white conte and vine charcoal on strathmore 400 series
For ages, every time I took a drawing class certain materials would land on the supply list but never be used – conté crayon being the biggest culprit. In the last year I’ve finally begun using the sanguine conté pretty regularly. But the white conté has really remained elusive. Until this week.
I loved this technique. Start with a colored piece of paper that will be your mid-tone. Use the white crayon to draw your lights first. Then add charcoal to show the shadows. I used vine charcoal tonight. Both the conté and the vine charcoal erase nicely, a feature I especially appreciate in any medium. Really the whole drawing ends up pretty delicate. Breath too strongly near it and find something smeared. His nose didn’t make the trip home very well. All things considered I think I got off easy in that regard.
It turns out that this is one of my favorite drawings. Yes, I realize I recently said I don’t keep a list. Apparently I didn’t know what I was talking about. It feels like I got to turn things inside out. More than any other technique, this one had me looking for light where I might before have sought the shadow shapes. I think I need to draw light more often.
Comments