I went to a drawing class several years ago as Art Therapy while coping with depression. We had easles with large sheets of newsprint and charcol. I know what you mean about trying not to smudge the charcol!

It was my first time taking lessons in drawing, but I had been to the studio quite a bit for drop-in sessions trying out other mediums (block prints, knitting, photography). There were some wonderful artists in the drawing class and at first I felt intimidated, but I found most everyone to be supportive.

The art instructor was also a dancer and she hired other dancers to be models for our class. Sometimes we worked on still-life and other times we tried to capture the dancers in motion. Swirling the charcol around was kinda fun! That reminds me, to warm up at the start of our class, we just swirled charcol around all over the page, using our whole arm and sometimes while listening to music. I found it felt quite freeing and it didn't matter if it ended up just looking like scribbles!

Good for you, bizi, for pushing yourself a bit to try something new.