charcoal pencils or conte pencils. I didn't remember exactly which brand. You shave most the wood off to expose 2" or so of the charcoal, keep a bit of med-grit sand paper handy to keep it with a sharp point. I remember Ron grinding the point to have 2 sides. A large flat side for wide swaths of value, a smaller flat side…
I used to goto the concept art forums a lot when some of the teachers and students from watts would post sketches from their classes. It's been awhile, but I seem to remember them using newsprint with black conte pencils sharpened to have a long point.
i went to an atelier just like watts for a long time (in van nuys--associates in art). we used charcoal pencils as hito describes on smooth newsprint (it needs to be smooth to get that look). the tricky part was finding quality charcoal pencils--ritmo brand were the best you could buy for a loooong time, far superior to…
I'm also thinking torchons/blending tortillons with your standard 8H - 8B pencil drawing set. Could also be charcoal, but it definately looks like blending and shading was done with a torchon/blending tortillons. Sometimes they get so filled with graphite and charcoal you can just shade with them without having to lay down…
I'm pretty sure they're using torchons, the paper blending sticks you mentioned. If you use a soft pencil to start off with then press hard and move fast with a torchon, it creates a very similar effect to that shown in the images, especially obvious in the lower left area of the 2nd image. You can also guess that because…
It is 100% for certain charcoal, since that is always what's used in ateliers at this stage of their programmes. It handles more like paint than graphite does, so they don't tend to use pencils after the Bargue drawing stage. I would say it's almost certainly fine willow or vine charcoal. Compressed charcoal sticks won't…