Sit Down With Our #090 Featured Artist
Josh Hernandez
Featured Artist / #139 ScrawlrBox
Josh Hernandez, known professionally as Mad Charcoal, is an American artist recognized for expressive charcoal portraiture that blends realism with raw abstraction. Through dramatic contrast, fractured marks, and emotional atmosphere, his work explores identity, beauty, struggle, and faith.
After building a global audience of millions through sharing his creative process online, he has continued to push charcoal beyond traditional boundaries through original artworks, prints, and artist-designed materials. His mission is simple: make honest work that people can feel.
TikTokYouTube/Instagram: @mad.charcoal
Artwork: madcharcoal.comArt Materials: madartmaterials.com
We absolutely love your style, it’s so unique and recognisably your own. Over time, your work has become quite distinct in mood and technique. How would you describe the evolution of your style since you started?
My style started as obsession with realism. I wanted to prove I could draw what I saw. Over time I became less interested in proving skill and more interested in revealing something true. That changed everything. I stopped polishing every edge and started letting chaos speak. Smears, fractures, missing details, violent marks, soft silence. Now I’m chasing emotion over perfection. I want the drawing to feel alive, like it’s becoming and collapsing at the same time.
How did you first get into charcoal drawing? Was there a moment or a person that inspired you to pursue it seriously?
I got into art young, drawing faces for lunch money in school. But charcoal hit me differently. It felt honest. No bright tricks, no hiding. Just dust, shadow, pressure, risk. It can be delicate or brutal in one second. I think I pursued it seriously when I realized it matched the way I feel things. It wasn’t just a medium anymore, it was a language.
Many of your drawings evoke intense emotion and atmosphere. What kinds of feelings or experiences motivate the themes you explore in your work
A lot of it comes from contrast. Beauty and grief. Strength and fragility. Desire and emptiness. Faith and doubt. I think most people live in tension, so I make work from tension. Sometimes a piece begins with pain, sometimes wonder, sometimes a memory I can’t explain. I’m interested in the invisible things people carry.
Do you use any special paper types or surface preparations when working on big pieces?
Yes, surface matters a lot. I like papers with enough tooth to hold layers but still allow movement. On larger works I often choose heavier archival papers so they can handle aggression, erasing, powder, pressure, all of it. The surface should survive the fight. Lately I have been exploring working on raw canvas to display something more museum like or archival like.