Charcoal
- HEX
- #36454F
- RGB
- 54 69 79
- HSL
- 204° 19% 26%
- CMYK
- 32 13 0 69
Charcoal or Slate?
A very dark grey with a touch of blue, darker than slate.
After burnt wood.
History
Charcoal is the oldest drawing tool and the first black. Artists at Chauvet Cave in France drew with it more than 30,000 years ago, and artists still use sticks of charred willow and vine for quick, smudgy sketches.
Art
Charcoal once fooled the experts. When nine-year-old María Sanz de Sautuola spotted bison on the ceiling of Altamira cave in 1879, the charcoal-and-ochre animals were judged too good to be prehistoric, and her father was accused of forgery. The leading skeptic, Émile Cartailhac, publicly took it back in 1902, after her father had died.
Kin
- Black: Charcoal drew the first black lines in caves
- Ash: What burning leaves behind: charcoal if starved of air, ash if not
- Slate: Two greys named after things you could write or draw with
In paintings
- Composition VII, Wassily Kandinsky
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer
- The Scream, Edvard Munch
Sources
- Bradshaw Foundation, 'Chauvet Cave'
- Wikipedia, 'Charcoal (art)'
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
- Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (2002)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.