Drawing media and materials

1Why your tools matter

Before an architect draws a new school, before a fashion designer sketches a kitenge dress, and before a scientist records a plant found in Nyungwe Forest, each of them chooses a tool. A hard pencil gives a fine, pale line that is easy to erase; a stick of charcoal gives a velvety black that fills a large area in seconds; ink gives a line that cannot be rubbed out. Choosing the right tool is the first decision in every drawing, and it costs very little: most of what you need can be bought for a few hundred francs or made at home.

Two words carry this lesson. A medium (plural media) is the material that makes the marks, such as graphite, charcoal or ink. The support is the surface you draw on, such as paper, card or board.

2Dry media

• Graphite pencils. The "lead" is graphite mixed with clay. More clay makes a harder pencil, marked H; more graphite makes a softer, blacker pencil, marked B. HB sits in the middle. A 2H gives pale, sharp lines for guidelines; a 2B to 6B gives rich darks for shading, but it smudges more easily.
• Charcoal. Stick (willow) charcoal is a twig burnt without air. It is soft, easy to rub out and good for big, bold drawings. Compressed charcoal is charcoal powder pressed with a binder: darker and harder to erase. A smooth, well-burnt piece of amakara from the cooking stove also draws, although it crumbles and can scratch.
• Chalk, pastels and crayons. White chalk adds light areas on grey or brown paper. Wax crayons resist smudging. Soft pastels give colour and blend easily.

3Wet media

• Pens: a ballpoint pen gives an even line; a felt-tip gives a bold one; a dip pen or a reed pen gives a line that swells and thins with pressure. Writers in the ancient world cut pens from reeds, and you can too.
• Ink and wash: ink brushed on with water makes a smooth grey tone called a wash. Strong black tea or coffee also makes a brown wash.

4Supports and other tools

• Paper: cartridge paper is thick and smooth; newsprint is cheap for practice; brown paper from a shop bag is a toned (mid-grey or brown) paper on which you can draw darks in charcoal and lights in white chalk. The roughness of a paper's surface is called its tooth: charcoal and pastel need tooth to grip.
• Erasers: a plastic eraser for pencil; a kneaded eraser (a soft, putty-like eraser you can shape to a point) for lifting small highlights. Soft bread pressed on charcoal lifts it too.
• A drawing board: plywood or stiff cardboard with two clips, so the paper does not slide.
• A blending stump: a tight roll of paper for smoothing tone. Fingers leave grease on the paper, so use the stump instead.
• Fixative: a light spray that stops charcoal smudging. Cheap hair spray, sprayed outdoors from about 30 cm, does the same job.

5Holding the tool

• Tripod grip (as for writing): for control and small detail.
• Overhand grip (pencil under your palm, held by the thumb and fingers): for long, loose lines and for shading with the side of the lead. Move from the shoulder, not just the wrist.

Worked example: choosing media for a job

Umutoni is making a drawing of a clay pot on a mat. Here is how she chooses her media, step by step.

1. Planning lines must be light and easy to remove, so she uses a 2H pencil with light pressure.
2. The darkest shadow inside the pot's mouth needs a deep black, so she uses a 6B pencil or charcoal, not a harder pencil pressed hard, which would only make the paper shiny and dent it.
3. A shiny highlight on the rim must be the lightest value, so she leaves the paper white or lifts it with a kneaded eraser.
4. The final drawing will be handled by classmates, so she sprays the charcoal areas lightly to fix them.

6Make it

A. A reed pen. (1) Cut a dry reed or thin bamboo stem, about as thick as a pencil, to 15 cm. (2) On a cutting board, cut one end at a long slant, cutting away from your body. (3) Trim the point flat so the tip is 2 to 3 mm wide. (4) Cut a slit about 1 cm up the middle of the tip; the slit holds the ink. (5) Dip it in ink and draw lines, dots and dashes. Press harder for a thicker line.

B. Charcoal sticks (with an adult). (1) Peel the bark off straight twigs about as thick as a pencil, from a plant known to be safe to burn. (2) Pack them into a small metal tin with a lid and make one small hole in the lid. (3) An adult places the tin in the hot embers of a cooking fire. Smoke comes out of the hole. (4) When the smoke stops, often after about an hour, the adult lifts the tin out with tongs. (5) Leave it closed until it is completely cold: opening it hot lets in air and the charcoal can catch fire.

C. A media test sheet. Rule six boxes on a page. In each box, test one medium: draw a line, a dark patch, a smudge and an erased mark. Label every box. Keep the sheet in your sketchbook as your own guide.

7Look closely

The Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) drew this wheat field in 1888 with a reed pen and ink, over a light pencil sketch.

• Look at how many different marks one simple pen makes: dots, dashes, curls, long strokes and short hooks.
• The marks are small and crowded near the horizon and grow bigger and more open near the bottom of the page. That change of size makes the field seem to stretch away from you.
• The ink was once black. It was iron-gall ink, which slowly turns brown over the years: a reminder that the medium you choose also decides how long a drawing lasts.

Practice