Life Drawing from Home: Conté Crayon (Patreon)

Introduction

Conté crayons are a hard drawing medium made from compressed powdered pigment mixed with clay, wax and a binder, moulded into rectangular sticks. Depending on the ratio of pigment to clay, they are graded according to their hardness on the HB scale, similar to graphite pencils. Their square shape enables them to be used to produce very fine lines, broad marks or a combination of both. Conté crayons also come in a wide variety of colours with black and sanguine (red-brown) being most common. Personally, I prefer the black crayons, particularly HB as I find the softer ones and the coloured ones crumble a lot and resemble charcoal or pastel on the paper. For the exercises we will do, black HB crayons are preferable, but if you don’t have those use some hard rectangular crayons instead. 

Aims of these exercises

• To familiarise you with Conté crayon and how it can help you produce a variety of line so your drawings have more depth and reveal a more 3 dimensional image.
• To encourage you to see how the contours of a subject can change according to the light source and get you to respond accordingly.
• To be aware of how much variety there is in contour lines and what effects it can have on your drawing

Materials

You will need:

• One stick of conté crayon, preferably black, preferably HB – or anything reasonably similar. Conté crayons are very brittle and snap easily when pressure is applied, so it is better to start by snapping a new crayon in half.
• Several sheets of ordinary mid weight cartridge paper, A3 is a good size to work on.
• For the first exercise, no reference images are required, you can work on an old scruffy bit of paper, something discarded will do. 

Exercise 1: Markmaking

Step 1. You are going to begin by practising drawing lines with the crayon. Firstly, by the tip of the crayon, use the smaller sharp end to draw with and start by making your mark as lightly as you can. As you pull the crayon down to create a line, gradually increase the pressure so it becomes darker towards the end. Repeat but this time start with adding pressure on the crayon and gradually easing so that the line becomes light. 

Step 2. Repeat, but this time use the long flat side of the crayon.

Step 3. Repeat again, this time using the long sharp side and finally, start with any side of the crayon twisting and turning it and varying the pressure as you go. Do this as many times as you wish.

Reference photos

Start by selecting a range of images. Either work from one of the online classes that you may have started to work from or use the reference material from our Patreon. Download the images, open them up as a slide show so you can quickly toggle between poses and time yourself for each drawing before moving on to the next pose. 1 – 3 minutes to start with. 

Exercise 2: Blind contour drawings

Step 1.  This means drawing without looking at the paper. Your eyes must be continually focused on the model in front of you and you will have to make an effort not to look down at your drawing as it is a natural instinct to look and see what you are doing. This exercise is intended for you to improve your hand and eye co-ordination and to draw what you really see, not what you think you see. The drawings often come out misplaced with strange proportions but surprisingly often more accurate than you would expect. Don’t let the results put you off as it is a very beneficial exercise that you can repeat again and again. 

(Blind Contour drawing examples)

Step 3 You will need to draw slowly, recording the edges that you see in the model in front of you, deciding whether they warrant thick dark lines, soft mid-tone lines, crisp dark lines and so on. When you see a dark line in your model, apply more pressure on your crayon when you see an edge that needs a lighter line apply less pressure as you did in Exercise 1. Sometimes the edges will almost disappear into the background, try to draw them as faintly as you can. 

Step 4. Start anywhere and don’t rush to finish, you don’t need to complete the figure. Relax and enjoy the freedom of drawing without worrying about the outcome. It’s easier if you use continuous line, meaning that your crayon stays on the paper the whole time without lifting it off.

Step 5. Make 5 drawings at 2 minutes each using continuous line. You can stay with the same image or change to a different one. Draw on the other side of the paper to reduce waste and/or do more than one to each page.

(Continuous line drawing, the pencil or crayon stays on the paper the whole time)

Exercise 3: Drawing with straight lines

This will help you to try and simplify the figure as a whole and also help you to identify angles of the limbs, torso etc. Don’t try to draw every single detail, just try to generalise curves into longer straighter lines. You can use any side of the crayon you wish, go with what feels most comfortable. If you are not sure where to start, start with the head, try and estimate where it should be on the paper and work your way down. You can look down this time and there is no need for continuous line drawing, but try not to make too many corrections, try and go with what you think are errors and save any corrections to be made towards the end. You can spend a bit longer on this one, 15 minutes should be about the right length of time. Try to analyse the angles of the contour lines and average any curves into longer, straight lines then draw those lines as straight as you can. It’s fine if a few curves slip in but try to keep most of them straight.

(Step-by-step figure in straight lines)

(Using straight lines to define angles)

I know some people find this exercise quite hard, so try not to feel too despondent if you struggle. Try the exercise again and if it is not falling into place then leave it and try a few more blind contour drawings as in Exercise 2 instead. 

Taking it further

These exercises can create drawings in their own right but they can also be a foundation for more involved detailed drawings. This portrait started out with establishing the angles of the head in straight lines and then lightly adding some of the details using blind contour drawing. Once the foundation was down, further details were added and some corrections were made. Finally, darker lines were placed over the top. So if you feel inclined to do a more detailed study, then you can use these exercises as a start.

Summary

Conté Crayon is a lovely medium to work with, it’s somewhere between pencil and charcoal, being able to give you rich dark fine lines along with softer, broader marks. You can use it to cover areas very quickly and also for fine detailed study. George Seurat created many beautiful drawings using Conté crayon on textured paper building up layers of tone by applying the crayon with various pressures and leaving varying amounts of white flecks from the paper to achieve tones. It’s worth taking a look at his work, he seems to be the first to develop a drawing technique that consciously explores the relationship between the surface and the mark to develop his own drawing style. With Conté crayon on textured paper, he deliberately incorporated the nature of the surface into the act of drawing itself, so that the surface influenced the mark. Not remarkable these days but at the time, drawings were no more than preparatory studies for paintings or sculptures. There is no right or wrong, if you have your own ideas about how you would like to use your materials, then go ahead and give it a try.

(Portrait d'Aman-Jean par son ami Georges Seurat, crayon Conté, 1882)

-

This is the fourth of our weekly 'Life Drawing From Home' blog posts, commissioned using money raised on the Draw Patreon. Please do share your drawings with us, as we would love to see what everyone is up! Just tag us with @Draw_Brighton on social media or use the #LifeDrawingFromHome and #DrawBrighton hashtags. this article was written by Shelley Morrow - you can follow her on Instagram at @shelleymorrow1 and you can see more of her work on her website www.shelleymorrow.com.

Thanks for your support!