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