Seek

I did this sketch at last week's life drawing session. Alaska willow charcoal on 11 by 14 inch sketch paper.

Afterwards I treated it with linseed oil, bonding the charcoal to the paper making it pretty much archival.

I experimented with this technique before but found the charcoal would sometimes "run", blurring the image.

This time I first temporarily 'fixed' the image by spraying a little hair spray on it, loosely bonding it to the paper. Then I applied linseed oil to the back of the sheet whereupon it soaks through to the image side and, when dry, provides an extremely durable permanent bond.

Once dry, I can take a clean white rag soak it in water, rub it over the image and find the rag is still clean and white, it picks up absolutely none of the charcoal.

After the linseed oil dries, the paper is translucent, parchment like, and can be mounted against a white or colored backing.