For extreme delicacy and purity of line no medium can surpass this method.  And for the expression of a beautiful line, such as a profile, nothing could be more suitable than a silver point.  As a training to the eye and hand also, it is of great value, as no rubbing out of any sort is possible, and eye and hand must work together with great exactness.  The discipline of silver-point drawing is to be recommended as a corrective to the picturesque vagaries of charcoal work.

A gold point, giving a warmer line, can also be used in the same way as a silver point, the paper first having been treated with Chinese white.

[Sidenote:  Charcoal.]

Two extreme points of view from which the rendering of form can be approached have been explained, and it has been suggested that students should study them both separately in the first instance, as they each have different things to teach.  Of the mediums that are best suited to a drawing combining both points of view, the first and most popular is charcoal.

Charcoal is made in many different degrees of hardness and softness, the harder varieties being capable of quite a fine point.  A chisel-shaped point is the most convenient, as it does not wear away so quickly.  And if the broad side of the chisel point is used when a dark mass is wanted, the edge can constantly be kept sharp.  With this edge a very fine line can be drawn.

Charcoal works with great freedom, and answers readily when forceful expression is wanted.  It is much more like painting than any other form of drawing, a wide piece of charcoal making a wide mark similar to a brush.  The delicacy and lightness with which it has to be handled is also much more like the handling of a brush than any other point drawing.  When rubbed with the finger, it sheds a soft grey tone over the whole work.  With a piece of bread pressed by thumb and finger into a pellet, high lights can be taken out with the precision of white chalk; or rubber can be used.  Bread is, perhaps, the best, as it does not smudge the charcoal but lifts it readily off.  When rubbed with the finger, the darks, of course, are lightened in tone.  It is therefore useful to draw in the general proportions roughly and rub down in this way.  You then have a middle tone over the work, with the rough drawing showing through.  Now proceed carefully to draw your lights with bread or rubber, and your shadows with charcoal, in much the same manner as you did in the monochrome exercises already described.

All preliminary setting out of your work on canvas is usually done with charcoal, which must of course be fixed with a spray diffuser.  For large work, such as a full-length portrait, sticks of charcoal nearly an inch in diameter are made, and a long swinging line can be done without their breaking.

For drawings that are intended as things of beauty in themselves, and are not merely done as a preparatory study for a painting, charcoal is perhaps not so refined a medium as a great many others.  It is too much like painting to have the particular beauties of a drawing, and too much like drawing to have the qualities of a painting.  However, some beautiful things have been done with it.