The paper itself is your highlight; you don’t need a separate white-marking tool. If you’re working on gray or warm-tan paper, white pigment is the other half of the drawing — without it, you have nowhere to place the brightest planes.
White charcoal is technically a misnomer — the “charcoal” sticks are typically chalk or white pigment with a charcoal-like binder. The mark is soft and luminous, and behaves like the inverse of a vine stick: easy to apply, easy to lift, easy to layer.
I use General’s white charcoal stick for the highlight tier on toned paper. Apply it lightly first — it’s tempting to push hard for “more white,” but the magic of toned-paper drawing is in the relative contrast between paper and pigment, not the absolute brightness of the white.
When to use it. Steps 4, 5, and 6 of the guided flow when you’re working on toned paper. The plan’s “White” layer shows you exactly where these marks belong.
Conté is a chalk-and-graphite pigment in a harder, square-format stick. It’s firmer than white charcoal, holds a sharper edge, and produces a brighter, more crisp mark. For the catchlight in the eyes — the single brightest point in a portrait — nothing else competes.
The sticks come in a small box. You only need one or two. They last forever because the marks are so small.
When to use it. The finishing phase on toned paper (Step 6), specifically for catchlights, the highlight on the lower lip, the brightest point on the cheekbone, the rim light on the bridge of the nose. Tiny marks, dramatic impact.
Paper is the most personal choice in drawing. The same brand makes wildly different products at different price points, and what works for a quick sketch will frustrate you for finished work. I think about paper in three buckets: sketching/practice, finished work on white paper, and finished work on toned paper.
A medium-weight pad you don’t feel guilty about ruining. Strathmore 400 Series Sketch in 9×12 or 11×14 is the standard answer — smooth, takes charcoal well, doesn’t bleed through. Canson XL Mix Media is a slightly heavier alternative if you want to test wet media on the same paper.
The point of sketch paper is to draw a lot. Don’t buy expensive paper for this purpose. You’ll hesitate to mark it.
Strathmore 500 Series Bristol Plate is my workhorse for finished charcoal portraits. The plate finish (smooth) holds tight values without breaking up at the dark end, and the surface lifts cleanly with a kneaded eraser for highlights. Vellum finish has more tooth and is good if you prefer a softer, grainier look.
Stonehenge (Legion Paper) is the other strong choice — slightly more textured, beautifully archival, and forgiving of multiple charcoal layers. Marginally more expensive but worth it for work you intend to keep or sell.
Strathmore Toned Gray and Toned Tan (the 400-series toned line) are the easiest entry point to toned-paper drawing. They come in pads, the tone is uniform, and they’re inexpensive enough to experiment with. The gray is a true neutral midtone; the tan is genuinely warm without being yellow.
For more serious work, Canson Mi-Teintes in larger sheet format gives you more tooth, more substantial weight, and a wider range of paper colors (warm gray, cool gray, sand, dark gray). It’s the standard for European portrait studios.
The most important non-charcoal tool you own. A kneaded eraser doesn’t scrub — it lifts. You shape it like clay (a fine point for highlights, a flat edge for broad lifts), press it into the paper, and pull pigment back off. This is how you create highlights on white paper and recover paper tone on toned paper.
Faber-Castell, Prismacolor, and General’s all make essentially identical kneaded erasers. Buy two or three; they wear out faster than you’d think.
How to maintain it. Knead it constantly to fold dirty surface inward. When it gets too dirty to clean (after maybe a month of regular use), throw it out and start fresh. Trying to over-extend a single eraser is a false economy.
For when the kneaded eraser isn’t aggressive enough. A gum eraser will fully remove charcoal from a clean area — useful for sharpening highlight edges or correcting major mistakes. The Faber-Castell Magic Rub is the standard; it’s soft enough not to damage the paper but firm enough to clean up the densest passages.
Don’t use a pink rubber school eraser. They’re too abrasive for charcoal paper and leave colored residue.
Tightly rolled paper sticks for blending and softening charcoal passages. Stumps are thicker and double-pointed; tortillions are narrower with a single point. Use them sparingly — over-blending is the most common reason charcoal portraits look plastic and lifeless.
When the tip gets too dirty, sand it on a piece of fine sandpaper to expose clean paper. They last for years if you treat them well.
A piece of soft leather, used to broadly soften charcoal across large passages. It’s gentler than a stump and covers more area in one pass. Auto-parts-store chamois (the kind sold for car-washing) is identical to art-store chamois at a fraction of the price — cut a 4-inch square, fold it once for a thicker pad, and you’re done forever.
Krylon Workable Fixatif or Sennelier Latour fixative — sprayed lightly between drawing stages to prevent smudging on layers you’re ready to lock in. Workable means you can still draw on top of it. Use sparingly: too much fixative dulls the paper and shifts darks.
I rarely fixate work in progress — only finished pieces I’m about to frame. Some artists fixate after the shadow-blocking stage so they can build over without lifting earlier marks. Both approaches work.
A piece of 1/4-inch Masonite cut to 16×20 or 18×24 is the cheap perfect drawing surface. Smooth, rigid, won’t warp. Tape your paper to it with artist’s tape (low-tack — not regular masking tape, which damages paper edges). A hardware store will cut Masonite to size for under $10.
Drawing standing up changes how you see. When the work is vertical and you’re backed up six feet, you see the whole drawing instead of the small area under your hand. A simple H-frame easel is fine; nothing fancy required. Mabef, Best, and even the cheap student-grade Bissell easels all work.
Six things, total cost under $40 from a specialty retailer.
If you’re working on toned paper instead of white, swap the Strathmore Sketch for Strathmore Toned Gray and add one stick of General’s white charcoal. Cost goes up by about $8.
Two specialty retailers I trust completely. One I think you should avoid for premium brands.
Best overall selection, fair pricing, reliable authenticity. Good private-label products at lower price points if you want to save money. Brick-and-mortar stores in many cities. This is my default.
Comparable selection to Blick, sometimes better sale pricing. Excellent paper selection. Worth checking both before placing an order.
Counterfeit art supplies are a known issue on Amazon — especially for Faber-Castell, Caran d’Ache, Prismacolor, and Strathmore products. Generic supplies are fine. Premium brands: buy from Blick or Jerry’s instead.
If you have a local art store, support them. The selection won’t match Blick’s, but the staff will know things the internet doesn’t. The relationship is worth more than the small price difference.