Drawing with Chalk or Charcoal on Toned Paper / Colored Paper

Drawing with Chalk or Charcoal on Toned Paper / Colored Paper

DRAWINGS ON TONED PAPER.

Toned paper with black and white chalk is often used by painters, when making studies, for carefully chosen, it provides a ready-made middle or half tone, and hence saves time and labor. Especially is it suitable for drapery studies, and Lord Leighton's drawings in this medium are well known.

Students of painting should use this method sometimes when drawing, for it fosters modeling "in the light." With pencil or black chalk on white, as the tone of the object approaches the tone of the paper, so work has perforce to cease. That is to say, on white paper most of the modeling is done on the dark side, and the tendency is to leave the lighter tones more or less empty. Work on toned paper is concerned as much with the light passages as with the dark, and hence follows more closely the method of painting.

One common error may be noted here. It is that of first making a completed drawing in black on the toned. paper, (and owing to its completeness the eye has subconsciously disregarded the tone of the paper and assumed it to be white), afterwards using the white chalk freely for the lights, with the result that all the tones are falsified.

When drawing on toned paper the figure should be examined in order to determine which areas may be assumed to be equivalent in tone to that of the paper. The black chalk may be used first to place the figure, to indicate the chief darks, and to suggest the main structure, then the white chalk should be substituted in order to place the lights. Generally the white chalk should not touch the black (except for cases of special emphasis), a space of plain paper being left between the two, representing the tone chosen as standing for the tone of paper.

Often when working on toned paper the student darkens unduly the parts approaching half tone, only finding at the close of the exercise that the tone of the paper would have sufficed. The untouched paper is the best part of the drawing if it is in the right place and corresponds with the tones of the model.

In drawing from draped figures evidence should be sought of the form beneath. Beginners draw the drapery only, as if on a clothes horse. They sometimes stop short at a sleeve, having omitted the continuity of arm and hand. Even in a fully clothed figure much of the form is suggested by the planes and by the pull of the drapery from the points of support, this often resulting in a beautiful series of radiating curves. It should be remembered that the deep parts of the folds represent the figure, for there the stuff rests upon it, and these shapes should be carefully searched out.