Portrait Drawing Week 1: Three Crayons

Starting by drawing a portrait head or head and shoulders, over the next few weeks we’ll go on to look at different parts of the face and depicting hair, in more detail. Firstly, do remind yourself of the general proportions of the head and placement of the features. This week we’ll use the head to explore the three-crayon technique. Historically this has been used for preparatory drawings for oil portraits and also for finished works in their own right.  Some examples can be found on the following Pinterest board, link below:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/jhall1282/coloured-grounds-drawing/three-crayon-technique/

Here you will find works by Antoine Watteau, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and others you may not be so familiar with like Frederico Barocci and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.  Much later artists working in this medium are Elizabeth Sonrel (1874 to 1953) and the portrait drawings of the contemporary artist Weillie Wu especially his portraits of Tibetan women and girls.

Also well worth a look is the article below about Holbein’s drawings, link below. Holbein often combined different drawing media within the same work, ink, charcoal, red chalk, etc.

https://willkempartschool.com/hobeins-portrait-drawings-the-encounter/embed/#?secret=vBmq9yypVt#?secret=Q4neOMz06w

For these studies you will need just three “crayons” in black, terracotta or sanguine, and white. The “crayons” may be conté crayon, hard pastel, pastel pencil or pastel. The black may be charcoal.

You will also need a coloured ground with a tooth (pastel paper or board, or a board painted with a tinted gesso).   Traditionally this has usually been a warm grey or sometimes a pale green.  You can make surprisingly realistic skin tones using these three colours on a warm grey.  The black serves as the deepest tone but can also look quite blue when mixed with white and contrasts well with the redder chalk/pastel.

You may start with the red first or the black and hold back with the white till you are ready to add some pale areas. However there are no rules. I would advise making your initial marks with a light touch till you are happy with the main shapes. Then add stronger tones and lines.

Practical:

1. To get an idea of how the materials work together make some swatches of the colours alone and mixing by layering, hatching or blending.  Each method will give a slightly different result.  An important thing to notice is that the reddish chalk and white give very warm tints and the black with white gives very cool almost blue tints, so together with using the paper as a colour you have a limited but useful palette.

 2. Then try drawing an oval and use the chalks to make it look as three dimensional as an egg.  You could do worse than choose an egg as your first model as you can draw in the shadow as well.

3. Draw an imagined head using the three chalks.  Start with either the sanguine or black; I have a preference for using the red first and limiting the amount of black.  Look at the Pinterest board see how some artists work by blending the materials and others by making distinct marks with each colour and use line, hatching and overlaying. Also note how the paper is used as a tone/colour.

This is also a good exercise to recall the basic proportions of the head.

4. Choose a reference, perhaps a young woman and make your own three crayon study.  Note that in making these drawings you will be leaving some of the paper untouched. If you find it a bit difficult, try just making a black and white, or sanguine and white study this week, and using all three crayons together the following week.

Your Drawings: