BLENDING COLORS WITH CONTE CRAYONS

SHARPENING CONTE PASTEL PENCILS

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The following was posted by Brian McGurgan on our Conte Crayons Resouce Board, which we no longer have. The articles and posts on that board are being transferred to these pages where they will be more likely to be read (and, they're easier to read, too).
- Jean

One of the most important differences an artist familiar with working in paint will recognize when starting to use Conté crayons (or pastels) is that the act of blending colors to form new shades and hues occurs directly on the picture’s surface or ground rather than through mixing colors before application. This distinction is important because it directly affects the manner in which colors are applied.

Blending of color with Conté crayons typically follows one of two approaches:

1. Lining or layering strokes of different color next to and on top of each other so that, standing back from the work, the color appears to the observer’s eyes to blend. When viewed more closely, the individual strokes of distinct color are still visible.

2. Layering strokes of different color on top of each other and physically blending the crayon particles together to produce a new color. The blending can be done with tissue paper, cotton, paper towel, cloth, tortillon, stump, or blending tool. Tortillons are made of paper that is spiral-wound to a point. Stumps are also made from spiral-wound paper, but the end is typically ground to a point. Blending tools usually have rubber tips in a variety of different shapes and are suited for detailed blending. You can also use your fingers, although this is probably not to be recommended for concerns of both health and neatness.

As with most techniques, a finished drawing will often contain a combination of both approaches. I tend to utilize the second form of blending more, though. I usually work with an approach that is similar to applying light washes in watercolor paint (without the water, that is). I lightly apply small amounts of Conté crayon to an area of a drawing and then rub the area to create a uniform, light “dry wash” of color. In many cases, I will apply these dry washes in layers, working one color at a time. Since I tend to use light-toned paper lately, this has the added advantage of allowing a certain amount of the light tone of the paper to be visible until multiple semi-transparent layers of color have been applied. Usually, I’ll leave some areas with only the lightest of dry washes to allow the paper to provide a sense of luminescence in much the same way you would with watercolor paint and paper. Another thing that I like about this approach is that you can use multiple dry washes of the same color to build intensity in some areas of a form while leaving other areas lighter by applying fewer layers of dry washes. This can be used to suggest three-dimensionality in the form without immediately needing to resort to application of different darker and lighter colors. I use paper towel most often for applying these very light, dry wash layers because it’s coarse texture will rub down the surface removing excess dust and leaving a clean, semi-transparent layer of pigment. Other blending tools and materials, including cotton, tissue, tortillons, and stumps, tend to leave a thin layer of dust on the surface that reduces the semi-transparent quality that the paper towel can produce.

Since Conté crayons work very similarly to dry, hard pastels, many of the techniques used for working in pastel apply. With most pastel works (especially those in soft pastel), the layering of color through strokes and blending creates a heavier coat of pastel dust than what I’ve described above with my “dry washes”. I use this approach, too – often applying heavier strokes in certain areas of a drawing right on top of areas of my “dry wash” so that the undertones show through in places. However, when you build up heavier coatings of dust (either in Conté crayon or pastel), you then have to rely entirely on the various shades of color available to you – or that you are able to blend – rather than on using light layers of the same color to build intensity as I described above.

At the start of this post, I commented that these approaches to blending color make work with Conté crayons (and pastels) distinctly different than with most painting, where colors are typically mixed on a palette before they are applied to the ground. To clarify, though, the artist in paints can utilize the two techniques I described above for blending color in Conté crayon but also has the additional – and more frequently used – approach of mixing color before application. Certainly, you can achieve a visual “mixture” of paints by applying brush strokes of different color next to each other (Seurat’s work is a good example), and you can mix colors – either in washes or in heavier strokes – directly on the painting ground. But most mixing in painting typically occurs on the palette before color is applied to the ground and this is a distinction that seems worth noting.

Having said all of that, you actually can mix Conté crayon or pastels before application. This requires, though, that you grind the crayons you want to mix into fine dust using a file or sandpaper. You can then mix the resulting dust to achieve the color you want and can then wipe the color on with a tissue, paper towel, or cotton. I include this as a final note for completeness but I can’t necessarily endorse this approach since it doesn’t seem like it would be a very pleasant way to work. I also tend to think that it would be tough to achieve just the right blend of color. The only reason I can think of for trying this approach would be if you wish to have very light dry washes of pigment with no visible stroke marks – except for the slight variations in intensity caused by your rubbing with tissue or cotton. Again, I’ve included it as an endnote for completeness and not as a recommendation.

Please add comments or suggestions to help improve upon the techniques I’ve described here. I have no doubt that others will have approaches they’ve used that I haven’t thought of, and I’d like to learn of them as well. I plan another post soon to talk about other techniques for applying color, mostly borrowed from pastel practices.

Brian

P.S.

I mentioned above that you can grind your Conté crayons (or pastels) into dust and rub the dust onto your drawing surface, and had described this as a possible way of mixing color before applying it. While I suggested that this wouldn't be a very pleasant way to work, there are some artists that do use this approach to obtain a dry wash. One example is Bruce Lynch, a wildlife artist, who works in pastels as well as in paints. This article shows a demonstration of use of pastels on a photorealistic picture. The artist comments elsewhere that he doesn't mix the pastel dust before application, but instead uses pure colors from individual pastel sticks. Many artists in pastel prefer to limit the blending they do and instead rely on maintaining a wide range of pastel colors. This helps explain why some manufacturers have color ranges that contain hundreds of hues and values. Whereas with watercolor and oil paints, artists often can get by with a very limited range of colors, pastel artists often prefer to have a very broad selection of colors at their disposal to reduce the difficulties that mixing can present. Conté crayons present something of a challenge here since only 48 colors are available in the USA, with another 22 or so available in Europe. Personally, I prefer the limited range since this helps prevent me from feeling I need to collect every possible hue manufactured. Also, by limiting my palette to the 48 available colors, I hope to build a greater sensitivity in my use of these colors and in blending them to achieve the hues and values I desire in my work. I've heard of artists augmenting their range of Conté colors with soft or hard pastels from other manufacturers, which is another possibility if there are colors you just don't feel you are successfully able to achieve through blending.

Brian

SHARPENING CONTE PASTEL PENCILS

This is another post by Brian McGurgan:

I use Conté pastel pencils along with Conté crayons when working on drawings. Generally, I will start a drawing with a light sketch in pastel pencil, and then work in the blocks of color, light, and shadow, with Conté crayons, and finally switch back to the pastel pencils when adding finer detail and for giving greater definition to the outline of shapes. Although they sometimes seem slightly harder than the crayons, the pastel pencils have similar blending and workability properties, and the same range of colors as the crayons.

A big frustration I hit upon early in using Conté pastel pencils was the difficulty I had in sharpening them. The diameter of the pencil is too large for most sharpeners and, when I would find a sharpener of suitable size, the pencil would more often than not be badly damaged in the sharpening process. The wood casing frequently splintered and the pastel core would crumble. This led to much waste and great anxiety for me. I also found that, once the pastel core had been stressed by sharpening that had resulted in breakage or crumbling, subsequent efforts to sharpen the pencil were even more likely to result in further crumbling. I contacted a number of vendors and the best advice I received was to avoid sharpeners all together and to use a sharp knife and sandpaper to achieve a point. This worked better, but the points I made were inconsistent in shape, rarely truly sharp, and seemed to result in a lot of pastel core being sanded away and therefore a fair amount of waste.

This situation was particularly frustrating to me because I am a firm believer in mastering technique in order to be able to move on to developing skill and expressiveness in my work - and sharpening the pastel pencils was holding me back. I decided that I needed a technique that accomplished a number of goals: consistently sharp pencils, consistent shape to the points, and with no breakage and a minimum of waste.

I've arrived at the following technique, which successfully accomplishes these goals. A warning in advance, though - patience and practice is necessary here. I can now sharpen a very dull pastel pencil in three to four minutes, and maintaining the point between sharpenings takes little time at all. However, this is not the same as the few seconds it takes to sharpen a regular pencil in a mechanical or handheld sharpener. The reward for patience and care, though, are sharp pastel pencils that don't get mangled and wasted in the process - to me this well worth the time it takes.

This approach consists of three steps:

1) Using a very sharp knife, carefully shape the last 5/8" - 3/4" of the pastel pencil, removing the wood completely from the pastel core for roughly the last 3/8" of the pencil. I hold the pencil in my left hand and the knife in my right hand (I'm right-handed) and use the thumb of my left hand to push the blade through the wood while the fingers of my right hand adjust the angle of the knife. My fingers all remain behind the blade for safety and I work very carefully to slice the wood off in thin shavings, tapering to the spot where the pastel core is completely revealed. Remember that the wood provides structural support for the pastel core so you don't want to remove more wood than necessary - only enough to have sufficient pastel core to shape to a point. Also, avoid digging into the pastel core with the knife since this can lead to crumbling if the blade enters too deeply into the pastel. Note that I am not sharpening the pastel core at all in this stage - only removing the wood from it near the end of the pencil.

2) With the wood whittled away from approximately 3/8" of pastel core, I then use a handheld pencil sharpener to shape the pastel core to a point. I do notinsert the pastel pencil fully into the sharpener but instead hold the the pastel pencil tip against the space between the blade of the sharpener and the case about 1/4" - 1/2" inside the sharpener's hole. I turn the pastel pencil between my fingers so that the pastel pencil tip is being ground against the sharpener's blade. By moving the pencil tip closer to or further away from the opening in the sharpener, I can adjust the angle of the pastel pencil's point. I know I'm done when I have a very neat, consistently shaped point on the pencil. Note that none of the wood casing of the pencil is removed in this step; I'm only sharpening the exposed pastel core. This will result in build-up of a very small amount of fine dust from the pencil, which - if you are very frugal - you can save for rubbing on to drawings later with a tissue, Q-Tip, or paper towel. The angle of the tip will usually be more obtuse than you would get if you sharpened a regular pencil in a sharpener. I don't try to achieve a long, acutely-angled point since this would be more fragile.

3) The last and final step is to lightly rub the point of the pencil against a piece of fine-grit sandpaper to bring the very tip of the pencil to a very sharp point. This should be accomplished in just a few light strokes and shouldn't result in much dust, since this is really just fine-tuning the point provided by step 2 above.

As you use the pencil, you can usually maintain the tip with steps 2 and 3 above until the point has become worn enough that you need to remove additional wood casing.

The technique described here has worked well for me and has allowed me to use my Conté pastel pencils free of the anxiety that sharpening had produced previously. If you have a better approach you can recommend, I would be eager to here about it. Also, if you try the approach I've described and can recommend improvements to it, that would be great too.

Brian

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