14-Day Beginner Series - Dry Mediums

Hi, I'm Mackenzie Swenson, and welcome back to the 14-day Beginner Series with the Artist's Academy. Today, we are going to be talking all about dry mediums. So typically this is what people think of when they use the word drawing. It covers anything from working in pencils to charcoal, to oil pastel, you know, whatever is a dry medium that kinda falls into this category. There are a couple of things that are kind of iffy. So we are gonna be doing a segment then on wet mediums, so things that would typically be considered painting. And I have included a couple things today that sort of fall into the wet medium side of things, but still tend to be considered drawing. So that would be things like working with pen and ink. Technically ink is a liquid substance, and so in a way that would make it a wet medium, but it's usually classified as, you know, a drawing tool. So keeping it in with that, and then also markers. Markers are technically an ink-based item, so in a way they maybe belong more with the wet mediums, but I've also kinda grouped those into this, just since it's more drawing tools. So just to give you guys a little bit of an overview of the different mediums that are being covered with, you know, different instructional material on the site, we've got working with graphite or pencil, working in charcoal, working in chalk. So like red chalk drawings or something you could think of, white chalk. So not like not like sidewalk chalk, but like you know what da Vinci, or, you know, Michelangelo's like red chalk anatomy drawings, that kind of thing. We've got colored pencil. So colored pencils, usually a little waxier, with wax as the binding agent. And then we also have, like I mentioned before, pen and ink. We have markers and then, lastly, oil pastel. Those are just kind of an overview of the range of options you have for, you know, exploring different things. I'm not gonna get into all of those today, partially because I don't have personal experience with some of them, like I've never worked in oil pastel, and I've never really done much with, I don't do a lot with pen and ink these days. It's been a while since I've worked with that. So what I'm really gonna focus on today is pencil, charcoal, a little bit of chalk, colored pencil. And I think that that pretty much covers it. Those are kind of the more traditional mediums. Pen and ink is definitely a traditional medium, but that certainly deserves its own sort of studying category. So I went over my basic drawing kit. You guys will probably remember this from the second day, right? This was my pencil case. I have, you know, my Staedtler pencil, my kneaded eraser, my Mono Tombow eraser, old stump, and let's see, can't even read this one anymore. General's charcoal pencil. And then, I don't have one in here. Where did it go? Here we go. Ah. Okay. Well, it doesn't have much lead right now, but the General's white chalk. So just to get a little further into working with graphite, I like to have a range of pencils that goes from about 2B, which is very soft, gets darker, it's a little smudgier, all the way up to about 4H, which is really nice for fine detail work, delicate rendering, getting values that are really, really subtle. So that's, you know, pretty much all there is to the material side of things with graphite. The next thing that I'll go over is charcoal. So I mentioned this the General's charcoal pencil as a, you know, one of the main things that I keep on hand at all times. But if I'm gonna do a charcoal specific drawing, there are two other types of charcoal that I usually keep on hand. This is a brand called Creative Mark. There's willow charcoal in here, which is similar to vine charcoal. And those are both very light, airy, powdery. It breaks pretty easily, but you can also cover a lot of ground, and it's very loose powder. Well, it's not a powder, but like it'll dissolve into a loose powder as you use it. So those... I'm just gonna slide some of this stuff back over. So this willow charcoal here. The sticks come in, you know, different sizes. They're pretty irregular, but I sharpen them just like I sharpen the pencils with my little sanding board here. So keeping it on an angle. Alright, I'm not gonna do it right now 'cause it is sort of time consuming, but those are really good for covering broad areas and putting down marks that are easy to either smudge out with a shammy, a lambskin thing, or, you know, just being able to like move things around, keep it flexible. The other type of charcoal I like to use is a brand called Nitram. They come in these little, they're squares. And this charcoal is much harder and firmer and stays where you put it, you can get darker with it. So I like to move into working with my Nitram charcoal part way into the process if I'm working with charcoal. So between the General's charcoal pencil, which is the darkest and the most like precise of the three, the Nitram and the willow, those really cover the spectrum of what I use when I'm working with charcoal. Okay. So then the next thing I'm just gonna mention is working with chalk. So I like to keep a little bit of red chalk on hand for like a sanguine type drawing. And then I also like to keep the white chalk on hand. And I'll show you guys an example. Okay, so this is a brand that I like. I forget what it's called. Okay, Austria... It's funny when you pick up things, and then you're like, you have it for a while, and you're like, I don't remember where I got it. I don't remember what the brand was. I can't read it anymore. But this one I can also put it in the class description and notes, but this is a really nice... Here, I'll just use a little piece of paper here. And it creates a really kind of beautiful burnt orangey kind of color. And then it also blends really nicely. So if you wanna add just a little bit of color to otherwise monochromatic drawing, it's really, really beautiful for that. And then, of course, the white chalk as well. I heavily recommend this particular brand, the General's white chalk, just because it's a little bit drier. Some of them get really waxy and then they are really hard to erase, or they get smudgy and dirty with the other materials on your paper. One thing to keep in mind is when you're using white chalk and a different medium, whether it's the red chalk, or charcoal, or graphite, try to always keep a little bit of space in between where you use the white chalk, and then where you transition into using the pencil. So you'll see here, I'm allowing the paper to really serve as the intermediary value between the white chalk and the dark of this part of the pencil. So one of the other things is, once you kind of have an idea of what these different mediums are, you can combine them and use them for, you know, whatever purpose you want, however you want to. So I have this portrait drawing here that I did a while back, but, you know, in this drawing, it's on toned paper, and I used graphite, I used charcoal, I used red chalk, I used white chalk. I used brown chalk, I think. You know, there's a lot of different things being used in this drawing. And so I know some people are pretty strict about not combining like charcoal and graphite, or different things like that. But if you're careful with your layering process, and you just kind of observe how things are coming together as you go, I've always found that you can combine them pretty effectively. I also want to just take a moment to talk about colored pencils. So this is my current collection of colored pencils. You can see, I don't actually have a full, you know, set of like all of the different colors. But I tend to use colored pencil more as a, like a an accent thing where I have specific colors that I really like. And so I've kind of curated my palette of colored pencils to serve a specific purpose when I'm working on drawings. And then the other thing is I keep some 100 grit sandpaper on hand that I just can kind of slap on top of this guy here. And when I'm sharpening my colored pencils, I use that. And it allows me to get like a really beautiful... Hold on. There we go. You can see here a really beautiful tapered point, and not to kind of wear out the grit, or fill up the grit with wax on my sandpaper. The two brands of colored pencils that I really like are this brand called Supracolor 2 Soft. That's the specific make. And then I also really like just the Prismacolor Premier series. So those are what I prefer. I don't do a lot with colored pencil, but I like having the option to add a little bit of color to things when I want to. So then the last thing we'll talk about with this is just paper. So I've got three different types of paper I usually use when I'm drawing, just to keep it simple. Oh, I guess four. So we've talked a little bit about this, do a quick refresher. This is Strathmore brand. Same as this, alright? But this is their 400 Drawing series. So paper usually comes in newsprint, sketch, drawing, and then there's like one or two steps above that. I forget what it's called. I never use it so it's not something I pay too much attention to, but it's like something board. It's kind of like an illustration board, but they just basically get thicker and higher density. So newsprint is super thin. Alright. Sketch is a little bit thinner. Drawing is a nice happy medium where it's dense enough and sturdy enough that you can do a nice drawing on it, but it's not super expensive. So you can still not be too precious with how you use it. And then of course, like I mentioned, my gray paper that works really well for sketching. So those are kind of my go-tos for any basic drawing that I do. But then if I'm doing a more finished piece, I will either use this paper. This is a German company called Hahnemuhle, and this is their Earth Sand tone. I also have some white paper from them. But it's their Ingres paper, and Ingres is spelled I-N-G-R-E-S. And I don't know why it's pronounced ang, but it is. So Ingres. It's French, that's why. They don't like to pronounce letters. So we've got this paper. It's very traditionally made. It's got these little laid lines. I don't know if you can get close enough to see it, but it's a little bit more delicate. So you do have to be kind of careful with it, but it creates a really beautiful, very traditional line quality. And then the other paper I will use is a watercolor paper. So it's Artistico Fabriano 140-pound hot press paper that I tone myself. So this is a piece of paper I toned. And we got a couple videos on that on the site for you if you're interested in knowing how to do that. But that's what I did this painting on. So this is that watercolor paper. It's nice and dense. So it holds the tone of the ink. And then it really allows you to play around on the surface of it with different applications of mediums and things like that. So those are the types of paper I usually go to in my practice. So, you know, it can be a nice starting place, if you're just getting started or if you are looking for some new or different materials to try and use. But yeah, really to me drawing is just about experimenting. And then also, once you find something you like, getting really, really familiar and comfortable with it. You know, working with pencil for me is like it's an old friend. Like I feel very comfortable when I'm using it to bring things to life on a piece of paper. And it's a great feeling to know I have that relationship with my materials. So yeah, I hope this segment inspired you to, you know, maybe dig back out some old drawing supplies you haven't used in a while or maybe explore some new ones. Thank you so much for joining me, and I will see you tomorrow.