Making your own charcoal for drawing is such a fun and easy activity and using charcoal for drawing is a very sensory experience. It’s also a great way for kids of all ages to learn about shading and shadowing in art, as well as highlighting.

What you will need:

• Metal container with a lid (an old biscuit tin is perfect) or two food tins that can be nestled one inside the other

• Hammer

• Nail

• Sticks and twigs

• An oven glove (or fire proof glove if you have one)

• A heat source such as a fire pit or barbecue

What you need to do:

The process of making charcoal is quite simple. Essentially, wood needs to be heated in a low oxygen environment (your metal tin) to release the moisture and volatile compounds which then leaves behind a product that is nearly pure carbon (your charcoal).

First you’ll need to collect some sticks, roughly between 1 and 2 cm in diameter. Any sticks will do but it might be fun to experiment with different types of wood. You can either leave the bark on or peel it off.

Make some holes in the lid of the container with a nail and hammer. If you’re using a food tin, make a couple of holes in the base of the smaller tin. This is so the gases produced when heating the sticks can escape.

Trim your sticks so that they fit into your tin and then fill the tin with the sticks. If you’re using food tins, then fill the smaller tin with the sticks.

Put the lid on the container (or nest the smaller food tin inside the larger tin so that the sticks are fully enclosed).

Using your oven glove, carefully, place the container on your fire with the holes facing upwards. If using food tins, then you might want to push it into the fire a bit using a stick.

As the wood heats up, you’ll see smoke come out of the holes in your tin and, eventually, small flames which is because of the volatile gases burning off the wood inside.

Your charcoal is done when there is no more smoke coming from the hole. This can take between 30 minutes and 2 hours depending on the heat of your fire, the wood moisture content, size of tin etc.

Let the fire slowly die around the container (or if you have a fire proof glove, you can remove the container from the fire to a safe location where it can cool).

DO NOT OPEN the container until it is completely cooled! The contents will be very hot, and if you open the container and let in oxygen, the hot charcoal sticks will burst into flames and will be turned into ash.

Once everything has cooled, you can open up your container and check out your charcoal!

Author: Denise Hope, home educating mum of two boys

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