Drawing materials Flashcards
What are some tools for applying water based media?
Vegetel pens
Animal pens
Metallica pens
Brushes
What are the tools and techniques of pastels?
o Pastel pencils
o Rods
o Powders
o Light pressure – light shades
o Harder pressure – darker/saturated shades
o Can be used with water
o Smudge/blend colors with finger or sponge
What pigments where used in watercolours?
Natural: earth, minerals, plants, vegetables
Artificial:
o Prussian blue: iron-based pigment
Used to replace more expensive pigments, lapis lazuli
o Lead white: carbonate of lead metallic lead + vinegar
Oxidizes over time
What is graphite?
Crystalized form of carbon
What is red chalk?
Iron oxide, clay
What are the characteristics of pastels?
- Soft pastels – more pigment
- Hard pastels – more binder
- Usually used on paper that has tooth
- Opaque medium – doesn’t rely on bright paper
- Pastels are powdery and therefor fragile/vulnerable – can be made stronger but then brilliance is lessened
- Risk of smudging
What are the characteristics of red chalk?
- Red colour
- Powdery material
-Adheres to paper immediately – don’t need a lot of pressure
What is lamp black ink/carbon ink?
o Soot based ink
Burning pine resins, burning oils (collected from inside oil lamps)
Strong rich black
Washes create lighter more grey colors
Popular in norther and central Europe
What is watercolours?
- Made from finely ground pigment, water, and gum Arabic
What are the tools and techniques used with charcoal?
- Powder
- Pens
- Cloths
- Strokes look different depending on angle and pressure
- Stumping
- Can be easily erased with an eraser - erased areas act as highlights
What is the history of graphite?
15th CE onward in Italy
Then whole Europe
What is sepia ink?
o Made from ink sack from cuttlefish
o Ink is dried, filtered, mixed with water and gum Arabic
o Difficult to make
o More popular in 18th and 19th century
o Reddish-brown in colour
What is the history of white chalk?
Used in Middle Ages but more in 17th century
What is metal point?
Not very common
Stylus used to draw on prepared surface
What are the characteristics of chalk?
-Easy to use
-Versatile – used for all types of drawings
-Can be removed with an eraser (glue erasers, breadcrumbs)
-Can be blended/chalk can be spread with stumps
-Can be used with water and applied with brush, called washing
What are metallic pens?
- Fountain pens
- 19th century boom with industrialisation
What are brushes?
- Can vary depending on size, width etc.
- Made from Squirrel hairs
- Nowadays made from otters, badger, or marter
- Used to apply washes
- Tool of choice to apply watercolors
- Watercolor – sponge can remove pigment
- 18th- 19th century brushes used on ivory for portrait miniatures
What is bistre/chimney ink?
o Made from soot collected from chimneys
o If not filtered it becomes granular
o Reddish-brown colour
What is the history of watercolours?
- Late 18th century, watercolor gain more popularity
o Often landscapes - Botanical drawings
- Anatomical drawings of animals by Dürer
What is gouache/bodycolor
Watercolors mixed with white to make more opaque
What is the process/characteristics of metal point drawing?
- Made with a stylus – thin metal rod
- Gesso is put on surface. Gesso = chalk + pigment + binder (rabbit-skin glue)
- Gesso dries on paper
- Stylus is traced on gesso-paper – leaves a small amount of metal that is visible
- Metal used: silver, gold, tin, bronze, lead
- Hard to spot what metal is used
- Metal point leaves very thin and light lines
- No tonal range – tones can be achieved by layering lines
- Difficult technique – can’t erase lines
What are the characteristics of black chalk?
- Blueish, brownish, blackish colour
-Cohesive material that adheres to drawing support
-Texture – fatty and oily
-Versatile – draw loose, more detailed, draw preparatory
-Used for drawings and cartoons
What are the characteristics of white chalk?
-Used with red and/or black chalk
-Used with technique called heightening to create light effect
-Highlight on smaller areas
What are animal pens?
- Quills
- Made from geese, swans, ravens
- Need to be prepared
o Tip is hardened in hot ashes
o Cleaned
o Tip is sharpened - Pens need to be refueled with ink – therefor pen drawings tend to be smaller
What are vegetel pens?
- Early modern period
o Made from reeds - Now made from bamboo
- Absorbs ink quickly
What are the techniques of watercolour?
- Wet color on wet color will blend
- Wet color on dry paper/paint will be more precise
- Remove pigment with sponge while still wet
- Apply pigment with sponge
- Remove pigment with knife or backside of brush when pigment is dry
- Mask paper with tape
What is chalk?
Minerals – mined from the earth
What is a wash?
o Layer of color that is a bit transparent
o Usually applied to larger areas
o Used to create background or build layers
o Appreciated in early modern period for its shine
What tools are used with chalk?
-Erasers (breadcrumbs)
-Stumps
-Holders (to keep fingers clean)
What is the history of black chalk?
From italy 17th CE
Later spreads
What are the characteristics of graphite?
- Slightly shiny – differentiate from chalk/charcoal
- Metallic grey - easily erased
- Pure form – crumbles easily
- Graphite sticks wrapped with string/put in holders to not dirty hands
What are the pros and cons of chalk?
Pros:
- Can be blended/chalk can be spread with stumps
- Versatile – used for all types of drawings
- Easy to use
- Can be mixed with water and used with brush (washing)
Cons:
- Chalk easily smudges
- Hard to remove/do revisions because it clings to surface – can scrape off with knife, remove with breadcrumbs
- Requires discipline
- Today less minerals are used because of mining problems
What are the tools and techniques of Pencils?
o Can be erased – create highlights
o Blended with stumps
What is iron gall ink/oak gall ink?
o Most used ink in early modern period
o Made from tannins in oak gall nuts + metal salts + binder (ex. Gum Arabic)
o Colorless in beginning – oxidizes to a rich black
o Changes color over time – from colorless to rich black to fainter colors (brown, grey etc.)
o If acidic ink will seep into paper and crack
What is black chalk?
Carbon rich rock/mineral/stone
Shale, shist
What are the characteristics of charcoal?
- Dark grey to velvet black
-No binding agent – particles spread easily
-Paper must have texture to retain pigment - More intense and rich colour compared to chalk
- Easier to erase, to correct and highlight, compared to chalk
- Recomended for beginners
What are pastels?
Powdered pigments + white filler chalk + binder (gum tragacanth)
What is the history of charcoal?
In 19th CE used to make highly finished drawings
What is charcoal?
Made from wood – twigs of spindle, willow, vine
How is charcoal made?
- Dry twigs
- Make bundles form thin pieces, sharpen
- Attach with copper or iron strings
- Put in pot and seal pot with clay
- Put in oven over night
What are the characteristics of watercolour paper?
- Not coloured
- Sized with gelatin
- External sizing
Sizing when paper is dry and final
-Internal sizing
Sizing when paper is made
-Grammage
-Higher grammage – more resistant to watercolors
-Ideally 300 g
-Grain- Smooth, fine, rough
- External sizing
- Watercolors will interact differently depending on grammage and grain
What is ink?
Pigment and binder creates mixture with no solid particles
What is the history of pastels?
16th century in Italy – flourishes in the 18th century
What is the history of red chalk?
-Start to be used - end of 15th century in Italy
-Leonardo da Vinci is one of the first to use it
-Gradually replaced with pencils and coloured pencils
What is white chalk?
Calcium carbonate
What is logwood and synthetic ink?
Can be made from Aniline, oak
What are some types of ink?
- Lamp black ink/carbon black
- Iron gall ink/oak gall ink
- Bistre/chimney soot
- Sepia/cuttlefish ink
- Logwoods and synthetic ink
What is a pencil and who invented it?
o 1795 – invention of the Conté pencil
o Graphite and clay cooked at high temperature in rods – incased in wood
o Different proportions of graphite and clay produce different hardness of pencil
o H = hardness B = blackness
