Comparison: Recent Drawings to Older Newsprint Ones

Newsprint meets Toned Papers:

(This is the continuation of some points explored in the previous three posts) 

The Conte crayon drawings I have done on 24 x 36″ sheets of Newsprint are some of the work of mine I like best. But over the last few years I have tried some alternate media to capture what I like about them on a better surface. Here are five current drawings, done with oil-based pencil on hand-coloured paper, beside comparable newsprint drawings. 

The new ones are a third to a quarter of the size of the newsprint drawings, but the balance of line/tone, and the even-ness and luminous quality of shading are in a similar ballpark - I believe these are the closest of everything tried so far. 

But these colour ones are on acid-free paper, which is sturdy enough to allow for post-session additions and amendments, and lasting enough to make that worth trying, so I’m optimistic about the future explorations they allow. 

Summary Report: Toned Papers, Part 1

Toned Papers, Part 1:

For some time I have been exploring alternatives to drawing on newsprint. I found that for my sensibilities, drawing with Conte crayon on large sheets of newsprint had an ideal texture for direct figure drawing. But the newsprint has no longevity. 

Earlier this year I began experimenting with adding washes of ink to better quality paper to draw on. This came in  conjunction with finding an oil-base pencil, Cretacolor Nero, whose marks I liked: they are less coarse than Conte and `smoother’ than charcoals.

The early ones I’ve been doing used more muted greys with small amounts of colour mixed in, echoing the newsprint look that I have a fondness for. Also, black marks look less stark when there is some underlying midtone, rather than white paper.

Summary Report: Toned Papers, Part 2

Toned Papers, Part 2:

More recently I've been exploring how a base tone washed on paper contributes to the drawing I’m doing. Starting March/April of this year (2016), I began using washes of more vivid hues. 

I found a paper I like, Stonehenge light weight, and began using Daler Rowney FW acrylic ink for the colour washes. The drawing is done with Cretacolour Nero oil-base pencils.

There are certain limitations. I stretch the paper to wash colour on, but it’s thin enough that working in water media while drawing would buckle the surface a lot. The colour layer can come off with heavier erasing, so I try to keep erasures to a minimum.

It’s having promising results so far, and allows for a few directions of exploration, making images of people. I hope you are enjoying these as well- I’m having a good time making them. You can follow the progress of this on my tumblr.