Becky Gouverneur Demo

Friday 11th April 2025

Charcoal & pencil artist

Becky Gouverneur is a professional artist specialising in realistic, detailed portraits of animals. She works primarily in graphite and charcoal but occasionally in colour with pastel or coloured pencil. For this demonstration she is going to work in charcoal on a picture of a red panda that she started a little time ago.

Becky studied Textile Design and Photography at University. She  uses her skill with photography to capture the personality and character of her subject with her intricate and detailed drawing work.  She works on a magnetic board with magnets that keep her work in place. She used Snowdon 300 Gsm paper from Jacksons for this piece as it is not too textured and at the same time not too smooth “Goldilocks paper” she called it smiling. She did say that she sometimes uses Frisk 220 Gsm from SAA especially when she has an article in their magazine.

Becky began by explaining how important it is to keep the work clean. She uses a sheet of glassine paper to protect the artwork from being rubbed by her hand. She also wears an artist’s glove, which is a two finger glove that fits on either the left or right hand and protects the surface of the paper from the natural oils of the skin. She originally sketched the drawing on a separate piece of paper and then transferred it on to the final paper. She uses a putty rubber to lift off some of the lines. This has to be done before any charcoal is applied.

During the course of the demonstration Becky used the full range of the equipment that can be seen in the picture above. She began by telling us about the little pot of charcoal float powder that is top right of the screen. She explained that when charcoal is ground on an industrial scale the lightest and finest dust floats. She uses float powder because it is so fine it has no lumps. The lightest area of the panda’s cheek looked almost white on the overhead projector but it did have a light dusting of float powder. She uses a make-up brush to put this down.

Charcoal will not work over graphite. She wraps her willow charcoal in masking tape which stops it breaking and keeps her hands clean. Willow charcoal produces the second lightest tones. Becky can spend hours layering up and developing tone. She uses a greyscale value finder to check the tone of her work against the tones in the reference photo. There is an App that can help with this as it gives colours in isolation. She did not know the name of the App but suggested putting Colour Picker App into an internet search engine.

Becky visited the Sennelier Art Store in Paris once and decided to buy one of every charcoal pencil available, apparently she came away with 12. She wanted to test them to see which blended well, which would break too easily, etc. She likes to use Conté Pierre Noire pencils. They have soft leads that are dense, deep, and matt black. Pit compressed charcoal is the darkest she has found but a black pastel could be used if this is not available.

For the whiskers Becky uses a white polychroma pencil. She will use this again on the nose when she comes to do that. She uses Tombow Mono Zero eraser pencils to lift and erase. She has a round tip and a flat tip. She tends to use the round tip most. They work well on pastel and in fact on any dry media, they are almost an essential piece of equipment.

As can be seen in the photo above Becky is able to use the Tombow eraser to create the look of individual hairs. She said that students often do this too regularly. It needs to be a bit random and varied to look realistic. Becky was asked if she uses fixative when she has finished and she said she uses the Daler Rowley Fixative that comes in a silver can with a yellow label. Other fixatives are available but it is best never to use hairspray.

After the coffee break Becky began to work on the nose. She started by using the Pierre Noir pencil while looking for the darkest parts. She then decided to work in the resist polychroma white pencil. The little white dots on the nose are the result of the resist. “I am not drawing a nose, I am drawing shapes and tones”, she said.

Becky talked and answered questions while she worked and we learned that she had not only been a photographer but she had also been a police officer at one time in her career. She has even spent a short period teaching art in a prison. She told us that it was a terrible family tragedy that had led her to take up art as a business career. About nine years ago her parents were on holiday when they were in a serious car accident. Very sadly her father was killed and her mother, who was suffering from PTSD, needed her support. The school where she was teaching art would not let her go part time and so she had to reassess her priorities. As chance would have it a charcoal commission drawing she had done was put on social media and things took off to such an extent that by the time Covid came she had a three year waiting list of commissions.

Becky’s knowledge of photography compliments her drawing as she photographs her subjects for nearly all of her commissions and exhibition work. In fact she is running a four day Animal Photography & Charcoal Realism Drawing Retreat in Westcott Barton, Devon from Wednesday 23rd to Monday 28th July this summer. Here is a photo of the flyer.

There was also information about Workshops she will be running near Milton Keynes. She had brought a number of step-by-step guides, cards and prints that people could buy. Beck is working on a book that will be published next year. For more information and to book on the workshops please visit www.Bexarts.co.uk.

Becky’s style of work is clearly very time consuming and yet she managed to keep up a constant flow of conversation and information throughout the course of the demonstration. Smooth haired animals do not take as long as curly haired ones. Becky said she would never do another cockapoo although perhaps a cockapoo tariff might be the answer. In a light hearted, lively conversation about all sorts of things the evening came to a close as Sue Whitehead, the chairman, voiced our thanks and appreciation that Becky had been prepared to make the two hour journey from near Milton Keynes to be with us.

Photos & Write up by Carole Head