Charcoal or Chalk?

That would mainly depend on whether you would like to work in color or more black and white. Chalk pastels offer a wide variety of colors while charcoal is black. I would suggest giving both a try as neither are very expensive or hard to find.

Thanks Aldistar. I have one good chalk and colored pencil drawing of a leopard that I want to get on this site. How much do they run?

CarbonSystem- All you need to do is to scan it into your computer, and post it under "Original Art and Photography" in the Gallery. There is no charge to post your picture for people to look at it, but you can't sell it on A2K!

oh oh i know that part, thanks anyway, is was refering to the pastels, sorry for not explaining myself clearly

Hmmm...prices vary on both, but for the most part the only difference will most likely be the name on the box. Any local arts and crafts store should carry a starter set of pastels. This is a box of pastels that could vary from 12 to 42 colors and sometimes more. The more colors the higher the price. A good estimate would be about a dollar per pastel stick.

Charcoal is pretty inexpensive if you just get a stick of compressed charcoal it shouldn't run more than, say, .79 cents. They also make charcoal pencils. These look like a regular pencil but have charcoal instead of graphite. These are less messy because you don't have to actually touch the charcoal, but they are more in the price range of 2 to 7 dollars.

I would recommend the plain compressed charcoal. It is less expensive and you can shape the tips any way you want or turn the stick sideways to color large portions all at once. Besides, no matter what you do you will get messy, it's just part of working with charcoal and pastels.

Thanks a lot Aldistar. I think I'm going to start with pastels. Now all I need is a few tips and hints from some people on this site about techniques and what-not. If you know any members here who are very good w/ pastels, let me know. Thanks all