I have been drawing a lot lately, I tend to go from painting to drawing and back. I have been looking at old master portraits and been enjoying drawing them, yet as soon as I am done sketching and I look at it, I like what I see, yet I can never get the darks as dark as I want...or think I need. I love the grey toned paper for creating nice white highlights and I want to get some that is bigger. Most is just standard letter size.
I have seen charcoal paper but it is expensive so my question is, smooth or toothed paper and what is a decent paper that is grey that doesnt involve selling my kidney..
0 ·
Comments
Try soft pastel or charcoal on newsprint. $0.20 cents for an A2 sheet. (see attached dwg.)
Great for doing lots of drawings and compositional layouts.
The charcoal or pastel can tone the newsprint in half a minute - dry and ready to draw on.
Lighten tone with chamoise, erase with putty rubber, blend with fingers. Highlights with white pastel.
Use the expensive store purchased papers for redoing the best of your newsprint drawings.
Alternately, use Yupo (plastic) paper (A2 $4) painted with Art Spectrum Colourfix Primer ($12. $6 on special) heaps of pastel tones and a perfect fine sandpaper-like surface for pastel.
Denis
http://www.dickblick.com/products/strathmore-400-series-recycled-toned-sketch-wirebound-journals/#photos
It comes in two flavors GRAY and TAN and sizes range from 5"x8" to 18"x24"
I reckon loose sheets are better, I bought a pack of 500, 20"x 30" - you are not paying for the binding and cover printing you don't need.
Denis