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This medium is not permanent and can easily be erased or smudged; it requires gum or resin to maintain permanency. The advantage of using charcoal is its versatility. It can be used to produce either a soft or strong quality of line, which can be erased without difficulty, or it can be dragged across the paper to produce different tonal areas, texture, and shading.

An artist that took advantage of charcoal drawing was the French Impressionist Edgar Degas. Well trained in the classics, Degas remained committed to drawing and studio practice throughout his life. Degas believed in the importance of line in his work, and the human figure was his main focus. Through the human figure he was able to depict modern society, including the café, opera, ballet and brothel.

Always drawing from life, Degas built up his compositions from numerous studies of live models, both in studio and in social spaces. The fine lines that Degas constructs present a style of drawing where the trace of bodily movement appears in multiple pencil markings across the paper's surface. A perfect example of this technique is seen in Degas' work Ballet Dancer. Degas used a fine pencil to construct Ballet Dancer, with the delicately drawn outlines producing not simply a recording, but an observation. The young dancer adjusts her strap, a movement to which Degas responded by repositioning her left arm several times.

Degas remained an accomplished draftsman throughout his artistic career. His highly observed studies of figures from life are engaged in the momentary gesture or casual gracefulness of the human form. The human female form was a consistent subject in many of Degas' drawings as a way to define the anatomy and determine the fall of light.

Around 1886, Degas told George Moore that his aim in painting bathing women was to show "a human creature preoccupied with herself; hitherto, the nude has always been represented in poses which presupposes an audience, but these women of mine are honest and simple folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their physical condition…It is as if you looked through a keyhole."

Edgar Degas is the champion of charcoal drawing; his drawn subjects are simplistic yet contain in-depth detail. To draw in such a form is a gift, the reason Baterbys Art Auction Gallery has many Edgar Degas Charcoal and pen drawings. Master artists can make charcoal an art form.