How to make drawing charcoal?

r ransom wrote: Maybe if i start with a smaller hole?

A smaller hole should be fine. The question is "risk" vs "reward". It wouldn't surprise me if you didn't need a hole at all. I suspect you would get enough gas leaking out of the crack around the edge. I almost tried that with my "candy tin" but it's much smaller than an Oxford Tin.

I suspect the worst that would happen is the lid would pop up and you'd loose that round of charcoal. You could do the first burn with some wood you didn't care about, as a test?

For drawing, I liked the fat sticks, so mostly I made fat sticks.  

Now I'm sketching on canvas before oil painting, I find the smaller, like 1/8th of an inch or less across , are best.  If I have time today, I'll try and gather and debark some about that size.... although it shrinks, so I don't know what size it should start.

Also, I don't know yet what kind of wood works best for sketching pre oilpaint charcoal.   Mulberry makes a good mark, but doesn't rub out of the canvas as well as willow.  I don't know if I've tried grape yet.  And I wonder what other woods to try?  

Tried willow today.  It doesn't want to let go of the bark.

Willow harvest is better mid to late winter.  

It never occurred to me to make artist charcoal (neither my wife nor I are particularly fond of the medium), but even after reading every post, I'm encouraged to try it.

Forgive me for falling into my own silly habits of trying everything just to see what works, but as soon as this drought abates and the fire restrictions are lifted, I'm pretty sure I'll be going around the lot trimming saplings of all species and sizes, and stuffing them into all the paint and coffee cans my wife ribs me for collecting. An honors graduate of the Fail Early and Often school of practical education, I've already compiled a list of a dozen different wood varieties growing on the property, and even thought of a way to incorporate the process into my BBQ grill/smoker so we can render a smoked beast out of the deal as well.

This sounds like the perfect way to waste a weekend now and again, with absolutely no downside. Whatever product failures might occur would go straight through the wood chipper and into the garden. As an added bonus, our rural community is home to a small college known for its art curriculum. There could be a ready market for inexpensive artist charcoal, locally produced.

Thanks for the prompt!

I just ended up with a bunch of charcoal sticks as a byproduct of another project and have been wondering what to do with them.
They're too appealing to just dump them on the garden like any other biochar. They're a pleasure to draw with, though I really don't sketch much.
I guess they go in the Art Supplies For Someday drawer.
I wonder if they would subtitute for bamboo charcoal to purify a jar of water.
I was firing a few small ceramic pieces in a dutch oven in a fire. I put sticks and leaves inside the dutch oven to see if they would do anything to the surface of the clay. It came out black.
The sticks were cute, they had shrunk down to perfect miniatures of themselves.
They were varied and not identifiable species, picked up from broken branches I had chopped & dropped. Most likely fruit wood (plum, cherry, apple), pecan, spicebush, fig.
I was worried about ruining my dutch oven, but I realized it has a curved bottom & won't work on my induction stove. So I'm no longer likely to use it in the kitchen. The fire took off the seasoning, but the metal seems fine.
I could see the wood gas coming out beneath the lid of the dutch oven and catching fire.

Yeardly Arthur wrote:It never occurred to me to make artist charcoal (neither my wife nor I are particularly fond of the medium), but even after reading every post, I'm encouraged to try it.

Forgive me for falling into my own silly habits of trying everything just to see what works, but as soon as this drought abates and the fire restrictions are lifted, I'm pretty sure I'll be going around the lot trimming saplings of all species and sizes, and stuffing them into all the paint and coffee cans my wife ribs me for collecting. An honors graduate of the Fail Early and Often school of practical education, I've already compiled a list of a dozen different wood varieties growing on the property, and even thought of a way to incorporate the process into my BBQ grill/smoker so we can render a smoked beast out of the deal as well.

This sounds like the perfect way to waste a weekend now and again, with absolutely no downside. Whatever product failures might occur would go straight through the wood chipper and into the garden. As an added bonus, our rural community is home to a small college known for its art curriculum. There could be a ready market for inexpensive artist charcoal, locally produced.

Thanks for the prompt!

I can't wait to hear what the different wood is like.  

I included easy directions for how kids (and their grown ups) can make charcoal in my children's nature art book, Wild Art: Awesome Art Projects Using Wild & Invasive Plants & Other Nature Items (aff link).

Here's the page from the book if it's helpful (and the front and back cover, if you're curious).  My teenage son Alex did the charcoal for me so I could take pictures. It's so simple with an Altoids tin and you can also crush the charcoal to make paint too (adding different things for different results).  I've posted other projects from the book in other threads like this one showing other fun art materials you can make with nature, if you want to do more wild art fun.  :)