Value Drawing in Charcoal (3 session)
Adult Workshop | Registration opens Monday, July 6, 2026 8:00 AM EDT
This workshop is focused on developing the essential drawing skill of seeing and using value to create light, form, depth, and atmosphere. Using charcoal, students will work through two still life sessions and one live model session while exploring tonal relationships, contrast, and observational techniques. This class is ideal for students with some prior drawing experience or who have taken introductory drawing fundamentals courses.
What You Will Learn:
- How to see and simplify shapes of value
- How to create light, shadow, and depth using charcoal by working both additively and subtractively (or reductively)
- Observational drawing techniques for still life and the figure
Who This Class Is For:
Students with prior drawing experience who are ready to build on their existing foundation. Questions about whether this class is right for you? Email adulteducation@fleisher.org.
Please start the class with these materials:
- Soft vine charcoal (12 sticks)
- Compressed charcoal (General's brand is recommended)
- Kneaded eraser
- Drawing paper pad (11"x14" or larger) - choose paper that is suitable for charcoal. Strathmore 400 Series Drawing Pads are a good, versatile option for both charcoal and pencil, and they have less texture than paper specifically labeled for charcoal. Avoid paper that is very lightweight or overly smooth.
- An old, cut-up T-shirt or chamois (available at art stores) for blending
Optional materials:
- A small pencil sharpener to sharpen charcoal
- Charcoal pencils for details, precision, and mark-making
- Workable spray fixative to set your finished work
Alicia Link
Alicia Link is a multidisciplinary visual artist and educator whose work interrogates systems that restrict and limit our agency and understanding of our bodies. Working across object-making, painting, and performance, her practice privileges material experimentation and process as a means of engaging with embodied memory, labor, and the politics of value—both personal and cultural.
Link holds a BFA in Painting from Boston University and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin. She has participated in residencies at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Philadelphia, PA), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and Officina Stamperia del Notaio (Tusa, Sicily). She’s exhibited nationally at venues including Space Heater Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Roy G Biv Gallery (Columbus, OH), the Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX), and AUTOMAT (Philadelphia, PA). She currently teaches at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University and at Fleisher Art Memorial, and is a member of the collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid.