Digital Charcoal

Yesterday I tried a short charcoal sketch in Procreate using Lane Brown’s Charcoal master pack, and over an hour passed and I just couldn’t stop playing. Below is the result of that trial run. Probably the best thing about these brushes is that they give me access to virtual versions of really high quality tools that I wouldn’t be able to access in real life here in India, like soft vine charcoal sticks and brushes. I used just two colours- a white and a dark to create my values, keeping the sketch on a single layer- as close to traditional as possible- and it felt really natural. Using the Timelapse feature in Procreate, I screenshotted the sketch at different stages, and I think I should have quit at this stage:

But I carried on till I reached this stage:

Every year that passes, technology comes closer to emulating the traditional media that I first fell in love with when I started drawing. It’s not 100% there yet, but it’s getting frightfully close.