Drawing Materials

Materials available to the artist have changed over time, as older ones were depleted or lost favor, new ones were introduced—often with more desirable optical or working properties. Exceptional activity in the manufacture and trade of readymade artists’ materials took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of these, such as crayon, graphite pencil, chalk, and pastel, consist of similar ingredients and can be extremely difficult to distinguish from each other in a work of art, particularly if they are present in scant amounts or heavily layered and reworked. Materials are often used in combination—charcoal and graphite, for instance—for preliminary sketches beneath a variety of other drawing materials, and transparent and opaque watercolor are frequently applied to the same painting.

Drawing materials can be divided into dry and wet media. Dry materials generally are applied directly to the paper in stick form, and can be manipulated further by smudging with a finger or eraser, while wet materials require a brush, pen or possibly airbrush for application. The physical properties of each dictate its handling qualities. Charcoal, for example, lends itself to broad strokes rather than the fine detail possible with pen and ink. The texture and character of the paper also contributes essential qualities to the appearance of the finished drawing and are chosen to be sympathetic with an artist’s preferred drawing materials and the means of expression.

• GRAPHITE
  

  

  The versatility of graphite makes it suitable for spontaneous sketches or highly finished work. A pencil or stick of graphite used on the flat side produces broad strokes and shaded areas; sharpened to a point it yields crisp lines. A dark gray metallic sheen can be observed by looking at a drawing from the side as light glances off the graphite surface. This effect is visible in the photomicrograph of graphite at the left.

  Graphite pencils took the place of lead and silver metalpoints for rendering fine linear drawings, hence the familiar terms “pencil lead” or “lead pencil” (even though pencils contain no lead whatsoever). After its discovery in sixteenth-century England, natural graphite was so highly prized that by law it could be mined only six weeks a year, and was transported to London by armed guards. In the late eighteenth century, French inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté patented a substitute for natural graphite. His formulation consisted of powdered graphite mixed with clay into a paste, then shaped into rods and fired like ceramic ware.

• CHARCOAL
  

  

  As a stick of charcoal is applied to paper, it splinters and the almost weightless particles scatter lightly over the surface producing dusty gray passages and soft lines that even the gentlest rubbing can smudge or erase. These qualities have favored its use for preparatory drawings, rapid sketches, and underdrawings throughout the centuries. The photomicrograph at the left illustrates the sparkle of the minute fractured particles in a charcoal stroke as they reflect light.

  Found in prehistoric cave paintings and gaining substantial popularity in the nineteenth century, charcoal has been used by artists of all periods. Natural charcoal is made by slowly heating vines or wooden twigs in an airtight chamber, after which it can be used directly without the addition of binder. For denser, more saturated marks, the artist soaked the charcoal sticks in olive or linseed oil, a technique practically forgotten today. By the mid-nineteenth century, the need for darker charcoal was met commercially with compressed charcoal, which consists of charcoal powder pressed into sticks and fired in a kiln. A charcoal stroke can be easily manipulated or removed with a soft rubber eraser or smudged with a tight roll of paper called a “stump” or “tortillon.”

• CRAYON
  

  

  In earlier periods and in other languages, the word “crayon” refers to a miscellany of dry drawing materials—pencils, chalks and pastels. Today, in English, the term “crayon” is associated with waxy or greasy drawing sticks. Crayon lines characteristically hold their shape, producing a rich saturated tone that resists blending. This quality encourages the artist to work in a linear fashion or to build up solid areas of tone through repeated application. As seen to the left, black crayon has accumulated along the peaks of parallel ridges in the sheet of laid paper.

  Crayons were manufactured to meet the artist's need for a material of intense color and rich body—these include lithographic, Conté, and wax crayons. The black greasy crayons developed for lithography in the late century contain waxes, tallow, resin binders, and lamp black pigment. Conté crayon, developed in France between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, is the brand name for a more lightly bound crayon that consists of compressed pigments, clay, and a small amount of greasy binder. Introduced for drawing in the early twentieth century, wax crayons such as the familiar Crayola® brand incorporate waxes, colorants, fillers, and lubricants.

• CHALK & PASTEL
  

  

  By the early nineteenth century, commercially fabricated chalk had largely replaced mined natural chalk as a drawing material. Fabricated chalk is composed of powdered pigments and clay bound with a weak adhesive. Pastel, a soft form of fabricated chalk, was popularized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and brings to mind the brilliant painterly compositions by Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt. Fabricated chalks, including pastel, are characterized by a velvety matte surface imparted by the densely deposited pigment; appearance can vary from distinct lines to areas of seamless blending. The detail at the left illustrates the velvety surface of pastel.

  First mentioned by Leonardo da Vinci in 1499, pastels were developed further during the sixteenth century and commercially manufactured by the eighteenth century when the taste for pastel portraiture became widespread. To produce pastels and fabricated chalks, pigments were typically combined with white clay, then formed into a paste with a dilute binder, rolled into sticks, and air-dried. Various binders have been used, but by the nineteenth century a plant gum (gum tragacanth) was referred to most frequently. In Mary Cassatt's time, a richly colored palette of pastels, as well as papers and canvases prepared with highly textured surfaces, were available for purchase. The artist can blend the pastel with brushes, fingers, chamois, or a rolled paper stump.

• WATERCOLOR
  

  

  The luminosity of an expertly rendered watercolor relies on the interplay of individual and overlapping color washes and the white of the paper. The transparent washes allow light to pass through and reflect back from the paper beneath, so that overlapping strokes combine optically to produce new colors. If sufficient drying time is not allowed before applying the overlying strokes of color, the moist colors will run together, an effect Charles Demuth, among others, controlled and used to his advantage.

  Watercolor has been used since ancient times, even predating the use of paper. It appeared very early in Egyptian papyrus paintings, and later on parchment in Medieval illuminated manuscripts. Watercolors consist of finely ground pigments or dyes suspended in water by means of a plant gum, generally gum arabic. As the paint dries, the coloring agents stain the support or are stuck to its surface by the gum.

  Watercolor is a versatile medium that allows artists to explore a variety of application techniques. Charles Demuth used a technique that involved sprinkling salt on a wet watercolor wash, allowing it to dry, and then brushing it away to produce a dappled effect.

• OPAQUE WATERCOLOR
  

  

  Also known by the French term gouache, opaque watercolor is a water-based paint composed of ground pigments and a plant binder, traditionally gum arabic, much like transparent watercolor. Unlike its translucent counterpart, however, opaque watercolor is a dense paint that fully covers the underlying surface in one coat and characteristically renders a flat matte surface. This is due to a greater proportion of pigment to binder and, in some colors, the addition of inert white clays or opaque pigments, such as Chinese white (zinc oxide). The small amount of binder creates a lean, brittle paint layer, and the development of minute cracks is a common occurrence, as shown at the left.

• PEN & INK
  

  

  A union of opposites, pen and ink wash drawings combine sinuous fine lines with broad washes, the latter often difficult to distinguish from watercolor in a finished drawing. Pens have evolved from reed and quill to metal nibs like that used in the detail at the left.

  Although today inks are available in a rainbow of colors, historically they were produced only in black, brown, or subtly tinted variations. Composed of very fine pigments or dyes in a solution of water and gum arabic or animal glue, ink must be intense in tone yet thin enough to flow through the point of a pen. The oldest black inks are iron gall and carbon black. Iron gall ink, derived from a chemical reaction between iron compounds and the tannin in oak tree gall nuts, gradually fades from black to brown. The corrosive nature of iron gall ink can also cause the underlying paper to discolor or deteriorate. The more permanent carbon black ink, such as Chinese or Indian ink, is colored with fine particles from charred wood or burned lamp oil. Two traditional brown inks are bister, a luminous, transparent ink; and sepia, an opaque wash extracted from the secretion of the cuttlefish. Formulas for bistre, made from the soluble tars in wood soot, were recorded as early as the fifteenth century, whereas sepia became fashionable in the late eighteenth century. Often the term sepia, when used to identify inks of earlier periods, refers to their brown tone rather than genuine sepia ink composition.

  Inks and pens have evolved since antiquity, allowing the artist to produce a crisp yet graceful line. By the fifteenth century, quill pens were preferred over reed pens for the delicate calligraphy and illustrations in Medieval manuscripts as well as for drawings by many of the Old Masters. Quills from the pinion feathers of the goose, swan, raven and crow were highly esteemed, producing responsive lines that glided across the textured surface of handmade papers. Although many artists continued to prefer quill pens throughout the nineteenth century, by the middle of the century pens with interchangeable steel nibs were used widely. This development was accompanied by the manufacture of smooth-surfaced paper that was able to withstand the vigorous scoring of the sharp metal points.

• MIXED MATERIALS
  

  

  Many artists have experimented with mixtures of materials, some not commonly used in works of art on paper. Based on formulations in artist’s manuals, Arthur Dove combined beeswax, resins, oils, egg yolk and colorants to prepare what is called a wax emulsion. He was also known for painting à l'essence (with solvent), using turpentine to thin out oil and wax paints to create washes that appeared similar to watercolor washes but with a more granular quality.