Red chalk drawing: Michelangelo
When you draw or work with chalks and other similar materials you are in effect making marks with the very rocks that compose the earth. White chalks in particular are very common on the south coast of England, (the White Cliffs of Dover), and lumps of it are everywhere you walk, often they are sea eroded and exactly the right fit for the hand. Chalk is soft and other rocks harder, so it is very easy to find a surface on which to make chalk drawings.
Sometimes when I think about what I am doing when I make a chalk drawing I can get a little shiver down my spine. Chalk is a limestone deposit. It is made by plankton concentrating calcium in their bodies when alive and then after they die, the calcium leaches out of their tiny bodies as they settle onto ocean floors. Over millions of years very thick deposits can be laid down, then as the earth morphs into new forms, seas recede and some areas of land are raised up, these areas of uplifted chalk deposits are what we see as the white cliffs of 'Albion', a name the Romans gave to what we now call England, a place name based on the Latin word 'albus' or 'white'. As I draw with chalk, I'm eroding it away, it's deposits now collecting on a new surface, one often made of paper, another organic substance, this time usually made from plants. This 'geological attrition' can be seen to be an essential part of the meaning of the activity of drawing with chalk. But the connection goes very deep. Back in the depths of time and in the depths of the sea there was an evolutionary step taken that was very significant for us humans. The need to leach out calcium carbonate was partly to ensure that a living organism was of the right acid/alkaline balance. Too much of either and life couldn't survive, and a transference out of the body of calcium carbonate as a 'shell' became a solution to the problem. Very quickly in evolutionary terms, what was something initially done to preserve life from too much alkaline present in the system, became something that operated as armour, encasing the animal as a protective shell. This process of using deposits of calcium carbonate to build with at some point much later turned itself inside out. Instead of building shells on the outside, it was used to build 'bones' on the inside and the history of vertebrates began, initially with fish like creatures and at some point long after fish had climbed out of the seas, the concept of a backbone was passed on as being essential to the idea of mammals.
So the chalk I'm drawing with in many ways shares a history with the bones that make up my fingers and which allow me to hold the chalk tightly as I use it.
Most people when you talk to them about chalk as a drawing substance are reminded of that time at school when teachers wrote on the blackboard with sticks of it. Weirdly blackboard chalk isn't chalk, it's usually made of gypsum another of those materials us artists are very fond of.
Tacita Dean
Tacita Dean's blackboard drawings use the classroom association in two ways, the first as a reminder that one aspect of art is to teach us something. Dean could be seen to be operating as a schoolmistress, telling us a tale of daring do. Her stories embrace the notion of struggle over the elements, which explains the recurrence of the sea as a major element in her work. The other issue about chalk drawings on blackboards is erasure, they always look impermanent, the erasures of the blackboard rubber being integral to the look.
Chalk (calcium carbonate) has been found in cave paintings that date back to 40,000 BC, while gypsum (calcium sulfate) has been used as a mortar for construction as far back as in the Egyptian pyramids. Chalk is an alkali that neutralizes acids, it is composed of calcium and oxygen combined with carbon (CaCO3), while gypsum is a salt (the product of a base and acid reacting and both becoming neutralised), made up of calcium and oxygen combined with sulphur. Gypsum’s origins are similar to chalk's, but in addition to being comprised of the calcium produced by the deaths of millions of plankton, gypsum also contains some of the salt that was left behind as the ocean evaporated.
Gypsum is a fantastic material mainly because it is the only mineral that can be restored to its original rock-like state by the addition of water alone. Common applications therefore include, the making of moulds and the making of sculpture (as Plaster of Paris) and as an ingredient in cement.
When making chalks, gypsum is dehydrated in a process that involves high temperatures to reduce its water content from nearly 21% to about 5-6%; then to make those various colours of classroom chalks, the crushed material is mixed with water and coloured pigments to produce those familiar blackboard chalk faded colours. But different mixes of pigments as well as clays or oils can also also added to produce pastels, and other art materials for drawing on paper. However these mixes don't have to be baked, because they are much softer, designed to be used on paper rather than blackboards.
If course plaster can be used to draw with. On the one hand it can simply be scratched into either when wet or dry, (as below) but it can also be used as a casting process to create drawings more like frottage.
The scratched lines incised into the plaster above are done to allow a top coat of smooth plaster to be laid down, the scratched surface allowing the next layer to be attached firmly. However it is also a drawing technique, called sgraffito, which is basically scratching through plaster to reveal the surface below.
Sgraffito used to decorate the outside of a building in Prague
Rachel Dein: Plaster relief drawing.
Flowers pushed into clay and a plaster mould made directly from the clay imprint
Although not as abundant as white, chalk can be found in various forms of red and in black. It is not easy to find deposits of such material because the chalk must be uniform enough for consistent colour and texture, dense and cohesive enough to be cut, but also soft and friable enough to make a mark on paper. Giorgio Vasari said that natural red chalk came primarily from Germany. There were also deposits in Italy, Spain, France, and Flanders. Black chalk was apparently more easily found. Natural black chalks make lines that are usually not as dark as charcoal. When looking at an old drawing, you can tell if it is done in chalk because chalk lines are neater and not as broken as charcoal lines, because chalks are not as crumbly. Increased pressure on the chalk can produce a darker line and lines can be broad and soft as well as sharp. A stick of chalk can be sharpened to a fine point for a thin line and Michelangelo talks about wetting chalk with his spittle in order to make it even darker. A chalk line also has a transparency to it that allows the light of the paper to show through and even though it is nearly impossible to erase chalk lines, they can be rubbed and blended to create subtle shading effects. Natural red chalk has a warm and vital colour that the French call sanguine (blood-red). The red derives from iron oxide, which occurs in the form of hematite. Red chalk is though rarely found naturally in a state soft enough to draw with and the hematite coloured chalk has to be diffused with fine clay in order to be soft enough for drawing. Different deposits produce different kinds of red. Natural red chalk is usually a pale blood-red, but the red can also be warm, cool, or neutral (that is, red-orange, red-violet, or red-brown).
Nathan Hawkes, an Australian artist makes large scale pastel and dry pigment drawings, working with anything from a vacuum cleaner to sharp metal points to scratch the paper in order to get the surfaces he requires. Hawkes reminds us that an old tradition can always be revisited and re-worked and in his case he also reminds us that we don't have to look far for exciting subject matter. Most of his images begin within the chaos of an ordinary life, and they evolve out of his experiences of domesticity, something that is being enforced on many of us at the moment, which is why I think artists like Nathan Hawkes deserve a fresh look.
Nathan Hawkes
Because red chalk is water soluble, it allows the making of a counterproof, a softer, reversed version of an image transferred by pressing it to another, dampened sheet of paper. Loosened by moisture, a portion of the ink, chalk, or graphite transfers to the new support, forming a mirror image of its source. Counterproofs are recognisable by their relative faintness and the direction of an artist's hatching. Lines created by right-handed artists tend to slope upward from left to right, but are reversed in counterproofs. This rudimentary form of replication helped artists to alter compositions or to simply see their work in reverse. I can remember when being trained as a printmaker, because an etching was a mirror image of the plate used to create it, we made counterproofs of soft pencil or felt tip pen drawing ideas, so that we were able to think about how the images would look in reverse.
Edme Bouchardon: The Sense of Smell: Counterproof
When a blood-red chalk is moistened to produce a stronger, darker, more solid line, it produces a cooler hue. Watteau sometimes wet his chalk for accents around the eyes, nose and mouth. By rubbing his natural red chalk lines lightly or smudging them slightly, Watteau was able to add very subtle accents within what were mainly monochrome drawings, as in the cheeks below.
Watteau
In this drawing by Watteau you can also see the difference between the sharp marks made by the red chalk and the rougher bolder marks that charcoal produces. Watteau was though an expert chalk user and he used several mixes of black chalk ground with clay, so I suspect the black lines on the checkered bodice are chalk and the hat charcoal.
Guercino
Guercino often used red chalk and in this drawing of a boy above you can see the traditional use of 'laid' paper as a surface for chalk drawings. 'Laid' paper has a good 'tooth' to it and in some ways it is like working on canvas, the texture of its surface can be used as an integral part of a drawing's feeling tone.
Laid paper
Seurat: Black conté crayon on Michallet, a handmade french 'laid' paper.
If you look closely at Seurat's drawing above, you can see the lines of the laid paper emerging from beneath the black marks of his sfumato technique. Laid papers such as those used by Guercino were still being used, but this time much more for their textural 'bite', but artists now had a new drawing tool with which to lay down granular dry pigment effects. During the late 18th century conté crayons were developed. Initially made of compressed powdered graphite or charcoal, they were, in a similar way to how red and black chalks had been made in previous times, mixed with a clay base, a base that Nicholas Conté realised could at times have small quantities of wax put into it to adjust the hardness of the crayon. This development was like cartridge paper another product of war. The British navel blockade of France during the Napoleonic War meant there was a shortage of graphite because what was available was being used for the war effort. The graphite deposit in Borrowdale in northern England was the only source at the time of pure solid graphite and Nicholas Conté discovered that he could mix together clay and powdered graphite, of which there was a supply in France, to form graphite rods. This also allowed for the production of varying darknesses, and as well as conté crayons, it led to the development of the pencil as we know it, including the HB hardness and softness system we use today. Now made using natural pigments, clay and a binder, conté crayons are usually found in black, white, sanguine (blood red), grey and other usually 'earth' colours. They are often used as a first layer before building up strong pastel colours. This is because pastels are so crumbly that you can often waste their intensity trying to build up the surface colour, and conté crayons are tougher than pastels but mix better on paper than many other hard pastel products.
The best papers to use for this are rough ones, these hold pigment grains well. The sticks' square profile also make conté crayons more suitable for detailed hatched work as opposed to the bolder painterly approach demanded by soft pastels. It is probably this aspect of conté crayons that led to them being used by Seurat. If you compare his use of pen and ink techniques to his use of crayon you can see why he might have preferred the harder crayons to softer pastels.
Seurat: Pen and ink drawing
In comparison you can see how Degas uses a very different handling that is much more suited to pastels.
Degas
Children's crayons, or art materials made specifically for children are relatively new things. Before the 19th century you would not have given children art materials to play with, they were far too expensive and would be seen as essential craft tools for working people. However since the 19th century the idea of fostering play through creative education has become more and more important as an aspect of child development and because of this we now associate childhood with a time of being able to use coloured crayons to 'express' ourselves. This has given coloured crayons, (both dry and waxy) an association some artists are anxious about, as the use of these materials they feel, can suggest that an artist is yet to let go of childish things. Personally I think that every material is wonderful and you just have to explore what it can do in order to open doors into new relationships between yourself and a material. This being something that is about 'letting go' of the human ego and opening yourself out to a proper 'material' conversation. In David Hockney's portrait drawing above you can see how he 'loves' his crayons, approaching them like all his materials with respect and giving himself time to adjust to them and their particular proclivities.
I began this post with an observation that when you draw or work with chalks and other similar materials you are in effect making marks with the very rocks that compose the earth. This is an ancient idea, for instance Buddhist sand painting is essentially drawing directly with dry pigments. The video below also demonstrates the use of chalked string to draw geometrical relations a process that links Renaissance perspective construction with the building trades.
Buddhist mandala creation
Yusuke Asai
Uluru
A cave painting at the base of Uluru
The image above is over 10,000 years old, made with the red earth of Uluru. The image below is one local to Leeds, a sandstone carving also made over 10,000 years ago on Ilkley moor.
Ilkley moor stone carving
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