The Complete Book of Drawing Techniques

Charcoal

81

mixture of paraffin pigment and wax. They

can come in many different colours and they

have a very greasy feel to them just like wax.

They are not at all dusty like charcoal so it is

not easy to smudge the material. If you need

to erase the material on the paper you need to

use a solvent and when this is applied it will

smear and loosen the wax on the paper.

However, it is a very useful material for

building up layers of different colours, dark

over light, and then scratching back through

these layers revealing the colours from

underneath. This technique is call scraphite,

and the artist Paul Klee used it very

successfully. The special qualities that emerge

from this technique are that the marks that

one scratches into the surface appear very

luminous. This way of working does not lend

itself to being a very naturalistic means of

recording our observations, but it is very good

for rendering more symbolic and abstract

statements.

SPANISH BLACK

There is a very quick and cheap way to make

a poor man’s charcoal that is known as

Spanish Black. This charcoal is made from

burning the end of a cork for a few minutes. I

can remember using this as a student for very

soft drawings when I could not afford proper

charcoal. It is also very good as a cheap form

of theatrical make up, and can be used for

false beards and eyebrows.

obtained for compressed charcoal as with
pencils. The product is manufactured and
can be brought from any art suppliers.
Finally, one can obtain charcoal in a pencil
form. This enables the charcoal to be
sharpened and allows it to be used more like
a pencil. However, you do lose the intrinsic
quality that charcoal has when used in this
form.

CONTE CRAYON

Conte crayon is the same as compressed
charcoal except that the pigment and the
binders are different. Conte crayons are small
square sticks that are made from pigment
mixed with clay and a binder. They are harder
than charcoal, compressed charcoal, and
pastels. The traditional colours are black,
white, sanguine, bistre, and sepia. You can
however now get conte crayons in different
colours. Conte crayon can also come encased
in wood like a pencil. Conte crayon, like
charcoal, can be smudged. However, it
creates a very intense black tone that is much
stronger and more difficult to remove than
charcoal. Conte crayon is very good for both
tonal drawings, and more intense mark-
making drawings.

WAX CRAYONS

These are very different in character to the
previous materials. They are made from a